The APSA Congressional Fellowship: Value for Faculty from Teaching Colleges and Universities

During its 55-year history, the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program (CFP) has influenced much of the best work written about Congress. Top congressional and legislative scholars like David Mayhew, Alan Rosenthal, David Rohde, Lawrence Dodd, and Barbara Sinclair, to name just a few, were strongly influenced by their experience as legislative fellows on Capitol Hill. To cite the most prominent example, David Mayhew remarked that his fellowship year was integral to his writing of Congress: the Electoral Connection: “Absent my experience as an APSA Congressional Fellow in 1967–1968, there is not the slightest chance I would have conceived or written The Electoral Connection” (quoted in Biggs 2003, 143).