Holy Cross Receives $800,000 Mellon Foundation Grant to Create Teaching Positions

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the College of the Holy Cross a grant of $800,000 to enable the College to recruit to its campus talented young scholars who have recently completed their Ph.D. programs.

The Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellows Program at Holy Cross will offer these young women and men an exceptional experience that integrates teaching with scholarship in an undergraduate, liberal arts setting, with the goal of helping them appreciate the relative advantages of embarking on a career at a small college rather than at a research university.

Over a four-year period beginning in August 2008, the Mellon funding will bring six teacher-scholars to the College.  The new positions will be filled by nationally-recruited scholars who can demonstrate that they will bring to the College a strong theoretical grounding in pedagogy and some prior teaching experience as part of their graduate studies.

The first Mellon fellows will arrive at Holy Cross at an exciting time, says Timothy Austin, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the College.  Montserrat (www.holycross.edu/montserrat/), the College’s unique new program for all first-year students, begins this fall.

“Montserrat is an academically-driven program in which students studying in closely-linked seminars live together in the same residence hall,” he says.  “It is designed to encourage students to take the conversations and debates that begin in the classroom into the dining halls and residences, and from there into all the other areas of their lives on campus.  Interaction between students and professors will be critical to creating this experience – as it is critical to every student’s experience at Holy Cross – and we believe that the new Mellow Postdoctoral Fellows will benefit from witnessing this new approach to educating first-year students.”

The Mellon fellows will first be given the opportunity to learn about the unique strengths of Montserrat and then to apply to teach in it if they wish.

The College will also work to find other ways for the young faculty members to participate fully in the rich life of a liberal arts college. For example, a Mellon fellow in the theatre department will be considered as a possible director of one of the College’s 2009-2010 main stage theatrical productions, in addition to teaching classes in acting, directing and dramatic literature.

Mellon fellows will be mentored individually by senior Holy Cross faculty members in their departments, and will be supported with travel and research funds to permit them to develop scholarly projects and present the results at professional conferences.

“We will be inviting young scholars to experience what it is like to teach undergraduates at a highly selective liberal arts college—to see if it’s for them,” said Austin.  “Holy Cross has recently recruited to permanent faculty positions talented individuals who participated in postdoctoral programs like this at other institutions.  Having benefited from the process, we are now looking forward to becoming part of the pipeline ourselves and assisting at an early stage in the development of some great teachers.”

He added:  “It is also at the core of our institutional mission as a Jesuit college to offer opportunities for those on our campus to discern their purpose in life.  We are grateful to the Mellon Foundation for making it possible for us to create this exciting opportunity for Holy Cross.”

With offices in New York City and Princeton, N.J., the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation currently makes grants in six core program areas: higher education and scholarship, scholarly communications, research in information technology, museums and art conservation, performing arts, and conservation and the environment.