The University of California Office of the President has announced a $15 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of efforts to increase faculty diversity.

The grant will support an expansion of the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP), which was created in 1984 and offers postdoctoral research fellowships, professional development, and faculty mentoring to scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at UC. The funding will establish the PPFP/Mellon Foundation UC-HSI Initiative for Humanities, which will promote the hiring of faculty whose research and teaching emphasize diversity and equity in the humanities and humanities-inflected social sciences at UC's six federally recognized Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs): UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC Merced, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Davis; offer promising postdoctoral fellows and early-career faculty startup funding, mentorship, and career training in their fields of study; and ensure that HSI campuses have the resources to effectively recruit fellows.

"The UC system's long-term commitment to its innovative and impactful President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program has long served as a model across higher education, demonstrating the requirement of recruiting and retaining outstanding diverse and inclusive faculty to the creation of a healthy academic ecosystem," said Mellon Foundation senior program officer Dianne Harris. "With the growth and demographic transformation of the University of California's student body, this grant likewise creates an opportunity to support expansion and transformation of the PPFP to strengthen the humanities and elevate faculty and student success. Notably, it is further clearing pathways to the professoriate for those whose work advances diversity, equity and inclusion, and for forging links that connect higher education access to the creation of a more just society."

(Photo credit: GettyImages/monkeybusinessimages)