The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Higher Education and Scholarship in the Humanities Program has awarded $2 million dollars to The Five Colleges of Ohio, in collaboration with The Ohio State University. The grant establishes The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Languages to support language teaching and to build faculty interest and expertise in the uses of blended learning pedagogies. 

The program will allow recent recipients of a doctoral degree in language from Ohio State to have a two-year liberal arts teaching and research experience at one of The Five Colleges of Ohio: Denison University, Kenyon College, Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University or the College of Wooster.

Diane W. Birckbichler, director, Ohio State University’s Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures, said, “The Mellon Foundation grant provides a unique opportunity for Ohio State to partner with The Five Colleges of Ohio in a variety of collaborative activities, particularly the postdoctoral fellowships for our PhD graduates in foreign languages.

“The Mellon Grant is ground breaking for several reasons. It offers one of the few dedicated postdoctoral positions in foreign languages in the country; it provides a unique opportunity for course sharing, seminars and other collaborative projects between Ohio State and The Five Colleges of Ohio; and Ohio State PhDs in foreign language will have a head start in the job market through their positions at these highly regarded liberal arts colleges.”

This joint endeavor is an important one for both partners, providing extensive, tangible benefits to faculty and students during the grant period and beyond.

The postdoctoral fellows will have an exceptional opportunity to become familiar with higher education in a liberal arts context, build a substantive teaching and research portfolio and join a thriving intellectual community.

Each postdoctoral fellow will benefit from faculty mentoring from the host college, which includes help with teaching, assistance with research and an introduction to professional academic life at a liberal arts college.

The fellows are expected to dedicate significant time and energy to scholarship, participate in the intellectual and cultural life on the host campus and engage with other fellows, their PhD advisors and their host mentors.

The Five Colleges of Ohio institutions will rely on the postdoctoral fellows to strengthen curricula, introduce innovations and enrich extracurricular offerings.

Additionally, all language faculty from the Ohio Five and Ohio State will be able to build stronger relationships with colleagues that will pave the way for new on-campus and inter-institutional collaborations and exchange programs.

The four-year grant period begins January 2015 and runs through December 2018. During that time, each of the five colleges will hire two postdoctoral fellows for two overlapping years.

Birckbichler, with Garett Heysel, assistant dean, arts and humanities, College of Arts and Sciences (ASC); and Valarie Williams, associate dean, arts and humanities, ASC; spearheaded Ohio State’s involvement in the grant and saw it through the collaborative grant writing and planning process with colleagues at The Five Colleges of Ohio.

“Collaboration was the key word in being able to obtain this innovative grant,” Birckbichler said. “It was a true collaboration with colleagues at the Ohio Five schools, the chairs of our foreign language departments and the support of Arts and Sciences Executive Dean David Manderscheid and ASC Arts and Humanities Dean Mark Shanda."

—Sandi Rutkowski