Allocating spaces on the first COUNTER Academy

We announced the launch of COUNTER Academy in April, and have had an overwhelming response to this new educational offering. Thank you to everyone who expressed an interest. In this post, we set out how we will be allocating spaces in the first COUNTER Academy cohort.

We only have 25 spaces available on this first cohort. More than 70 people have expressed interest in attending and more than 40 of these people are eligible to participate. That means not everyone who has expressed interest will be able to join us this time around. To be as fair as possible, we’ll be following this process to identify our first participants:

1. One participant per member. In some cases two or more people from a single member organisation have expressed interest in attending. We will ask these organisations to choose which person should attend the first iteration of the Academy. Please note the Academy is only open to full members of COUNTER. See our membership page to check if your organisation is a member.
   
2. Commitment to completion. It has taken a great deal of work to develop the Academy. We want to make sure that we’re offering spaces only to people who intend to participate throughout the course. If you are not able to commit to engaging in eight modules over four month this year then please consider joining a course in a future year.
   
3. If we still have too many people we’ll resort to a lottery for the remaining places.

Next steps and allocating spaces in future cohorts

We will be in touch with everyone who has expressed an interest in being part of the Academy. Anyone who is eligible for the Academy but doesn’t get a spot on this cohort will be top of the list for future cohorts. If all goes according to plan we’ll be offering the Academy twice in 2026.

We have started a new form for expressions of interest in the Academy in 2026. If you have already expressed interest in the 2025 cohort you don’t need to register again.