Professional Education Faculty Fellows

Professional Education Faculty Fellows Award

All applications are due January 29, 2027 by 5 pm PST. 

Program Overview

The Professional Education Faculty Fellows program is a new joint effort between the Offices of Sponsored Programs and Professional Education.  This program provides faculty the opportunity to use their deep disciplinary expertise and leverage the silicon valley ecosystem to develop new, dynamic executive education offerings at USF.  

USF will select up to 8 faculty fellows to develop professional education offerings in one of five priority domains:

  • AI & Intelligent Enterprise 
  • Healthcare & Life Sciences 
  • Financial Services / FinanceTech 
  • Cybersecurity & Digital Risk 
  • Sustainable Technology / Climate Innovation 

Each Fellow will receive a $5,000 ($3,000 at award and $2,000 when the train-the-trainer package is delivered mini-grant, executive education pedagogy training, industry engagement opportunities, and coaching from an experienced executive education practitioner. Please see Required Deliverables below for more information.

As part of this program, Faculty Fellows will:

  • Identify an important industry challenge and executive audience. 
  • Engage Silicon Valley companies, practitioners, startups, or executives to validate the problem. 
  • Learn contemporary active, experiential, case- and project-based executive education pedagogy. 
  • Translate their disciplinary expertise into an executive learning experience. 
  • Prototype and pilot the experience with industry participants. 
  • Gather executive, industry, and peer feedback replicable train-the-trainer model. 

Application Process

In order to be selected, applicants must complete the online application. 

All applications are due by Friday, January 29, 2027. Applications will be reviewed by members of the Offices of Professional Education and Sponsored Programs, and all applicants will be notified by March 1, 2027. 

Applications will be evaluated based on the following criteria: 

Criterion

Weight

Innovation and active-learning potential

25%

Industry relevance / market need

20%

Faculty disciplinary expertise

20%

Quality of applied executive use case

20%

Industry partnership and scalability

15%

Required Deliverables

Each Fellow will produce:

1. Executive Use Case

A validated, real-world organizational problem appropriate for executive learning.

2. Executive Learning Module

A 2–4 hour prototype that integrates academic expertise with applied executive learning.

3. Active-Learning Experience

At least one substantial experiential component, such as a simulation, case, design challenge, executive decision exercise, live project, peer consulting exercise, or AI-enabled workflow.

4. Faculty Facilitation Guide

Learning objectives, preparation, teaching sequence, activities, facilitation questions, materials, assessment, and debrief.

5. Industry Engagement & Pilot

At least one industry executive/practitioner involved in validating the use case and a pilot delivery with an executive audience.

6. Train-the-Trainer Package

A complete set of materials and guidance that enables another USF faculty member to deliver the learning experience

Upon submission of the above deliverables, selected fellows will receive the second payment of the fellowship grant.