Bouchet and Mellon Mays fellowships help set minority students on path to professorships

Eight recipients of undergraduate fellowships with a lofty mission — to promote diversity in college faculties — will march at Commencement this year. Among those applauding the graduating seniors at the ceremony will be four Yale faculty members who once held one of those fellowships.

The soon-to-be-graduates are among the scores of Yale students who have received support from the Mellon Mays and Bouchet fellowship program over the years. The former, established by the Mellon Foundation in 1989, is named in honor of educator and minister Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse College for 27 years and a celebrated civil rights activist. The latter, founded by the Offices of the Yale President and Provost in 1994, honors Edward A. Bouchet, the first African American to graduate from Yale College and the first African American in the United States to earn a Ph.D. (also from Yale).

The two fellowships have the same central goal: “to reduce over time the serious under-representation of individuals from certain minority groups at the faculty level, as well as to address the attendant educational consequences of these disparities.” The programs also aim to improve racial and ethnic relations on college campuses and provide role models for youths.

Students are selected during their sophomore year and matched with faculty mentors who provide guidance and direction in demystifying the academy, supporting the fellow’s scholarly work, and preparing them for graduate school and entering the professoriate. The fellowships provide fellows with funding to do research over a period of two and a half years, including the summers.

Mellon Mays and Bouchet fellows are also prepared for the GRE through an in-house course, and the fellowship meetings include panels and conversations on applying to graduate school, mentoring, preparing a personal statement, publishing their research papers, finding balance and supportive social networks during graduate school, and much more. Fellows often present their work at Yale-hosted conferences and regional intercollegiate Mellon conferences, and travel to professional conferences with their mentors, among other activities. Mellon Mays Fellows continue to participate in an international of network of graduate students and faculty after graduation, in addition to targeted funds and support initiatives throughout their graduate and professional careers.

“What we have here is our own pipeline program, and it makes a profound impact on student success, achievement and contributions to the scholarly work of the academy.”

— Saveena Dhall

The fellowships program is directed by Saveena Dhall, assistant dean in Yale College.

“The Mellon Mays and Edward A. Bouchet Fellowships program is the premier research-based undergraduate program at Yale,” says Dhall. “Identifying students early on, partnering them with invested mentors, and providing them with a solid foundation through fellowship programs puts our fellows leaps and bounds ahead of peers when it comes to preparedness and the progress they are able to make once at the graduate level.

“What we have here is our own pipeline program,” she continues, “and it makes a profound impact on student success, achievement and contributions to the scholarly work of the academy. Many of our students are first generation and graduate school or becoming a professor was never on their radar. Without the anchoring of the fellowship, it would have been a greater struggle for our students to identify this passion within them and shape it into a career path.”

The program’s faculty chair, Stephen Pitti ’91 B.A., now professor of history and American studies and master of Ezra Stiles College, was a Mellon Mays Fellow during his undergraduate years at Yale, as was Vanessa Agard-Jones ’00 B.A., assistant professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies and of African American studies. In addition, Laurie Santos, associate professor of psychology, was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow at Harvard, and Dixa Ramirez, assistant professor of American studies held a Mellon Mays Fellowship at Brown.

“I never would have entered academia if it weren’t for the Mellon-Mays Program,” says Pitti. “I benefited from great mentoring from historian and former Yale President Howard Lamar who taught me a great deal about research and teaching. He also helped me understand the joys and challenges that professors at a research university face, and he supported and guided my applications to graduate schools. I ended up at Stanford, and I might not have finished my Ph.D. there if it hadn’t been for the guidance and support of the Mellon Foundation and the growing network of Mellon-Mays Fellows.”

Over the years, Yale has had 114 Mellon May Fellows and 82 Edward A. Bouchet Fellows. Twelve of the Bouchet Fellows are currently in Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. programs and 14 have completed their Ph.D. There are currently 22 Mellon Mays Fellows seeking a Ph.D., and 18 Mellons have received their doctorate.

“A significant portion of the current Ph.D. students of color in at least a few Yale graduate programs also had the Mellon-Mays fellowship at their undergraduate institutions,” notes Pitti. “It’s a very important pipeline program that’s been critical to the academy.”

Profiles of the graduating Mellon Mays and Bouchet fellows follow:

Andrés Bustamante

Mellon Mays Fellow

Bustamante is a history major in Berkeley College from San Francisco, California. For the last two years he has worked with his advisers, Professors Gilbert Joseph and Mary Miller, and graduate mentors, Jenny Lambe and Alice Baumgartner, to conduct research on cultural nationalism in 19^th- and 20^th-century Mexico. His thesis, titled “’They will never loot us again!’: Art Repatriation and the Post-Revolutionary Mexican Cultural Project,” explores the role of museums and archaeology in forging a national Mexican identity. He is a 2014 Beinecke Scholar and hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Latin American history. This summer, Bustamante will be interning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the department of Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. In the fall, he will travel to the United Kingdom for an M.Phil. in archaeology (Archaeological Heritage and Museum Studies) at Cambridge University with a Paul Mellon fellowship for Clare College.

Javier Cienfuegos

Edward A. Bouchet Fellow

Cienfuegos is a double major in theater studies and ethnicity, race, and migration in Branford College. His research explores the use of comedy as a political tool in Latino theater in California. During his time as a Bouchet Fellow, he has worked closely with various faculty and graduate student mentors, including Professor Joe Roach and Ph.D. candidate Danielle Bainbridge. Next year, Javier will begin his graduate work in American Studies at Purdue University.

Kathy Phan

Mellon Mays Fellow

Phan is a double major in political science and ethnicity, race, and migration in Ezra Stiles. Her faculty mentors are Professor Mary Lui in American studies and Professor Rachel Silbermann in political science. Her graduate mentor is Tri Phuong in anthropology. She is interested in Asian American studies and how race and politics intersect for Asian Americans. She is a freshman counselor, research assistant in political science, and works at the Admissions Office. She will be teaching for Houston public schools next year.

Christofer Rodelo

Mellon Mays Fellow

Rodelo is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College double-majoring in American studies and ethnicity, race, and migration. During his time at Yale, he was heavily involved at La Casa, serving as a student coordinator for three years and on the executive boards of MEChA de Yale and PorColombia. He says he is grateful for mentorship from Albert Laguna, Stephen Pitti, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Laura Barraclough, Daphne Brooks, Sebastian Perez, and many others throughout his time at Yale. Broadly, his academic interests are in Latina/o studies, comparative studies of race and ethnicity, performance studies, material culture studies, and consumer culture studies. His senior thesis looked at the articulation of Mexican and Latina/o authenticity in ethnic supermarket chains in southern California, with an eye to material-based identity formations. After graduation, he will enroll as a Ph.D. student in the American studies program at Harvard University.

Donald Rodriguez

Robertson Family/Bouchet Fellow

Rodriguez is a senior in Ezra Stiles College majoring in both psychology and molecular biophysics & biochemistry. Over the past two years, he has performed research as part of the Department of Neurology under David A. Hafler, his primary investigator, and Amanda Hernandez, his graduate mentor. His research has examined the effects that high levels of salt have on regulatory T cells, which are responsible for suppressing immune cells that inappropriately react against the self. Alongside his graduate mentor, Rodriguez has helped demonstrate that salt abrogates the function of these cells in healthy individuals and may be associated with autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and type 1 diabetes. His current project aims to study the effects of salt among patients with MS. Outside of lab, Rodriguez is an active member of both his residential college, through his involvement in intramural sports, and the Yale Latino community, through his participation with La Casa Cultural. Rodriguez hopes to obtain an M.D./Ph.D. in biomedical sciences and further his career in academic medicine.

Rahul Singh

Edward A. Bouchet Fellow

Singh is in Saybrook College, and studies economics and mathematics at Yale. He aims to enrich social policy with quantitative insight. He says he also loves to teach, and he has founded financial literacy programs in Cleveland and New Haven. As a Marshall Scholar, Singh will study econometrics and mathematical economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, then computational statistics and machine learning at University College London. He noted that he is deeply grateful to his mentor, Professor Andrew Metrick.

Azmar Williams

Mellon Mays Fellow

Williams is a senior in Silliman College majoring in history and African-American studies. In addition to serving as president of the Yale Black Men’s Union during his junior year, Williams volunteered as a tutor with the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project. As a Mellon Mays Fellow, he has spent the past two summers pursuing his research at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Princeton University. At Yale he has worked with Professors Glenda Gilmore, Crystal Feimster, and Jonathan Holloway. His current research interests are in 19^th- and 20^th-century U.S. history, as well as African-American historiography and intellectual history. Next year, he will begin working on his Ph.D. in history at Harvard University.

Aily Zhang

Mellon Mays Fellow

Zhang is an environmental studies major in Silliman College, concentrating in food and urban environments, with a regional focus on East Asia. Her adviser is Amity Doolittle, a professor at Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Her graduate student mentor is C.J. Huang, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Chinese history. Zhang’s research interests include environmentalism, sustainable agriculture and alternative food movements in post-socialist China. Her thesis explores how economic reform, urban development, and socio-cultural changes in China have altered the country’s food pathways, while also redefining how Chinese citizens engage in environmental activism. At Yale, Zhang has been involved with the Yale Sustainable Food Project, the Sustainable Service Corps at the Office of Sustainability, and the Leadership Institute at Yale. She was named a Princeton-in-Asia Fellow, and next year will work at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Beijing on their Environmental Governance and Law Project. Zhang is also the co-founder of a sustainable food and agriculture think tank that specializes on China’s food system with fellow Yale student Abigail Bok. She plans to build upon the research institute, “Time to Grow,” while abroad in Beijing, and hopes to pursue graduate studies in geography after her fellowship.