Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has established a new postdoctoral fellowship program with the goal of creating greater diversity in academia. The university’s Academic Pathways Postdoctoral Fellowship will emphasize academic research and scholarship, but will also include enhanced professional and leadership development training and robust mentoring. The initiative is designed to provide fellows with important opportunities to develop the teaching, mentoring and service experience that will make them highly competitive candidates for academic positions.
The Academic Pathways program will ultimately sponsor up to 12 fellows per year. While a specific goal of the program is to increase the number of women of color in the STEM professoriate, the Academic Pathways Fellowship will be open to applicants of all backgrounds and gender expressions. The first fellows will be on campus for the fall 2017 semester.
Susan R. Wente, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Vanderbilt, explains that “preparing scholars to become leaders in their chosen field has always been integral to Vanderbilt’s mission. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to give future professors the framework and support they need to build successful careers, which will have the outcome of strengthening not only Vanderbilt’s faculty but contributing to the overall quality and diversity of faculty nationally. This program will support efforts across the humanities, social sciences and life, physical and biomedical sciences across campus.”
More information about the fellowship may be found here.
