The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1988, made a long-term commitment to help remedy the serious shortage of faculty of color in higher education through the Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program under the then-President William Bowen.

MMUF began in 1988 with eight participating institutions: Bryn Mawr College, Carleton College, Cornell University, Hunter College, Oberlin College, Swarthmore College, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. The following year, eleven more schools joined the program: Brooklyn College, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, Queens College, Stanford University, the UNCF consortium of historically black colleges and universities, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, Williams College and Yale University.

The current director, Dr. Amando Bengochea had previously coordinated or advised the MMUF programs at Brown University and Connecticut College.

The fundamental objective of Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program is to address, over time, the problem of underrepresentation in the academy at the level of college and university faculties. This goal can be achieved both by increasing the number of students from underrepresented minority groups (URM) who pursue PhDs and by supporting the pursuit of PhDs by students who may not come from traditional minority groups but have otherwise demonstrated a commitment to the goals of MMUF. The MMUF program is designed to encourage fellows to enter Ph.D. programs that prepare students for professorial careers; it is not intended to support students who intend to go on to medical school, law school or other professional schools.

Our relationship with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation goes back to the 1970s. The Foundation has been very supportive of Connecticut College and provided us with much needed financial resources in the form of presidential discretionary grants, grants for special projects and consortium initiatives with Trinity College and Wesleyan University.

Go to the National Organization for more information.