Fellowships and Grants

Since its founding, the Center has remained committed to supporting research, education, preservation, interpretation, and community engagement.  A significant expression of that commitment has been through the thousands of dollars the Center has awarded individual scholars to support a range of scholarly and creative projects.

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Center Fellows (1993-1994)

One of the Center's first initiatives was to establish a robust grant program in 1984 that provided financial support to more than a dozen projects in each of its first two years.  Projects included:

  • Providing programs on Appalachian culture to under-resourced public schools in east Tennessee
  • Providing culturally-specific training to rural healthcare providers to facilitate more effective treatment programs
  • Commissioning and purchasing regionally-specific art and material culture artifacts for preservation
  • Creating documentaries and radio programs on Appalachian history and culture
  • Conducting surveys of regional historic sites
  • Compiling and disseminating accurate socio-economic data on counties in southern Appalachia

This initial granting program remained active for more than fifteen years, supporting well over 100 scholarly and creative projects that contributed accurate data and nuanced and reliable representations of the region.  It was augmented by additional grant programs such as a student scholarship, funded by the Reece Museum, that has supported Art & Design and Museum Studies students since the 1980s.

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String Band Summit (2023)

Project support through the Center continues today.  The Margaret Huffman Endowment Grant, active since 2019, has funded projects in public health, nursing, religious studies, environmental studies, veterans support, visual arts, music history, regional cartography, and more.  The Institute for Appalachian Music and Culture has assisted in a range of musical research projects, including the String Band Summit, a gathering of string band scholars and performers first held in 2022.

Through these and other efforts, the Center remains steadfast in its commitment to support the highest quality of scholarly and artistic production in the region.

Fellowships and Grants