Awards and Grants
The Raymond W. Smock Fellowship
Application Deadline: April 3, 2026.
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 2026 meeting will be held May 6-8 and is hosted by the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC.
The Smock Fellowship in the amount of $1000 is awarded annually to an individual or individuals working in a congressional center that is a member of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress (ACSC) who has not previously attended an ACSC annual meeting. The Smock Fellowship honors ACSC founding member and first president, Raymond W. Smock, Director Emeritus of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies at Shepherd University. The recipient will be notified about the award before the meeting, and the award will be presented at the 2026 annual meeting at the Center for Legislative Archives in Washington, DC.
To apply, fill out the application form and send it to the Scholarships and Awards Committee chair, Ashton Ellett, at ellettag[at]uga[dot]edu. Completed applications must be received by Friday, April 3, 2026.
Application form:
The Richard A. Baker Graduate Student Research Travel Grant
Application deadline: May 15, 2026.
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. For a list of current ACSC repositories, please visit our member directory.
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.
To apply, fill out the attached form. Email completed applications with the subject line “Baker Grant” by 11:59 PM Eastern time on Friday, May 15, 2026 to the Scholarships and Awards Committee chair, Ashton Ellett, ellettag[at]uga[dot]edu.
The 2026 Richard A. Baker Graduate Student Research Travel Grant application (Word document)
Karen D. Paul Congressional Papers Section Scholarship
Application Deadline: May 15, 2026.
The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress (ACSC) awards the annual Karen D. Paul Congressional Papers Section (CPS) Scholarship of up to $500 to support attendance at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). This year’s SAA meeting will take place from July 29 to August 1, 2026, in New Orleans, Louisiana. You can find more information concerning the meeting online at SAA’s conference webpage.
The ACSC established this award in 2011 to acknowledge CPS’s role in promoting the preservation and use of congressional collections. In 2025, ACSC renamed the award to the Karen D. Paul Congressional Papers Section Scholarship to honor longtime U.S. Senate Archivist and charter CPS member Karen D. Paul.
The Scholarships and Award Committee will give preference to an individual who is tasked 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 provide the information outlined in the link below and email the completed application with subject line “Karen D. Paul CPS Scholarship” by 11:59PM Eastern on May 15, 2026 to the Scholarships and Awards Committee chair, Ashton Ellett, ellettag[at]uga[dot]edu.
2026 Karen D. Paul Congressional Papers Section (CPS) Scholarship (Word document)
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.
- Applications for grants can only be submitted by ACSC institutional members (i.e., ACSC sponsors) and should contain the following information:
Name of ACSC sponsor
Contact information for liaison person at sponsoring institution
Amount requested (up to $500)
Description of the research project
List of congressional collections used by the researcher
Criteria used by the sponsor to recommend the grant
Researcher’s contact information
- 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.
- Grant payments will be made directly to the individual researcher, not to the ACSC sponsor.
Members should contact Sara Stefani for more information.
