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“I would not be in graduate school without the support of MMUF,” says Nai-Lah Dixon ’21.

Dixon is talking about �ڰ�������’s program, which she participated in as an associate fellow beginning in her junior year. The program helps prepare undergraduates from underrepresented communities for academic careers in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. 

Now Dixon is a PhD student in human development and social policy at Northwestern University, where she is studying how the underdiagnosis of learning disabilities in Black children affects academic success and other outcomes. She is one of a record eight recent MMUF alumni to begin doctoral programs this fall. 

“Lots of students have high potential and high talent for research, but they may not know how that might translate into furthering their education and even their careers,” says , the Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor of Comparative Literature, who has directed MMUF at �ڰ������� since 2010. 

“The program serves as a bridge, identifying students who have that high potential and then giving them the building blocks to succeed while they’re at �ڰ������� and to potentially continue after they graduate.” 

The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship was by the New York-based Mellon Foundation. The program builds on the legacy of the late Benjamin Elijah Mays, a scholar and educator known for mentoring a generation of social justice activists, including Martin Luther King Jr.

�ڰ������� was one of the first schools invited to join the program, which now has partnerships at nearly 50 institutions. 

“Students look around campus and see that the student body is more diverse than the faculty. But it’s kind of abstract why that is,” Warren says. “The program gives them concrete, specific explanations for how the professoriate is built, how people get from point A to point B, and shows them that they themselves can do that. It makes academia accessible and clear and empowering as a pathway.”

Fellows receive stipends and funds for research and conferences beginning in their sophomore summer. The program offers mentorship, an extensive network of peers and advisers, and opportunities to develop the necessary skills to succeed in an academic career, including training in research and writing and guidance on the graduate school application process. The support of the community and mentors continues long after graduation.

“MMUF is pivotal because it really trains the next generation of academics and it adds diversity to academia,” says Dixon, who after �ڰ������� worked for the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice before deciding to go to graduate school.

Though not all fellows go on to graduate school, the program shows powerful results: Out of more than 200 �ڰ������� MMUF alumni, over two-thirds have pursued graduate degrees of all kinds, and more than 30 have gone on to careers in academia. In her tenure as MMUF director, Warren has seen 73% percent of alumni from the program enroll in doctoral programs—more than twice the national ratio of BA-level graduates to PhD enrollments.

“I’m a case example for the program working,” says Sháńdíín Brown ’20, who began a PhD program in the history of art at Yale University this fall, where she is studying time in relation to Native American art. “I had no idea that I was going to get a PhD because I didn’t know anyone in my family who had done it before. Professor Warren coached me through my applications with a lot of encouragement, which I needed.”

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Sháńdíín Brown ’20, shown here at the Hood Museum of Art when she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow at �ڰ�������, started a PhD program this fall at Yale in the history of art. (Photo by Don Hamerman)

After graduation from �ڰ�������, Brown, who is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, completed an internship at the School for Advanced Research’s Indian Arts Research Center in Santa Fe, N.M., and a fellowship in Native American Art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, where she went on to serve as an assistant curator before deciding to return to graduate school.

Brown is one of five Native American MMUF alumni to start PhD programs in recent years, including three this year—“an unprecedented level of participation,” Warren says, and a result of the program’s conscious outreach to �ڰ�������’s Native American community. �ڰ������� has one of the highest Native student populations among participating MMUF schools.

“I cannot say enough positive things” about Warren and MMUF Associate Coordinator , a senior lecturer in writing, Brown says. “They’ve impacted my work as an academic and as a professional, but also as a person. I don’t know if I could ever repay them. And I’ve even told them that, and they were like, ‘Then it’s your job to mentor other students when you graduate.’ ”

In addition to the fellowships funded through Mellon—which supports a cohort of five new fellows each year—�ڰ������� provides its own funding for an additional three associate fellows like Dixon, who majored in sociology modified with African American studies.

“The associate fellows funding enables us to broaden participation in MMUF, and has been a real catalyst to the overall success of all the program,” Warren says. 

Dixon calls the associate fellows program “pivotal and life-saving.” The first member of her family to attend college, she faced a number of challenges early in her �ڰ������� career, including major illness in her family, and she was not accepted to MMUF when she applied as a sophomore, she says. 

“The initial rejection from MMUF made me hone in on exactly the research questions that I wanted to ask, and the answers that I was trying to find,” she says. She refined those questions during an independent study with now-retired , who encouraged her to reapply. When she did, she says, “Professor Warren and Professor Chaney saw that I had a clear direction and trajectory that I wanted to go, which is exactly what they were looking for.”

In addition to Brown and Dixon, �ڰ������� MMUF alumni beginning PhD programs this year include: 

• Emilie Bowerman ’23, history, Notre Dame University
• Hayden Elrafei ’24, American studies, New York University
• Daniel Modesto ’24, American studies, University of Minnesota 
• Alejandro Morales ’24, comparative literature, Brown University 
• Sydney Nguyen ’21, anthropology, NYU
• George Stain ’23, linguistics, University of Michigan

MMUF alumni who recently completed doctoral degrees include Oscar Cornejo Cásares ’17, who earned a PhD in sociology from Northwestern and is now an assistant professor of Latin American studies at Davidson College; Mark Griffith ’19, who earned a PhD in sociology from Harvard University and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern’s Sexualities Project; Winifred Danielle Jones ’17, who earned a PhD in English from the University of Chicago; Estéfani Marín ’17, who earned a PhD in sociology from the University of California Irvine and has begun an assistant professorship of ethnic studies at Lawrence University; and Jessica Womack ’14, who earned a PhD in art history from Princeton University.