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The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program at Duke
Program Coordinators: Professor Kerry L. Haynie, Department of Political Science
Ms. Deborah Wahl,
Undergraduate Research Support Office
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in order to broaden the pool of those pursuing academic careers in higher education. The program supports individuals in selected disciplines who demonstrate a strong commitment to increasing opportunities for underrepresented minorities and advancing cross-racial and ethnic understanding.
The program at Duke uses mentoring and funded research opportunities to provide students interested in a scholarly career with a greater awareness of the challenges and opportunities of academic life. Each year, five sophomore students are selected as Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows; they receive stipends for the academic terms and summers for two years. During the summers, Fellows, under the direction of a faculty mentor, pursue some form of directed study, intended to give them a sense of scholarly research activities. During the academic year, they may: (1) continue their independent research; or (2) work as a research assistant on a project which the faculty mentor is currently pursuing; or (3) work on curricular or teaching projects of interest to their faculty mentor.
In addition to the advantages of this close faculty interaction, Fellows also have regular opportunities for social and intellectual discourse with students and faculty from the broad range of fields supported by the program. This program differs from many other undergraduate research opportunities in that the mechanisms for forming long-term relationships between students and faculty are incorporated at the Foundation level. The Program has four main components:
- Mentoring: Fellows receive personalized attention and advice from a faculty mentor and have regular interactions with the program coordinators. Faculty mentors receive an annual award of $750.
- Summer Research Support: Fellows receive support for an eight-week project during the summers following their sophomore and junior years. The support includes a stipend of $3,300, a $750 housing allowance, and a research travel budget of up to $400. The summer project may be conducted off campus, but it must be done under the supervision of the Duke faculty mentor. Fellows are required to write a paper on their project at the end of each summer appointment. The summer appointment for 2008 is from June 11 through August 1.
- Term-time Stipends: Fellows are awarded a $900 stipend each semester for their continuing work with their faculty mentor. The stipend is intended to supplant financial aid work study assignments. In addition, each Scholar receives an annual budget of $150 to cover project-related expenses.
- Loan Repayment: If a Mellon Undergraduate Fellow enrolls as a full-time student in a Ph.D. program in a Mellon-identified discipline (see Eligibility) within two years of graduating from Duke, that Fellow may have up to $10,000 of his or her undergraduate student loans repaid by the Mellon Foundation: one-eighth of the total indebtedness (up to a maximum of $1,250) in each of the first four years of study, and the remaining half of the total (up to a maximum of $5,000) if the Ph.D. is earned within six years after enrollment. Mellon Fellows who do not use this loan repayment allocation to repay undergraduate loans may use this benefit to repay desginated educational loans for graduate study from recognized lenders.