Spring 2007 Newsletter · Issue 29
Diversifying the Professoriate, One Mellon Fellow at a Time
by Krishna Winston, Marcus L. Taft Pprofessor of German Language and Literature, Coordinator, Mellon Mays Uundergraduate Fellowship
It is a well-kept secret that being a professor is perhaps the most cushy job our society offers. Professors love to complain about the long hours (evenings! weekends!), the burdens of committee service, salaries that seem low by comparison with other professionals’, and lack of prestige. Yet how many jobs offer the freedom to set one’s own schedule, the opportunity to teach and do research on fascinating material, membership in a community of highly intelligent colleagues, and, best of all, the privilege of working with young people, whose potential is almost limitless and whose desire for understanding keeps one on one’s toes?
The Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) was created in 1988 to attract young people to this hidden treasure of a profession—people whom U.S. higher education urgently needed in the professoriate. The fellowship was the brainchild of William Bowen, a labor economist who had just been appointed to head the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation after distinguished service as president of Princeton University. Bowen’s insight was that American colleges and universities were enrolling ever-larger numbers of students from groups historically excluded from or underrepresented in higher education—African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians. Yet the faculties of those institutions remained overwhelmingly white. Bowen saw this disparity as a threat to the quality of American higher education and to American society at large. He decided to invest Foundation resources in remedying this situation. Together with his longtime associate, the educator Henry Drewry, Bowen created MMUF and invited a select number of schools to apply for funding.
Although the institutions’ proposals varied in details, the basic outlines of the program were established by the Foundation:
- the cohorts would be small, with no more than five fellows chosen each year;
- Fellows would work with faculty mentors to acquire scholarly research skills;
- Fellows would receive modest stipends, intended to reduce or eliminate their need to earn money during the academic year; and
- Funding would be provided for attendance at conferences and summer study or research.
Upon a fellow’s earning a PhD, the Foundation would repay a portion of the fellow’s undergraduate loans. Each school would appoint a senior administrator or faculty member to coordinate the program.
When Wesleyan joined MMUF in 1989, Associate Professor of Religion Jerome Long became Wesleyan’s first coordinator. Ably assisted by the Mellon intern June Lee ’88, he recruited a selection committee, which chose the first fellows and implemented the program structure described in the grant application. In 1993, I succeeded Professor Long as coordinator and began what has been the most rewarding and exciting phase of my academic career. Six of our fellows have completed the PhD in the fields the Foundation chose to support, and 11 more fellows are at various stages in their graduate programs, with three poised to complete their dissertations this year. Five are applying to PhD programs for the fall of 2007. Wesleyan Fellows are teaching at UC Berkeley, Barry University, Princeton, Texas A&M University, and the University of South Carolina. The current fellows’ research projects include topics such as the sociological significance of reggaeton music in Puerto Rico, black American soldiers in the Philippines in the early 20th century, and changing standards of beauty in the U.S. fashion industry.
MMUF came under attack from forces opposed to affirmative action, but after the U. S. Supreme Court decided the University of Michigan cases in 2003, the Foundation recommitted itself to its original mission. It also changed the name of the program to honor the example of Benjamin Mays, longtime president of Morehouse College, noted scholar and civil-rights activist, and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., and opened the program to students from all backgrounds, so long as they could demonstrate that they were dedicated to the purpose for which MMUF was created.
The basic outline of Wesleyan’s program has remained constant, but over the years several features that enrich the fellows’ experience have been added. These include an annual conference for all Mellon programs in the Northeast, which has been hosted since 1996 by Wesleyan. Last year’s conference theme was “Portrait of the Scholar as a Creative Artist.” Fellows performed music and poetry; displayed drawings, films, and art quilts; and spoke about the relationship of their art to their scholarly endeavors. This year’s conference brought together a panel of faculty members from Bowdoin, Wesleyan, and Williams to discuss “Life’s Kaleidoscope: Shifting Phases and Perspectives in a Scholar’s Career.” Every spring Wesleyan collaborates with Smith, Williams, and Yale to host a panel of Mellon alumni in graduate school, who share their experiences and offer advice to the undergraduates. These events give the fellows from different institutions a chance to meet, and to recognize that they have colleagues who can rely on each other as they move from the diverse student bodies of their undergraduate institutions to much less diverse settings in graduate school.
Even after MMUF was up and running, the individual schools and the Foundation were feeling their way, sure that the vision of the program was right, but facing the daunting task of persuading college sophomores that becoming a professor was a realistic and desirable goal to which they could, and should, commit themselves.
The greatest innovation was the addition in 1997 of a six-week summer session for the newly selected fellows. Wesleyan fellows are joined by fellows from Queens College and City College of New York, who thus have an opportunity to experience campus life in Middletown’s semi-rural setting. An intensive seminar taught by advanced Mellon graduate students, a writing workshop, research training with the Olin Library reference librarians, faculty dinners, and weekly field trips are the main components of what we call our “intellectual boot camp.” On the field trips and for faculty dinners, leisurely meals at good restaurants are a must, and it has become a tradition for the fellows to express their gratitude for excellent restaurant fare by saying, “Thank you, Uncle Andrew.”
Even after MMUF was up and running, the individual schools and the Foundation were feeling their way, sure that the vision of the program was right, but facing the daunting task of persuading college sophomores that becoming a professor was a realistic and desirable goal to which they could, and should, commit themselves. The coordinators faced difficult questions. Should selection be based on a certain (high) GPA? Should fellows be pushed to apply to graduate school in their senior year? Was it important that applicants be completely certain that they wanted to become professors? How could faculty members be encouraged to assume the mentoring role, which goes beyond academic advising and includes the student’s personal life? To help the Mellon schools deal with these questions and many others, the Foundation brought the program coordinators together once a year in New York to discuss, strategize, share experiences, and support one another. These conferences, which initially were fairly modest affairs, expanded over the years from one day to two and a half days. Three years ago the conference became a gala event celebrating the first 100 PhDs to emerge from the program. And last year the coordinators traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, for a week-long conference at which Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivered the keynote address. The sense of fellowship among the coordinators, already strong, grew by leaps and bounds during this life-altering adventure.
As MMUF approaches its 20th anniversary, 200 Mellon Fellows have earned the PhD, with 14 already tenured, and more than 500 in the pipeline. The transformative effects of the fellows’ teaching and research are increasingly making themselves felt. As the beneficiaries of mentoring, the fellows now in teaching positions have become mentors themselves. Recognizing that a program like this requires long-term support, the trustees of the Mellon Foundation have just approved a fourth renewal of the original funding. I believe no other private foundation has sustained a program of this scope for this length of time in the history of American philanthropy. The faculty members and administrators who coordinate MMUF are unanimous in considering themselves uniquely blessed to be associated with this remarkable undertaking. If being a professor is already a privilege, being a midwife to future professors as talented as our fellows is a privilege to the second power.