The aim of the Mellon grant is to foster the growth of the intellectual community on campus by bringing postdoctoral fellows in the humanities and social sciences to the College and providing them with teaching positions.
Through previous grants awarded to the College by the Mellon Foundation, 11 scholars have completed fellowships. An additional fellow, Jeffers Engelhardt, is currently serving his term at Amherst as the Mellon visiting assistant professor of music.
Unlike the previous Mellon Foundation grants, the most recent one, which will eventually total $3 million, will permanently endow the Mellon Fellowship Program at the College.
This new Mellon endowment fund will bring at least two postdoctoral fellows to campus each year, allowing these emerging scholars to work closely with the undergraduates in the Amherst community.
The Mellon fellows will be provided with the important opportunity of gaining research and teaching experience before seeking permanent positions in academia.
"The intention here is to give graduate students the opportunity to be at a place like Amherst in the hope that the best of those might think of applying for faculty positions here," said President Anthony Marx.
When asked about the motivations behind Amherst's decision to accept the matching grant of $1.5 million, Dean of the Faculty Greg Call emphasized the importance of the program. "The goal of the Mellon grant is significant enough to Amherst that the College was willing to support the program with its own resources," he said.
Call stressed the importance of keeping these fellows at the College. "The Mellon Foundation has been very generous to Amherst in the past, but this recent matching grant will now allow us to continue to bring postdocs to the College on a regular basis to learn from our outstanding faculty of scholar-teachers and to work with us to develop pedagogical techniques and insights into emerging fields of research," he said
Professors are excited about what these grants could mean for their departments. Professor of Anthropology Deborah Gewertz, who chairs the department, said that given the opportunity, she is sure professors would be interested in the fellows. "Certainly, if the College were to earn money for postdoctoral fellows, my department would be interested," she said.
Gewertz commented that these fellows could provide a unique insight to someone who is up to date on the latest research in the field. "I myself would benefit enormously from the presence of someone interested in nutritional anthropology," she said. "I am sure that other members of anthropology-sociology departments could likewise benefit from someone interested in their areas of research."
Although the various departments at the College have had little information given to them about the possibilities provided by the grant, most of them agree that the prospect of postdoctoral fellows sounds appealing.
"The Mellon Grant sounds extremely promising," said Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought Lawrence Douglas, the department chair. "My department hasn't yet discussed the possibility of hiring research assistants under the terms of the grant."
Despite Marx's reassuring remarks, students studying the humanities are concerned about what bringing postgraduate students to the College could mean for the future. "I don't think it is a good idea. I think it undermines Amherst's mission," said Samantha Siegal '08. "The only positive side to all this that I can see is that students would have someone else to form a relationship with in addition to their professor, but I still don't think the pros would outweigh the cons."
Siegal, who spent her summer interning at the admissions office, is worried the College could lose its focus. "Amherst is [and should be] first and foremost about the undergraduate students," she said.
Marx assured students that the College is not changing its focus. "Amherst is not about to introduce a sort of Harvard system of graduate students teaching instead of faculty," said Marx. "Just the contrary, our commitment to our faculty teaching our students is not at risk now or ever."