Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has announced the expansion of a program designed to increase diversity among postdoctoral fellows and the university’s faculty. The program was originally established to bring three postdoctoral fellows to campus for one year. Now the university plans to bring six postdoctoral fellows from underrepresented minority groups to campus for two years each. It is hoped that further expansions to the program will be made in the coming years.
The President’s Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship Program will recruit scholars who are studying issues of race, ethnicity, and gender. The program will focus on bringing African American and American Indians to campus and also women in scientific disciplines and economics. The goal is to retain the postdoctoral students in tenure-track faculty positions after their two years as fellows.
Each postdoctoral fellow will teach one course per semester. Two thirds of their time will be allocated to expanding their doctoral theses into books, conducting additional research, or writing scholarly articles for publication.
