The Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) helps faculty and staff across 16 residential liberal arts colleges to leverage resources, experiment and innovate as we connect people of shared interests to structured learning and growth opportunities.
2023 is a big year for ACS – a final round of programs concludes a $1.4M, 8-year grant that has funded over 60 faculty projects and 20 consortium wide workshops, institutes and initiatives. You can still be among the many who are benefitting from opportunities.
Scroll down to see our full list of opportunities.
If you would like to see the latest updates on the programs and workshops below, please go to our ACS Private Community Site.
If you have already been invited to the ACS Community, click link above to login and enter the site.
REQUEST ACCESS TO THE ACS COMMUNITY
If you are a faculty or staff employee of an ACS member college and have not already been invited to join, please request access to the community site with the link above.
Connecting with STUDENTS
Sustainability Mindset: Making Change Makers
(at Sewanee, University of the South)
Tuesday, May 23, 2023 – Thursday, May 25, 2023.
What happens when we notice our own choices rippling out across time and around the globe? Mindsets shift about what “sustainability” might include. Beyond fostering eco-literacy, Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG), a United Nations initiative, structures approaches and techniques for opening students’ minds to fostering global-social changes. This workshop builds on innovative curricula using a leading-edge approach sustainability mindset, led by Dr. Isabel Rimanoczy.
Registration for this workshop seeks to balance multi-disciplinary representation and assure access to people from across all ACS schools. Therefore, please apply here before April 10. Organizers will then contact people for registration as space permits. A waiting list will be created as needed, and all registration closes by April 30.
Chocolate Covered Teaching: Using commodity-based goods to foster critical thinking skills in undergraduates (at Southwestern University)
Thursday, June 1, 2023 – Sunday, June 4, 2023.
This chocolate workshop is aimed at faculty across disciplines who use – or want to consider using – chocolate and other “affordable luxuries” as an approach for teaching curricular materials, especially at introductory levels. Faculty will explore and create curricular materials that both support and integrate the natural sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Neuroscience), the social sciences (Anthropology, Education, Geography, Economics, Business, Environmental Studies), the fine arts (Visualization) and the humanities (English, History, Religion, Community) into different themes including, but not limited to, biodiversity, global and local economics/business, human health, artistic impression, and social justice.
Registration for this workshop will soon be available on the ACS website; faculty, staff or administrators are invited to register directly.
ACS Teaching and Learning Workshop (at Centre College)
Monday, June 5, 2023 – Saturday, June 10, 2023.
This annual program focuses on individualized instruction, often for early career faculty, for teachers explicitly seeking to develop classroom style and techniques for increasing their classroom effectiveness. The workshop is led by a consistent set of teaching and learning coaches from ACS schools who have built, refined and continuously innovated the curriculum and their own pedagogical techniques over time.
Registration for this experience requires that a faculty member be nominated by their Chief Academic Officer. Please contact your CAO’s office.
Inclusive Pedagogy Institute (at Millsaps College)
Monday, June 26, 2023 – Thursday, June 29, 2023.
Students and classrooms differ, not just by content but also by who’s teaching! Curious to learn more about reaching varieties of students in today’s generation? The facilitation team of this 2 ½-day interdisciplinary workshop fosters honest exploration of the complexities of “doing the work of inclusive pedagogy,” structures activities that cultivate connections with colleagues across ACS, teaches participants how to design an authentic inclusive assignment, practice, or assessment that can be implemented in Fall 2023 in your course(s) or in your emergent inclusive mindset. Participants will come away from the institute with a toolkit for building inclusive learning environments.
Registration for this experience is underway among regional schools proximal to Millsaps (Centenary, Morehouse, Spelman, Trinity, and Southwestern) until April 18, at which time nominations and registration open to all of ACS. Interested faculty should contact their Chief Academic Officer to be nominated.
Passionate about SOCIAL JUSTICE?
The OpEd Project Workshop: “Write to Change the World”
(Virtual across the ACS)
Summer 2023 Participation Sponsored by the ACS
Faculty across ACS institutions are invited to apply to the ACS’s sponsorship of up to 20 spots in any of The OpEd Project’s “Write to Change the World” virtual workshops this summer.
What’s the workshop? The “Write to Change the World” virtual workshop by The OpEd Project will help participants frame their expertise as they write for public audiences and, according to The OpEd Project’s mission, “change who writes history.”
How does this ACS summer program work? Selected faculty will choose the summer workshop dates that fit their schedule, get an ACS code for free workshop registration, participate in the workshop, and then convene for a 90-minute virtual gathering at the end of the summer to highlight lessons learned and brainstorm strategies for sharing with their colleagues and students. Applications are due April 14.
For more information, available workshop dates, and the simple application form, visit this webpage.
Pathways to Diversity – Shaping Histories of Desegregation
(at Centre College)
Monday, June 19, 2023 – Tuesday, June 20, 2023.
The stories shared are the narratives believed. This project invites library archivists and faculty of art, anthropology, history, political science, race and ethnic studies and more to learn the strategy, the tools, and the multi-media technique from librarians and faculty who have been doing this work at Centre College, Rollins College, Washington & Lee University, and Furman University since 2018. We especially seek colleagues from Birmingham Southern, Centenary, Davidson, Hendrix, Millsaps, Morehouse Sewanee, Southwestern, Spelman, Rhodes, Trinity, and University of Richmond. Learn more.
Register directly! https://library.centre.edu/pathways-workshops/join
Thinking of a specific IDEA?
ACS Virtual Summer Working Groups and Workshops – Motivation and Purposeful Work: Finding your Passion
(virtual across the ACS)
Summer 2023.
Each summer, ACS opens sponsored space for faculty/staff to come together around topics of choice with the intention of studying something of particular interest together and sharing it out to others across the ACS.
Click here for more information.
ACS Summer Writing Accountability Group (WAG) Program
(virtual across the ACS)
Summer 2023.
In most faculty members’ long “To Do” lists, “Write that article!” is often pushed down when urgent but less important tasks emerge. Writing is thus perennially relegated to summer, traditionally the non-teaching months. Join this ACS Summer Writing Accountability Group (WAG) Program if accountability, structure, and community sound like helpful writing assistants to you. Participants will be placed into multi-institutional groupsthat serve as mutual accountability partners throughout the summer. They will develop a personalized writing plan, establish and celebrate specific milestones as they chart their progress, cultivate a writing practice they can live with, talk through moments of feeling stuck, and share advice on all things writing. The program will be facilitated by Nancy Chick, Director of the Endeavor Foundation Center for Faculty Development at Rollins College. Participants who complete the accountability components of the program will receive $500 stipends.
To apply to participate in an ACS WAG, please email the following to sfabritius@acsouth.edu by April 17, 2023:
- Name, title, institution, and contact information of applicant
- Describe the writing you are hoping to complete through participation in this Writing Accountability Group Program.
- What do you currently see as the primary barriers to your writing progress?
Questions about applications, selection, or stipends?
Please contact Stephanie Fabritius (sfabritius@acsouth.edu) and include “Summer WAG Program question” in the SUBJECT LINE.
Questions about the WAG Program?
Email Nancy Chick (nchick@rollins.edu), or visit the ACS WAG Program website.
Building a more DIVERSE and INCLUSIVE university?
Retention Strategies Think-Tank (at Southwestern University)
Monday, June 12, 2023 – Wednesday, June 14, 2023.
ACS colleges are notably smaller than state schools in the south, and some of our colleges are geographically located in rural towns. Faculty/staff hires from historically under-represented demographic groups report an amplified challenge (compared to hires who look and sound like the community’s majority) finding cohorts of like-others – especially when comparing their experiences to peers’ experiences in much larger schools. Therefore, this think-tank gathering seeks to bring together a mixed group of faculty/staff with expertise ranging from human resource management to organizational learning to social innovation in order to explore ways in which our consortium – if working collaboratively – might mimic inclusion patterns more organically emergent at larger campuses. We will begin with the industry concept of “cohort hiring” and explore what models or practices we might recommend for experimentation across ACS.
Registration for this think-tank opportunity requires existing skills, experience or roles that meet the stated objectives. If you are interested in engaging or if you can recommend one or more people within ACS ranks who you think would benefit the group’s experience, please email grants@acsouth.edu and reference this initiative.
“Diversity Advocate” Approach to Building Equitable Hiring Practices (at the Emory Conference Center Hotel)
Monday, July 10, 2023 – Wednesday, July 12, 2023.
This “train the trainer” experience equips two people per campus (a human resource lead and a faculty-hiring lead) to build or expand the institution’s recruiting and hiring process, practices and policies towards increased equity in faculty/staff hiring. The experience includes readings, interactive lectures with people who have designed such programs at ACS institutions, opportunities for confidentially sharing and discussing among peers, scenarios for training and tactical planning for each institution’s up-coming hiring season.
Registration for this experience requires that a staff person and a faculty member have hiring (or hiring oversight) responsibilities and be nominated by their administration. Please contact your CAO’s office for information and to explore who might be the best fit for attending from your institution.
Diversity Institute (at Emory Conference Center Hotel)
Monday, September 18, 2023 – Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Specifically aimed at fostering thematic dialogue among diversity officers (or people who are designated as having authority for campuswide diversity initiatives) who often hold mixed sets of authority and responsibility, and often without peer-colleagues equipped to be confidential thinking-partners for strategic and tactical initiatives. If this work and/or this workshop interests you, please contact Stephanie Fabritius at ACS to learn more.
Registration for this experience requires that a staff person and a faculty member be nominated by their administration.
Culmination of the 2016 Mellon Advancement Grant
Learning Summit – Idea Immersion and Collaborative Orienteering
(at the Emory University Conference Center)
Monday, September 18, 2023 – Wednesday, September 20, 2023.
Have you been part of the Mellon Foundation’s funded work of over 60 projects, 40 summer working groups, or pilot learning institutes occurring collaboratively across ACS since 2016? If so, are you interested in contributing to the discovery, harvest and leverage of what has been learned? If so, your insights will help us draw meaning as we close this 8-year grant period.
We seek meta-reflective insights inspired by what has occurred. ACS will be emailing every project-team participant for insights about their experience and outcomes to learn about collaboration (What worked well? What was challenging? What helped you or projects to flourish?), about learning (In retrospect, what stands out for you still today?), and about content interconnections (In what ways does your content “fit” into the schema of advancement? Where does it contribute? Where can its value be leveraged?). The invitation to engage will include an opportunity to contribute to the emerging resource center and to a gallery of insights. Then, we will invite each ACS school to send posters and representatives to Atlanta in September to explore what has occurred over time, what themes most compel us, and what routes might the collaboration follow. Asynchronous engagement will be an option for everyone.
The September idea-immersion experience itself creates the space for discovery. The process imitates an orienteering approach, looking beneath surface objectives and leveraging what we are learning to chart possible routes towards what we most want next. This is the time to learn — How did we do? What did we do? What do we want to imagine next because of what we have learned? And how might we do that together?
Project teams will be receiving specific emails throughout the spring and summer. Chief Academic Officers, grants officers, diversity officers and teaching-learning specialists will continue to receive tactical updates. Reach out to these people on your campus or contact worshops@acsouth.edu to join the learning, assessment and collaboration.