The Fellowship

The core of the Mellon fellowship are the graduate teaching fellows: each year, 6-7 Emory graduate students are selected to teach at the partner institutions.  This straightforward arrangement is surrounded by a number of features which makes it unique.

• This program is a parternship.  The Mellon fellows are selected by a committe of liaisons from the partner institutions, ensuring that the fellows will fill genuine needs at their teaching institutions.
• The program focuses on professionalization. Throughout the year, the fellows meet monthly for a seminar led by the Mellon Directors.  The seminar considers a wide range of professional issues, from balancing teaching and research to managing the tenure cycle.
• The program establishes mentoring relationships.  Each teaching fellows acquires a mentor at his or her host institution, and gains an opportunity to learn from an experienced colleague about faculty life.
• The program aims at degree completion: the mentoring, the moderate teaching load and the professionalization seminar work together to move fellows along towards completing their degress.

The professionalization seminar and the mentoring relationships that are at the core of the Mellon fellowships are establishing a model for helping students through the final phase of their graduate school careers, and for allowing them to complete their degrees with a sense of professional confidence and knowledge of the career they are entering.