Principal Fellowship

Principal Fellowship provides professional recognition for highly experienced individuals that lead and have had an 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 and sustained.

Principal Fellows can demonstrate how they provided vision and direction, and transformed practice and outcomes. They are able to show evidence that their strategic leadership has had a sustained record of effectiveness and positive impact on the last five to seven years. Their practice will have made a positive and lasting change at a strategic level on high quality learning.

Principal Fellowship is not role dependent. Within your context, you will need to explore whether you have the extensive evidence of impact on high quality learning, at a strategic level, that is the basis for a successful application. For Principal Fellowship you need to be able to:

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

Principal Fellows are a diverse community representing the full range of strategic leadership in higher education. For example, you may work in academic departments, professional or service departments, on senior or executive leadership teams, for a professional body, as independent consultants, or in other roles with impact on learning and teaching in Higher Education. To evidence the ‘sustained’ and ‘effective’ nature of your work you need to reflect and explain the rationale and process of your work and evidence the impact resulting from it over a period of five to seven years.

Read the Getting Started pages initially if you are unsure if Principal Fellowship is right for you.

Route to Principal Fellowship

Staff can apply for Principal Fellowship on the basis of existing practice/experience.

Applying for Principal Fellowship

Principal Fellowship Application Requirements

Context and Leadership statement

This is optional – not assessed and not included in overall word count.
3 minutes verbal/digital story or 300 written words max.

Record of Strategic Educational Impact (RSEI)

Maximum 10x 25 word entries = 250 words. This is not assessed and not included in the overall word count.

Overall word count

For the case studies below you may choose to include three case studies with a higher word/time count each or four case studies with less word/time count. However, you should aim to produce approximately 70 minutes verbal/digital stories or 7,000 written words in total with an absolute maximum of 80 minutes verbal/digital stories or 8000 written words.

Three or four Case Studies

70 minutes verbal/digital stories or 7,000 written words or a combination of verbal and written based on the proportions of 1 min=100 words.

Reference List

500 words max – written only. This is not included in the overall word count.

Three Advocate Statements

Approx. 5 minutes verbal/digital story or 500 written words

• At least one must be a Hallam employee; 
• At least one must be external to Hallam (they should be a position to corroborate your strategic practice from an external perspective and not from when you previously worked together at the same institution);
• One, at least, must hold a category of Advance HE Fellowship;
• One of your three advocates must comment on how you have influenced their practice.

What should your submission cover?

The Professional Standards Framework 2023 Descriptors (D1 – D4) each consist of a set of three statements that form the final criteria you should be able to provide evidence for to achieve the relevant category of fellowship. The Dimensions of Practice (Areas of Activity, Core Knowledge and Professional Values) are incorporated within these criteria, but there are additional elements for each Descriptor that will also need to be met within your submission. It is important that you map against these criteria across your submission Case Studies and reflective pieces and make sure your referees focus their written statements towards the Descriptors also.

For Principal Fellowship these are the requirements (Descriptors) you must show in your application:

• D4.1: sustained and effective strategic leadership of higher education practice, with extensive impact on high-quality learning: within or beyond an institution, or across a discipline or profession
• D4.2: development and implementation of effective and inclusive: strategies, or policies, or procedures, or initiatives, to enhance practice and outcomes for learners
• D4.3: active commitment to, and integration of, all Dimensions in the strategic leadership of academic or professional practices.

You should refer to Advance HE's guidance for Principal Fellowship which will help you to understand the purpose and meaning of the Descriptors in more depth and, in particular, how they relate to each other and how you can use them effectively within your submission evidence.

Preparing your application

1. Download an application form (DOCX, 295.7KB)
2. Choose your topics and gather evidence for your case studies. Decide on the format for your case studies.
3. Identify your advocates.
4. Create your application, taking advantage of cohort support like peer advice and writing retreats.

We recommend you map the dimensions of practice inside your application as this will help ensure you have met all of the criteria.

Finalise and submit your application

1. Finish creating your application.
2. Send your advocates your application and a link to the advocate guidance and form (DOCX, 281.8KB).
3. Each advocate writes their advocate statement and sends it back to you.
4. Submit your application and all advocate statements to recognitionofteaching@shu.ac.uk as Word documents.

Get Support 

For further questions about Advance HE Fellowship and teaching recognition programmes, you can email recognitionofteaching@shu.ac.uk