About — The Appalachian Civic Fellowship

Welcome to the Appalachian Civic Fellowship

About Our Program

Explore the great questions of democracy and political life.

Founded in 2025 by graduates of Yale University, the ACF brings together recent college graduates and high schoolers living in and around Eastern Kentucky to spend three weeks learning about politics, democracy, and civic life. Each week incorporates seminars, lectures, and special activities, including multiple debates, fun games, a poetry slam, a Constitutional Convention, and more, to empower students to become thoughtful civic leaders in their local communities.

After two successful summers in Pikeville, Kentucky, the program is expanding to multiple locations in the Summer of 2027.

Our Activities

Tutor Lectures

Each day begins with a forty-five minute lecture on the relevant history and underlying themes of the day.
College-Style Seminars

Students attend small-group seminars for several hours each day, breaking down the subtle themes of the text with the help of their peers.
Essay Writing Workshops

Weekly essay writing workshops on argument structure, style, and revision guide students to write a four-page argumentative essay on an assigned prompt.
1-on-1 Conferences

Every student meets individually with a tutor once per week to chat about the course, college applications, and everything in between.
Author Presentations

After lecture each day, one student presents on the life of our thinker. Slides are allowed, but songs, games, poems, and speeches are encouraged!
Social Contract Debate

What is human nature? How should we form a government accordingly? In this event, Team Hobbes and Team Locke vie to find out.
Constitutional Convention

An all-day race to ratify America’s new supreme law, with each student competing as a real delegate.
Poetry Slam

After writing poetry outside in the “leaves of grass,” students stand before their peers and recite their work. Whitman would be proud.
Performance of Julius Caesar

"Let us be sacrificers, Caius, but not butchers.” In this toga-bound production, students dazzle as the conspirators in Shakespeare’s classic tragedy.
Secret Borgia

Are you willing to do what it takes? Trust and strategy are put to the test in this mafia-like game where a secret Cesare Borgia plots a overthrow of the Orsini.
ACF Declares Independence

When in the course of history a great text is set before us… it is only right that we declare on the quad for all to hear!
Pamphlet Making

Arts-and-crafts skills are put to the test in this fun activity, where students design Common Sense-inspired pamphlets identifying a civic issue they would like to improve in their local community.
American Civics 101

After reading the Constitution, students reconstruct the basic systems of our government on a board that hangs for the rest of the fellowship.
"Letter to My Community"

After reading MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” students write personal letters to their local community urging a cultural shift on a topic of their choosing.
Thinker Jeopardy

The TV classic comes to the ACF classroom in one of the most competitive games of the fellowship.
Commencement

A ceremony honoring the next generation of Appalachian civic leaders. The 2026 keynote speaker was Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams.