In 2010 Ellsworth received a Franklin Furnace Performance award and was a Visiting Research Fellow at Jane Franklin Hall, University of Tasmania, in Hobart. She also received a Faculty Research Endowment from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and was the Evelyn Smith Endowed Professor in the School of Art at Arizona State University.

She recieved a 2007 Arizona Commission on the Arts Project Grant and in 2002 an ACA Visual and Media Arts Fellowship. She has been nominated for a 2003 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and received a 2001 Surdna Art Teachers Fellowship from the Surdna Foundation. She has also received a Contemporary Forum Materials Grant from the Phoenix Art Museum, New Forms Regional Initiative Grant from DiverseWorks and Mexi-Arte, Art Matters, Inc. Fellowship, New Jersey State Council on the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and a New Forms Regional Grant from The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.