ACM-Mellon Post-doctoral Fellowship Program
With generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the ACM-Mellon Post-doctoral Teacher-Scholar Fellowships will place up to 26 new PhDs in two-year teaching and research residencies on campuses of the ACM member colleges over a period of 5-6 years. The first cohort of six Fellows began their residencies in fall 2009, and six colleges are advertising for the second cohort of Fellows to begin their two-year residencies in fall 2010.
The Fellowships are open to new PhDs in the arts, humanities, humanistic social sciences disciplines, and in interdisciplinary environmental studies areas. The program will combine campus-based mentoring with consortial orientation and workshops to introduce Fellows to the challenges and rewards of teaching, scholarship, and professional development in the residential liberal arts college.
Even as the program aims to make a compelling case among new PhDs for the desirability of a professional career engaged in undergraduate teaching and scholarship at a liberal arts institution, it will at the same time assist ACM institutions with strategic programmatic and pedagogical enhancement as Fellows bring with them new specializations and fresh approaches to teaching and learning.
Toward these ends the program seeks to attract excellent Post-doctoral Fellows from the nation’s top research universities. In arranging for a one-half teaching load over a two-year Fellowship and offering a rich program of mentoring, instruction, and support, the ACM-Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowships will help prepare a strong cohort of new PhDs for successful careers as teacher-scholars equipped to reinforce the collaborative goals of the consortium and the larger aims of liberal arts education.