MEMORANDUM

From:              Laura W. Perna

Date:               December 19, 2023

Subject:           Call for Nominations:  Penn Fellows and Mellon Fellows

                        Due:  February 15, 2024

We are pleased to request nominations for our sixteenth cohort of Penn Fellows and our fourth cohort of the Mellon Fellows.

Penn Fellows Program

As we hope you know, the Penn Fellows program provides select mid-career faculty (newly tenured to early full professors) an opportunity to develop their leadership skills, build networks, think strategically, and interact with campus leaders. We also strive to promote a cross-University network of support for participants as they move through their careers. Previous Penn Fellows have subsequently served as deans, department chairs, and vice provosts, and we anticipate that this trend will continue in the future.

Mellon Fellows Program

This year, we are again planning to offer a parallel program to the Penn Fellows program, the Mellon Fellows Program. This program seeks to support mid-career faculty (newly tenured to full professors) from core humanities and arts disciplines and from departments that are strongly inflected by the humanities, and/or scholars whose work is strongly based on cultural/historical analysis. The program is intended to orient arts and humanities faculty to the fundamentals of leadership roles, encourage collaboration and community across departments and disciplines, and build the next generation of higher education leaders inflected with humanistic culture and values.

Expectations

Participants are expected to participate in the leadership development sessions that are created for these programs. These sessions will be scheduled over the course of the 2024-2025 academic year. Participants will also be invited to participate in the Provost’s Leadership Academy.

Qualifications

Candidates for both programs should be mid-career faculty (newly tenured to full professors) with a demonstrated record of academic excellence, administrative leadership potential, and interest in higher education leadership. Of particular interest are faculty who have not yet held senior higher education leadership positions, faculty from groups that are historically underrepresented in higher education leadership, and faculty who can further contribute to the excellence and diversity of our campus leadership.

The Mellon Fellows program is limited to faculty in core humanities and arts disciplines, from departments that are strongly inflected by the humanities, and/or whose work is strongly based on cultural/historical analysis are eligible.

Request for nominations

Nominations should be submitted to provost-fac@upenn.edu by February 15, 2024. Nominations should identify the preferred program and include a letter of support from the dean or department chair and candidate’s curriculum vitae. Previously nominated candidates may be re-nominated.