FOR RELEASE: Monday, March 20, 2017

CONTACT:

Rayna Truelove | Mellon Program Officer | [email protected]  |  (609)  452-7007 x121

Patrick Riccards |  Chief Communications & Strategy Officer | [email protected]  |  (609) 945-7885

 

Career Enhancement Fellowships Awarded to Junior and Adjunct Faculty

Fellowship provides stipends, mentors to support tenure progress, strengthen pipeline to the professoriate

PRINCETON, N.J. (March 20, 2017)— Today, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has announced the names of 30 new Career Enhancement Fellows—10 junior faculty members who will receive 12-month Fellowship and 20 who will receive six-month Fellowships. Also announced today were the second class of Career Enhancement Adjunct Faculty Fellows.

This year’s Fellows are working in an array of fields including English, critical dance studies, history, Mexican American and Latino/a studies, sociology, music, American studies, and philosophy. They represent some of the nation’s top institutions. (Full list of Fellows, institutions, and departments below.)

The Career Enhancement Fellowship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, creates career development opportunities for selected faculty fellows with promising research projects. The program provides Fellows with a six-month or one-year sabbatical stipend (up to $30,000); a research, travel, or publication stipend (up to $1,500); mentoring; and participation in a late summer professional development retreat.

The Career Enhancement retreat, an integral part of the program, provides opportunities for Fellows to meet at length with mentors they have selected—senior academics who help advise these early-career faculty on next steps in professional development. Fellows also have the opportunity to connect with Career Enhancement Fellows from past years and other special guest scholars.

This also marked the second year for the Career Enhancement Adjunct Faculty Fellowship, which seeks to increase the presence of Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows (MMUF)—promising scholars previously supported by Mellon Foundation grants—among tenure-track faculty in core fields of the humanities and social sciences. Fellows are awarded a six-month stipend (up to $10,000) and matched with a mentor and small professional network of tenured former Career Enhancement Fellows.

Administered at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation since 2001, the Career Enhancement Fellowship has supported nearly 370 junior faculty members over the past 17 years. The program seeks particularly to increase the presence of junior faculty members who are underrepresented in their fields, as well as other faculty members committed to eradicating racial disparities in core fields in the arts and humanities.

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The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, founded in 1969, endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies by supporting exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation identifies and develops leaders and institutions to meet the nation’s critical challenges. In these areas of challenge, the Foundation awards fellowships to enrich human resources, works to improve public policy, and assists organizations and institutions in enhancing practice.

 

Career Enhancement Junior Faculty Fellows and Adjunct Faculty Fellows, 2017

12-Month Fellows

Allison Curseen • Boston College, English
Faustina DuCros • San Jose State University, Sociology
Yomaira Figueroa • Michigan State University, English
Irvin Hunt • University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, English
Brandon Manning • University of Nevada, Las Vegas, African American/Gender & Sexuality Studies
Veronica Martinez-Matsuda • Cornell University, Labor Relations, Law, and History
Stacie McCormick • Texas Christian University, English and American Literature
Stephanie Rivera Berruz • William Paterson University, Philosophy
Claudia Rueda • Texas A&M Corpus Christi, History
Shante Smalls • St. John’s University, Queens, English

6-Month Fellows

Yousuf Al-Bulushi • Goucher College, Geographies of Justice and Cultures
Darius Bost • San Francisco State University, Sexuality Studies
Tamara Butler • Michigan State University, English
Dana Byrd • Bowdoin College, Art History
Jeffrey Coleman • Marquette University, Spanish
Teresa Gonzales • Knox College, Anthropology and Sociology
Octavio Gonzales • Wellesley College, English
Rachel Gonzalez-Martin • University of Texas – Austin, Mexican American and Latino/a Studies
Aneeka Henderson • Amherst College, Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies
Imani Johnson • UC Riverside, Critical Dance Studies
Stephanie Jones-Rogers • UC Berkeley, History
Zakiya Luna • UC Santa Barbara, Sociology
Monica Martinez • Brown University, American Studies
Imani Owens • University of Pittsburgh, English
Cassi Pittman • Case Western Reserve University, Sociology
Elliott Powell • University of Minnesota, American Studies
Junaid Quadri • University of Illinois at Chicago, History and Religious Studies
Patrick Rivers • University of New Haven, Music
Daniel Rodriguez • Brown University, History
Rocio Rosales • UC-Irvine, Sociology

Adjunct Faculty Fellows

Rosa Ficek • University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies
Anita Thompson • Georgia College, Sociology

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