Goal: To improve the quality, accessibility and uptake of cultural evolution course materials
worldwide.

Overview: The ACE Curricular Awards is a two-tiered grant program to build and disseminate high-quality educational resources in cultural evolution. The Awards will develop a global open access repository of expert-designed cultural evolution course materials and empower early career researchers to integrate these in their teaching. The award program will take place in two phases.

1. ACE Course Design Awards

(Phase 1, April launch)

• Focus: Recognizing leading educators in the field of cultural evolution and their existing efforts to advance its teaching.
• Eligibility: Established academics actively teaching at least one semester-long course related to cultural evolution (e.g., evolution of religion, music, warfare, technology).
• Award: Five (5) awards of $4,000 each will be granted in recognition of the contribution of their already-developed comprehensive course materials.
• Outcome: Awardees will contribute their developed course materials to a central repository, creating a valuable resource for the broader academic community. Awardees will be assisted to appropriately modify the course material for distribution. This award recognizes their existing expertise and provides a platform for wider distribution of their work.

2. ACE Teaching Innovation Awards

(Phase 2, summer launch)

• Focus: Empowering researchers to adopt tested cultural evolution course material in diverse educational settings.
• Eligibility: Researchers seeking to incorporate cultural evolution content into their teaching. Applicants should possess a PhD or equivalent qualification that enables undergraduate-level instruction in their respective country. Emphasis will be placed on early-career researchers and those from majority-world countries, though academics from all career-stages are welcome to apply. Preference will also be given to those who can dedicate a full semester or a significant series of classes to the subject. Proposals for online course development could also be considered, though not encouraged.
• Additional considerations: We are ideally looking for researchers who are invested in fostering the growth of cultural evolution as an academic field. We will prioritise applications with greater teaching impact (i.e. students, terms). We understand that for early career researchers this may be a constraint.
• Application process: Applicants must submit a letter of approval from their department director (specific details negotiable), a detailed plan outlining material adoption and modification for the course, and a comprehensive CV. To finalize the award and disburse any associated funds, awardees are required to submit a post-teaching report demonstrating the impact of their course.
• Resource: Applicants will use the course materials developed in Phase 1, accessible through the program’s repository.
• Award: Ten (10) awards of $2,000 each will be granted to support the integration of cultural evolution content into existing or new courses.
• Outcome: Expansion of cultural evolution education through the dissemination of established materials, fostering innovative teaching practices and empowering the next generation of educators. Awardees will be given the opportunity to interact with winners of Phase 1.

3. Rough Timeline

Phase 1 – Course Design Awards
• April: applications and nominations open.
• May – June: course materials modification
• June: winners announced
• July: launch the online repository

Phase 2 – Teaching Innovation Awards
• July: applications open
• August: announcement of awards
• Sept – May: teaching with materials
• May 2026: teaching impact reports due
• June 2026: winners announced