The Mellon New Directions
Fellowships Program
Call for Applications
Participating Institutions
Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Carleton
College, Haverford College
Macalester College, Swarthmore College, Wellesley College
The Mellon New Directions Fellowships for Teacher-Scholars Program was established through a generous four-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This program is designed to link faculty development to institutional innovation by providing opportunities for faculty at liberal arts colleges to explore new directions in teaching, research, or other forms of engagement that are critical to the mission of their home institutions. New Directions Fellowships provide a one-semester leave during which the faculty fellow undertakes an innovative, non-traditional project related to pedagogy, curricular development, research or governance. Unlike sabbaticals currently available to faculty, these fellowships allow time for faculty to move in directions different from their previous research or teaching interests in order to advance important institutional goals.
Reflecting the diversity of personal interest and institutional need, both the nature and the range of fellowship proposals are expected to be broad. Proposals might involve gaining expertise in a new field to fill an expressed curricular need, retooling and redirecting one’s scholarly career into an area that allows for greater interdisciplinary collaboration, or conducting an externship with the non-academic community to enhance experiential learning opportunities for students. Fellowships might be awarded to a team of faculty from one or more colleges who are working together to develop a new program or interdisciplinary perspective on a field. Some hypothetical examples of appropriate fellowship projects are:
· A political scientist who wants to collaborate with leaders of an inner-city community on creating and evaluating consensus-building models and enhance civic engagement opportunities for his students;
· A molecular biologist and a computer scientist who team up to take courses and work in a lab at a research university in order to move their research program into the emerging field of bioinformatics;
· An anthropologist who wants to expand her work on race and ethnicity in the U.S. by studying different religious traditions at a theological seminary in support of the college’s newly revised diversity requirement;
· A sociologist at Seven-College X and an art historian at Seven-College Y who collaborate to develop a joint College X/Y minor in migration studies that includes a summer field work component in City Z;
· A developmental psychologist who does research on the effects of childcare alternatives and is interested in working with the human relations office and the dean’s office to research best practices in colleges and universities as employers of parents;
· An economist whose expertise in higher education finance and survey research complements the interests of the admissions office and institutional research to perform a major study on the financial feasibility of beginning a new department and major in a particular subject.
Fellowship recipients must produce course or program curricula, research reports, workshops, or other materials than can be shared with faculty and staff at their home institutions. Faculty are also required to give a presentation at a Mellon-sponsored conference of the seven participating institutions to be held in June 2002.
Fellowships provide one semester of leave at full pay in either Spring 2002 or Fall 2002. Under exceptional circumstances, the fellowship may be taken in Fall 2001. Fellowships include a $5000 grant that may be used to defray research, travel or educational expenses related to the project. This grant is in addition to research and travel funds normally available to faculty at their home institutions.
If a team of two faculty members is awarded a fellowship, both faculty will receive one semester of leave and a research/travel grant.
Tenured faculty at each of the seven participating colleges are eligible to apply for the fellowship.
Applications should include the following:
1. A summary of the proposal describing the project, its significance and anticipated outcomes (no more than 300 words);
2. A fellowship proposal, consisting of the following (no more than 6 pages, single-spaced, 12 point font):
a) description of the project and statement of its significance to the faculty member’s department, institution and/or discipline (about 3 pages);
b) statement of the specific anticipated outcomes of the fellowship (e.g., new courses, workshops, institutional reports) and a timetable for these outcomes (about 1 page);
c) personal statement (about 2 pages) that addresses:
1) how the faculty member became interested in this project;
2) how the project will contribute to the faculty member’s development as a teacher-scholar at this moment in his or her career;
3) how the project is expected to affect the faculty member’s professional activities and plans in the future; and
3. A curriculum vitae (no more than 6 pages).
Application process
Proposals will be evaluated through a two-stage process. Faculty should submit applications the Provost's Office (email swadding or hard copy) no later than Wednesday, March 14, 2001 (note: the Provost's Office will be closed for spring break on Thursday and Friday, March 15th and 16th.) Each of the seven colleges may nominate as many fellowship candidates as it wishes; these nominations must be forwarded to the national selection committee by Monday, April 2, 2001. The national selection committee will consist of six people:
· three deans or provosts representing the three local clusters in the seven-college group (Barnard/Wellesley, Bryn Mawr/Haverford/Swarthmore, and Carleton/Macalester)
· one dean or provost from the second group of colleges supported by Mellon faculty development planning grants
· one representative designated by the Mellon Foundation
· one academic from a national organization (e.g., ACLS) with a demonstrated interested in faculty careers
The committee will award up to 14 fellowships in this round, and none of the seven colleges will receive more than two fellowships this year. Faculty Fellows will be named in late April 2001.