February 14, 2018
Dear Amherst Community,
As you may know, the College has recently been awarded a prestigious $500,000 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Program grant, made possible through The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant will fund an initiative aimed at attracting and preparing Amherst students from underrepresented groups for graduate study and academic positions in the humanities, with an overarching goal of contributing to the Mellon Foundation’s mission to diversify the faculty ranks of American institutions of higher learning.
For decades, about 90 percent of Amherst graduates have gone on to top graduate or professional education programs within five years of receiving their degrees. But students of all backgrounds have tended to gravitate toward professional degrees, rather than doctoral ones. The MMUF grant will allow the College to provide support to students in pursuit of graduate degrees or academic positions in the humanities that will include faculty mentorship, hands-on guidance and advice from graduate student assistants, funding for travel and research, networking opportunities with Amherst and MMUF alumni, and help with navigating the graduate school selection and application processes, among other benefits. The ultimate goal is to significantly boost the number of Amherst graduates who pursue Ph.D.s in the humanities.
MMUF alumna Marisa Parham, Amherst professor of English and a faculty diversity and inclusion officer—along with colleague Allen J. Hart, James E. Ostendarp Professor of Psychology and a faculty diversity and inclusion officer—will be centrally involved in helping to design Amherst’s MMUF activities. In addition, several Amherst faculty members—in Black Studies, Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies, and English—have already agreed to participate.
Additionally, we’re excited to welcome Rosemary Effiom, who will serve as Coordinator for the MMUF Program. Rosemary joins us from Bowdoin, where she coordinated its MMUF program for the past nine years. Our initiative will launch with a five-week MMUF summer institute designed to provide a new cohort of fellows with intensive training to build skills for a career in the academic profession. Rosemary is administratively housed in the Office of Diversity & Inclusion and will work in partnership with the Dean of the Faculty’s Office. Her office is located in Cooper 109 and she may be contacted at reffiom@amherst.edu.
Please join me in welcoming Rosemary to the Amherst community. She will look forward to hearing from you.
In Community,
Norm Jones
Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer
Office of Diversity & Inclusion