This Committee evaluates applications for promotion of Active Members to status as Fellows, and makes recommendations on those applications to the Board. The Committee also makes recommendations to the Board regarding honorary members and selects recipients of Association Awards. You must be an AAIDD Fellow to be on this Committee.

Fellows	Promotion to Fellowship Status	Procedures for Rating nominees to Fellow Status
	Evaluation Form	Download Fellowship Application
Awards	Call for Awards	Awards Guidelines
2003 Awards Recepients
2004 Awards Recepients
2005 Awards Recepients
2006 Awards Recepients
2007 Awards Recepients

Procedures for Rating Nominees for Fellow Status

A number of principles have guided the development of these revised procedures and rating form.

1.  These are guidelines which will inform the Committee's recommendations for Fellow status.
However, in exceptional cases, either the Awards and Fellowship Committee or the Board can override the guidelines.

2.  The guidelines were developed to operationalize the by-laws on this topic. The by-laws state the criteria for awarding the honor of fellow status as follows.

"Fellows shall be individuals who have had at least seven (7) years of continuous active membership in the Association at the time of their nomination. Fellows shall have participated in the professional and business affairs of the Association and shall have made meritorious contributions to the field of mental retardation in one or more of the following areas:

A.	Contributions to program development or administration and the improvement of services for people with mental retardation.
B.	Contributions which benefit people with mental retardation through skillful and diligent advocacy.
C.	Contributions to the field of mental retardation through academic achievements, research, publications, and presentation of professional papers.

3.   Recognizing that the by-laws require that fellows shall have made contributions to both the Association AND to the field of mental retardation, the proposed scoring system was structured so that that meritorious contributions to both are needed to reach a score of 80, which is needed for consideration by the Committee.

4.   We recommend that the rating form be posted on the AAIDD website, in the interest of an open process.

5.    Fellows of the Association shall be in support of the mission and values of AAIDD.

6.    We recommend that if a Fellow is found to have breached the AAIDD code of professional conduct, that the designation of Fellow status will be revoked, by a two-thirds vote of the Board of Directors.

The evaluation form consists of parallel ratings of the contributions made to the professional and business affairs of the Association (left column) and to the field of mental retardation (right column). The definitions of 'contributions' to each domain are based directly on the wording in the by-laws, and appear as footnotes to the rating form.