Guidance, mentorship for students in the social sciences, arts, and humanities

By Kate Rix

UC Berkeley is only one of a handful of public universities to join a national network of institutions that offer Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowships (MMUF) — a long-range support program aimed at fostering undergraduates who contribute to diversity and equal opportunity and who plan to earn a Ph.D. in the social sciences, arts, and humanities.

A group of five students in their junior year will be selected this semester from a pool of applicants and another cohort of five next spring at the end of their sophomore year. They must be highly motivated students who are very committed to attending graduate school and to teaching at the college level.

“The program has the vision of guiding fellows through not only their undergraduate years, but also graduate school and into academia,” says Josephine Moreno, graduate diversity director for the Division of Arts and Humanities. “We are looking for very, very promising students in specific disciplines, particularly in the social sciences and arts and humanities.”

The MMUF program was developed in 1988 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of a long-term commitment to help remedy the shortage of faculty of color in higher education. The program is named in part in honor of Benjamin E. Mays, who served as dean of Morehouse College for 25 years.

“It’s great to have MMUF at Berkeley,” says Janet Broughton, dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities. “The program really takes the long view, nurturing today’s talented undergraduates so that they can flower as part of tomorrow’s more diverse faculty. We’re very proud to be one of the first public universities to have an MMUF program. It reflects our own values so well.”

Once selected to join the Mellon Mays “family,” undergraduates receive mentorship and support from participating faculty as well as from graduate Mellon Mays fellows. The experience can make all the difference for a student making their way through the ups and downs of academic life.

“Our cohort programming specifically addressed the history and challenges of scholars of color in the academy in order to present an honest but encouraging atmosphere,” says Marisol Teresa Beas Silva, a Mellon Mays fellow and second-year graduate student in Ethnic Studies, who entered the program as an undergraduate at Yale. “While applying to graduate school is sometimes shrouded in mystery, the Yale MMUF graduate student and staff coordinators did an excellent job in programming workshops and events that helped us navigate the application process.”

There are currently 40 graduate students at Cal, like Silva, who are Mellon Mays fellows and who will participate in supporting the new cohort of undergraduate fellows.

“Berkeley's participation in MMUF adds depth to our reach with its outstanding students and faculty,” says Lydia English, director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program. “The Mellon Foundation looks forward to the outstanding scholarly achievement of these students.”

Through guest speaker events, discussion, workshops and formal advising, the program helps its fellows to define their unique paths toward graduate school. The goal is to support students all the way to their placement in university teaching jobs, a process that includes exploring the range of work that is possible in academic life.

“Through my relationship with my mentor I was able to picture professors as more than just lecturers, but as people as well,” says Silva. “I began to imagine a real future for myself as a scholar, which had never occurred prior to my participation in the program.”

While there is no financial need requirement associated with the program, fellows receive a stipend for both the academic year and the summer. The program also pays $10,000 towards the fellows’ undergraduate loan debt.
Students are selected based on academic promise, maturity and leadership potential as demonstrated through their application, interview and essay. The program is “rigorous and challenging but also supportive and open,” says Priscilla Layne, a graduate student in German at Berkeley who was selected as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow while an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.

Layne recalls that before becoming a fellow she had never conducted an extensive research project. She had written many papers in undergraduate seminars, but her Mellon Mays advisors encouraged her to take on a research topic and then present a proposal to her peers at a Mellon conference in St. Louis.

Thanks to that experience, Layne received a grant after graduation to conduct research in Berlin. Layne spent two years in Germany as a Fulbright teaching assistant. She applied to graduate school while overseas, with the support of her undergraduate Mellon mentor.

“As the daughter of West Indian immigrants who were themselves fairly unfamiliar with the American education system,” Layne says, “I thought people went to graduate school to study law or medicine. I knew I loved German and loved teaching, but I had no idea how a German professor got to where she was. Mellon has expanded my horizons and made me expect more from life.”

For more information, visit the Mellon Mays Undgraduate Fellowship Program website.