Awards

Raymond W. Smock Fellowship

Application Deadline: April 5, 2024.

The Raymond W. Smock Fellowship supports attendance for first-time attendees at the annual meeting of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress. The 2024 meeting will be held May 15-17 at the National Archives Research Center in Washington D.C. The 2024 meeting host is the Center for Legislative Archives.  

The Smock Fellowship of $1000 is open to those who work at an ACSC member institution and have not previously attended an annual meeting. If you know someone who fits these criteria, please let them know about this opportunity and please share it with your state and regional professional networks! The application deadline is Friday, April 5, 2024. Please note that the Scholarships and Awards Committee may choose to divide the award between two applicants.

Notification will be made before the ACSC meeting, and the award will be presented at the 2024 annual meeting in Washington D.C. 

 To apply, fill out the application form and send it to the Scholarships and Awards Committee chair, Ashton Ellett, at ellettag@uga.edu.

 
 

The Richard A. Baker Graduate Student Research Travel Grant

Application deadline: May 3, 2024.

The Baker Graduate Student Travel Grant is awarded annually to support graduate-level research conducted at Association of Centers for the Study of Congress member repositories. An award of up to $1500 may be used to underwrite travel, lodging, copying, scanning, and other research expenses incurred from July 1- June 1 of the award year. Please note that the Scholarships and Awards Committee may divide the award between two applicants. The Committee will evaluate each application on its merits. Top consideration will be given to projects involving the substantive study of issues primarily related to the study of Congress. Each proposal should be aimed at a discrete end product such as a book, dissertation, thesis, article, documentary, film, exhibit, digital humanities, or social networking site. Budgets may be approved in whole or in part. Each recipient is required to acknowledge the award as well as ACSC in any resulting published work(s) and donate a copy of the work(s) to both ACSC and the sponsoring archival repository. ACSC may also request that the recipient(s) submit a brief article summarizing their research experience and conclusions for publication by the Association. The Baker Award honors ACSC founding member and U. S. Senate Historian Emeritus Richard A. Baker.

Email completed applications with subject line “Baker Grant” by 11:59PM Eastern time on Friday, May 3, 2024 to the Scholarships and Awards Committee chair, Ashton Ellett, ellettag@uga.edu.

2024  Baker Graduate Student Research Travel Grant (Word) 

 

Congressional Papers Section Scholarship

Application Deadline: May 3, 2024.

The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress (ACSC) awards the annual Congressional Papers Section (CPS) Scholarship of up to $500 to support attendance at the CPS pre-conference meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). This year’s CPS pre-conference meeting will take place online, but the scholarship may be used to defray the cost of traveling to the 2024 meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Chicago, Illinois.

The ACSC established this award in 2011 to acknowledge CPS’s role in promoting the preservation and use of congressional collections. The Scholarships and Award Committee will give preference to an individual who is tasked for the first time with processing and preserving a congressional collection and whose institution is committed to documenting the political process. The committee reserves the right to split the scholarship between two individuals.

To apply, please fill out the attached form and email the completed application with subject line “CPS Scholarship” by 11:59PM Eastern on May 3, 2024 to the Scholarships and Awards Committee chair, Ashton Ellett, ellettag@uga.edu.

2024 Congressional Papers Section (CPS) Scholarship (Word) 

Grants

Grants for Research in Congressional Collections

The ACSC program Grants for Research in Congressional Collections is funded at $2,500 per year. Institutional members are eligible to apply for individual grants not to exceed $500 on behalf of individuals who have conducted research in an ACSC member’s congressional collections. Note that this grants program is unusual in that grants will be awarded after research has been conducted.

  1. Applications for grants can only be submitted by ACSC institutional members (i.e., ACSC sponsors) and should contain the following information:
    1. Name of ACSC sponsor

    2. Contact information for liaison person at sponsoring institution

    3. Amount requested (up to $500)

    4. Description of the research project 

    5. List of congressional collections used by the researcher

    6. Criteria used by the sponsor to recommend the grant

    7. Researcher’s contact information

  2. The ACSC Executive Committee will review applications and approve disbursements.  The committee will not impose criteria for selecting eligible individual recipients – criteria will be left to the ACSC sponsor.
  3. Grant payments will be made directly to the individual researcher, not to the ACSC sponsor.  

Members should contact Sara Stefani for more information.