In 2006, the Mellon Foundation awarded the Mellon 23, a group of twenty-three liberal arts colleges (see list of institutions below), a Faculty Career Enhancement Program (FCE) grant . This grant will fund collaborative initiatives that support faculty in their scholarly and creative work and that aid faculty in gaining a broader view of their institutions and of the pressing challenges facing American liberal arts colleges.
The proposal to the Foundation had two components: the continuation and broadening of opportunities for the already successful collaborative workshops that were occurring in smaller cohorts and the creation of Mellon Assemblies.
Faculty-led workshops have proven so successful for the original cohorts that over the course of the five years of the Mellon FCE grants the number of workshops has grown steadily. A review of the range of funded projects indicated that our faculty members were utilizing the workshop format in meaningful ways, and convinced the Mellon 23 of the value to faculty individually and our institutions collectively. Anticipated continued growth and the desire of some groups to meet again with a deepened agenda and include representatives from a wider group of colleges. The workshops are administered by a separate steering committee of deans.
In February 2008, 9 workshops were selected by the steering committee for funding.
The call for 2009-2010 workshop proposals is expected by early October.
The second component of the proposal is more ambitious. It takes us into new collaborative territory and is premised on a belief that we can enhance faculty leadership by bringing together carefully selected teams of prospective and emerging faculty leaders from our institutions to discuss issues of institutional significance with others from liberal arts colleges. Unlike the workshops which are focused on scholarly and pedagogical topics, the Mellon Assemblies are devoted to “sectoral issues” or institutional-level issues and are intended to give the next generation of faculty leaders opportunities to learn more about the sector and the challenges we face as institutions.
The goal of the Assemblies is both to enhance among the members of our faculties an awareness of our sector, and to bring a leadership group together to work on a project of relevance to each campus. Each campus team of “Mellon Fellows” figures out in terms of its own structures and culture how to bring back the benefits of the wider sectoral perspective gained at an Assembly. The group of Mellon Deans developing the individual assemblies also help participants develop strategies for bringing ideas and knowledge back to implement on their campuses.
The first Mellon 23 Assembly was held on February 23, 2008 at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. It focused on the issue of Interdisciplinarity and was attended by teams from 20 of the 23 member institutions, where institutions developed individual projects.
Instructions and Forms
Overview