Support for Fellowship applications

We have a number of services available to support you if you are thinking of applying for one of our categories of Fellowship, from our category tool to help you find out which category is most closely aligned to your practice, to online courses and writing retreats designed to help you create an application that fully reflects your practice.

Fellowship demonstrates a personal and institutional commitment to professionalism in higher education and provides individuals with recognition of their practice, impact and leadership of teaching and learning. We award four different categories of Fellowship: Associate Fellowship, Fellowship, Senior Fellowship and Principal Fellowship.

These four categories reflect the wide range of professional practice carried out by individuals who teach and/or support learning in higher education; from those who have a partial role in teaching/supporting learning through to senior professionals with strategic impact on teaching and learning in an organisational, national and/or international setting.

Next steps

After you have prepared your application by utilising either the Fellowship Application Builder or a Writing Retreat, you can find out more about how to apply for each category of Fellowship in our dedicated Fellowship section.

Fellowship Category Tool

Not sure which category to apply for? Our Fellowship Category Tool has been designed to help you to reflect on your practice.

After answering multiple-choice questions, which will take around 10-20 minutes, you will be sent a PDF report summarising your responses. The results will help you understand which category of Fellowship most closely reflects your current practice and to reflect on your ongoing professional development and career aspirations.

Support for direct Fellowship applications

Advance HE is delighted to offer the Fellowship Application Builder: a six-week online, self-directed course designed to enable individuals to use their experience of their teaching and supporting learning practice in higher education to develop a direct application for Fellowship (Descriptor 2 of the UKPSF).

This fully online course has been developed to provide an accessible and convenient format for you, with a time commitment of 2-3 hours per week. It provides the support and guidance to develop your application for Fellowship (FHEA), to help you as you prepare for submission. Access to the course materials will also be available for a further two weeks to allow you some time to revisit any of the units and activities so that you can finalise your application ready for submission. 

There are six units of study (over six consecutive weeks):

Each unit is self-directed to be undertaken at your own pace, with a synchronous one-hour session taking place between units 3 and 4, this session will be scheduled after enrolment to ensure a convenient time for all participants, including those from different time zones.

• Unit 1: Welcome to the course, Orientation and Introduction
• Unit 2: Working with the UK Professional Standards Framework (PSF)
• Unit 3: Writing for success
• Unit 4: Building your application
• Unit 5: Supporting Statement and essential components of the application
• Unit 6: Submitting your application

This support session is aimed at colleagues who are starting the process of completing their Principal Fellow direct application (Descriptor 4 of the PSF 2023), and who need more guidance on the Record of Strategic Educational Impact (RSEI) element. 

This is for highly experienced individuals that lead and have had extensive impact on high quality learning at a strategic level within or beyond an institution, or across a discipline or profession in higher education.  Their impact is extensive.  Principal Fellowship is not role-dependant and individuals need to be able to: 

• demonstrate a sustained record of effectiveness in strategic leadership of high quality learning; and show that their leadership has had an extensive impact. 

Participants will be asked to complete a template on which to collate their most significant strategic leadership activities drawn from recent practice (normally within the last five to seven years), and will receive constructive feedback in a virtual one-to-one, one-hour session with an experienced Advance HE PSF Consultant / Reviewer to help them progress their Principal Fellow application. 

Interested participants should book their place via the My Advance HE customer portal to receive a directed template to complete and will be contacted directly to arrange a convenient time for a virtual one-to-one session with the reviewer. Member session price £270, Non-member session price £360.