Undergraduate and Faculty Fellows Program for a Diverse Professoriate

Supported by an $8.1 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Undergraduate and Faculty Fellows Program for a Diverse Professoriate (Fellows Program) is a collaboration between undergraduate and graduate programs at the 14 liberal arts colleges in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) and 15 research universities in the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The Fellows Program is a seven-year, multi-part initiative that has three main components to support the program's broad goal of expanding participation by underrepresented groups in the career pipeline from college student to liberal arts college professor in the humanities, humanistic social sciences, and arts.

Current Initiatives:

Graduate Degree Exploration Program (GRADx)

GRADx is a series of biannual seminars on graduate study hosted at two different Big Ten Academic Alliance universities each year – once during the fall semester and once during the spring semester. During these seminars, students meet with graduate students and faculty, attend sessions on topics relating to careers in academia, explore the host campus, and network with cross-consortia GRADx undergraduates in their cohort.

Past Initiatives: 

Graduate School Exploration Fellowship Program (GSEF)

From 2016-2020, the GSEF Program provided under-represented ACM undergraduates a six-week summer research internship on the campus of a Big Ten institution following their junior year. In total, 160 of ACM undergraduates participated.

Big Ten Graduate Student Panels and Faculty Fellows Emerging Scholars Seminars

In 2023, a new series of Big Ten Academic Alliance Graduate Student Panels and Faculty Fellows Emerging Scholars Seminars launched. This initiative enabled Big Ten Academic Alliance graduate students to visit and give research presentations at ACM colleges as well as discuss with students about their experiences as graduate students. Informal meetings with one or more faculty members in their academic areas were also arranged. This created an opportunity for ACM colleges to recruit graduate students from underrepresented backgrounds to their open faculty positions. Each visit reinforced the pipeline supporting ACM students to Big Ten Academic Alliance graduate programs and Big Ten Academic Alliance graduate students to ACM faculty positions.

Mellon Faculty Fellows Program

At the post-graduate level, Mellon Faculty Fellowships offered tenure-track appointments at one of the ACM colleges to new Ph.D. or terminal master's degree graduates whose backgrounds and life experiences enhanced diversity on the ACM campuses and who had recently earned their graduate degree, preferably from a Big Ten Academic Alliance member institution. There were 30 faculty fellow appointments in the humanities, humanistic social sciences, or the arts over the seven years of the grant.