The Big Ten Academic Alliance has been awarded the Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow grant to develop the next generation of academic leaders in the humanities. The Mellon grant allows the Big Ten Academic Alliance to build upon a strong foundation of academic leadership development and further expand its impact by increasing the number of humanities faculty in our existing leadership development programs and enhancing the leadership skills of humanities faculty already in existing programs.

“We are tremendously grateful to the Mellon Foundation for this generous grant, ” said Big Ten Academic Alliance Executive Director Keith Marshall. “The Big Ten Academic Alliance has been committed to leadership development for over four decades, and the Mellon grant provides the resources to expand the number of humanists and humanistic social scientists in our leadership programs and enhance the experience with administrative fellowships. Both the Mellon Fellows and our member institutions will benefit greatly from the programs this grant makes possible.”

The Big Ten Academic Alliance is the nation’s preeminent consortium for effective collaboration among research universities whose member universities advance their academic missions, generate unique opportunities for students and faculty, and serve the common good by sharing expertise, leveraging campus resources, and collaborating on innovative programs.

The Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through their grants, they seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.

This year, each participating Big Ten university has included a Mellon Humanities Fellow in their Academic Leadership Program (ALP) cohort. In addition to participating in ALP, the Mellon Humanities Fellows meet with their Mellon cohort monthly to share strategies for humanities program development, advocacy, and transformative leadership. Mellon Humanities Fellows will also attend a half-day session ahead of the third ALP Seminar focused on topics relevant to humanities faculty members and the administration of humanities programs. University of Maryland ALP liaison and Director for Faculty Leadership Laura Rosenthal facilitates this Big Ten project. “This program recognizes the crucial role of humanities research at Big Ten institutions and in our society for their discovery, stewardship, and lively engagement with arts, languages, literatures, ideas, histories, ethics, and cultures,” Rosenthal notes. Mellon Grant participants will cultivate the skills to support strong and networked humanities programs within the Big Ten.  The University of Maryland’s inaugural Mellon Humanities Fellow is Hester Baer, Professor of German and Cinema & Media Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and Affiliate Professor in The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Dr. Baer served as the Department Head of German Studies from 2015 to 2019 and currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of The German Quarterly, the flagship journal in German literary and cultural studies. As her wide-ranging accomplishments suggest, Dr. Baer is interested in ways that humanities programs can break down silos and ensure continuity for future generations. She points out that “Research and education in the humanities are crucial to understanding history, to grappling with the challenges of our current times and to imagining better futures. Scholar-teachers in the humanities provide our institutions and our students with crucial skills, including linguistic and cultural expertise, traditional and digital literacy, ethical and political knowledge, and the tools to understand human differences and expressive forms.”