UCHRI Receives $175,000 Advancing Faculty Diversity Grant from the UC Office of the President
The grant will support an intercampus mentorship program for faculty across the UC.
UCHRI has received a three-year grant to support its ongoing UC Underrepresented Scholars Fellowship program, an intercampus faculty mentorship program serving the ten campuses of the University of California. The fellowship program pairs junior and mid-career faculty from the humanities and humanistic social sciences with desired senior mentors from other UC campuses.
The UC Underrepresented Scholars Fellowship program was first started in 2021-22 and includes participants from nine different campuses. Julia R. Lupton (UCHRI Interim Director) and Sara Černe (UCHRI Research Grants Program Director) lead the initiative; the advisory board consists of representatives from four UC campuses.
In addition to providing mentorship training, the UC Underrepresented Scholars Fellowship program organizes a Fall gathering for each new cohort, facilitates monthly one-on-one meetings for mentors and mentees, provides quarterly professionalization workshops based on the needs and preferences of the group, and brings participants from all cohorts together for an annual in-person event in the Spring.
Open to all faculty at the University of California, the program aims to enhance campus climate, retention, and faculty success by connecting scholars across the system and fostering an inclusive culture of mentorship. As one participant put it: “Gleaning some of this institutional knowledge from more seasoned scholars on other campuses will enable me to better support my underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students and, eventually, other junior scholars too.”
The latest cohort, which has doubled in size since last year, met on the UC Irvine campus in late September to hear from Veronica Reyes (UC Riverside), author of Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope, and shape an informal mentorship manifesto that will guide their work for the rest of the year.
