Volume 1 | Issue 2
Summer
2009
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To learn how you can give to UNC’s drive to support the Mellon Graduate Fellowship Program, contact Bill Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English and senior associate dean for fine arts and humanities, at 919-962-9270 or 919-962-1165 or by e-mail
Learn more about the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Learn more about UNC's graduate programs
Mellon grant draws top graduate students to the humanities
By Claire Cusick
Shannon L. Barry is a Mellon Fellow in religious studies.
The grant, announced in March, will join $2.76 million in funding from the University — most to be raised in private dollars — to create the Mellon Graduate Fellowship Program. It will provide tuition, fees, health insurance and a stipend for the recipients, who will enroll in doctoral programs in the departments of English and comparative literature, history, philosophy and religious studies.
Bernadette Gray-Little, outgoing executive vice chancellor and provost, said graduate student support is particularly critical for the humanities.
“In 2004, the last year for which we have national data, less than 9 percent of doctoral degrees went to humanities students,” she said. “That underscores the need for programs like this partnership.”
The partnership means UNC can attract the best students, who will spend five years in Chapel Hill. During their first year, Mellon Fellows will focus exclusively on coursework; during the last year solely on the dissertation. In years two, three and four, fellows will develop experience as undergraduate teachers while also pursuing their doctoral studies.
“This program will enhance our ability to compete for the best graduate students in the humanities from around the world,” said Bruce Carney, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “We’ve been at a competitive disadvantage with some prominent universities because we didn’t have as many fellowships that offer relief from teaching duties during the crucial first and final years of graduate study.
“At the same time, Mellon Fellows will teach in our classrooms, giving them valuable experience and exposing our undergraduate students to exceptionally bright young minds.”
One bright young mind
One of those bright young minds belongs to Shannon L. Barry, who will begin pursuing her doctorate in the Department of Religious Studies in fall 2009, because – though the grant was only announced in late March – departments were able to use the funds to recruit students for the upcoming academic year.Barry, who described herself as “thrilled,” “blown away,” and doing “ridiculous happy dances when I got the news” will study modern religious movements in the Americas.
“I want to study the bare bones of people's lives, their lived religious experiences and practices, how that relates to what they eat and cook, how they dress and conduct themselves in other arenas,” Barry said.
“I applied to UNC because so many qualities that I was looking for in a graduate program converged: UNC has an outstanding reputation and strong research community; [the Department of] Religious Studies has great faculty and a close-knit department community with the resources of a larger one, and a reputation for being very invested in their graduate students.”
Laurie Maffly-Kipp, chair of the Department of Religious Studies, was equally thrilled to have Barry apply. “Shannon had a distinguished career as an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin,” Maffly-Kipp said. “She fulfilled the requirements for four different majors, won numerous undergraduate awards and scholarships, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.”
Maffly-Kipp knew that Barry was deciding among several graduate programs when she offered her the Mellon Fellowship.
Receiving it meant that Barry could put all of her energy into her work without worrying about money, she said. “It made my first choice of school also the soundest choice financially,” she said. “When I started this process, I knew I couldn't go hugely into debt to get a Ph.D., no matter how much I loved this field. Also, it made me feel wanted, and that is no small thing.”
Barry is one of 12 fellows the program – three in each of the four departments – will fund during its first five years. After that, five fellows will enroll every other year.
Among UNC’s most respected academic programs, the departments in English and comparative literature, history, philosophy, and religious studies train a majority of graduate students in Carolina’s humanities disciplines – on average 375 annually. Most of their faculty members have won teaching awards, and 33 have earned the title of distinguished professor.
“This program will enhance our ability to compete for the best graduate students in the humanities from around the world. We’ve been at a competitive disadvantage with some prominent universities because we didn’t have as many fellowships that offer relief from teaching duties during the crucial first and final years of graduate study.”
» Bruce Carney
Lloyd Kramer, Dean Smith Distinguished Term Professor and Chair of the history department, used the Mellon fellowship to recruit Adam Domby, a recent graduate of Yale University. Domby’s field is nineteenth-century U.S. history, with an emphasis on the Civil War era.
“Adam had received a very generous offer from a university in his home state, and planned to go there,” Kramer said. “We had no way to match the offer that he already had, so he was on the point of turning us down.
“But then, his advisor at Yale (the historian David Blight) encouraged him to come to UNC because of the Mellon fellowship,” Kramer continued. “In the end, Adam decided to come to UNC. There is no way that we could have recruited him without the Mellon offer, which went beyond our usual graduate offer and also made us competitive with the university that had given him a large fellowship.”
Enriching Carolina’s academics
Programs such as the Mellon Fellowship are crucial for Carolina, Chancellor Holden Thorp said.“Our ability to attract outstanding graduate students is absolutely essential to our academic reputation and prominence,” he said. “They inspire our faculty to do their best work and they produce first-rate scholarship in their own right. As teachers they enhance the quality of our undergraduate education.
“So we’re very grateful for the Mellon Foundation’s generosity. Providing more support for graduate students ranks among our top priorities.”
Headquartered in New York City, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supports 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.