History

History

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation was established as a nonprofit philanthropic organization in 1969 with a mission to “strengthen, promote, and defend the arts and humanities as essential to democratic societies.”  In 1988, under this broad charter, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program was established.  Henry Drewry, program associate at the Mellon Foundation and co-founder of MMUF with then-president of Mellon William G. Bowen, was MMUF’s first director. Read more…

The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program is a signature program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  To date the program has produced more than 1,200 PhDs, some of whom have taken their humanities training into venues ranging from museums and nonprofit organizations to government positions and publishing houses, over 850 college and university faculty and instructors and over 500 tenured and tenure-track professors.  In celebration of the program’s 30th anniversary, a short documentary was created featuring interviews with MMUF fellows at all stages of their academic careers, from current undergraduate fellows to faculty members, along with MMUF coordinators and staff of the Mellon Foundation. Please join us in celebrating the success of MMUF and the vital contributions of its alumni toward advancing a broad range of scholarly perspectives both within and outside of the academy.