Five Colleges, Incorporated: New Mellon Grant Supports Joint Faculty

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New Mellon Grant Supports Joint Faculty

Five Colleges, Incorporated has received a grant of $2 million dollars from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support new joint faculty positions over the next five years. The award reflects the foundation's ongoing interest in how colleges and universities can use shared positions to foster collaborative responses to curricular needs in the face of fiscal constraints. Over the next five years, the five colleges will use funds from the grant to support the first three years of up to eight new tenure-track appointments, which may be shared between two, among three or four campuses as well as all five.

Commenting on the award, Five College Executive Director Lorna M. Peterson noted that "the five institutions have a long tradition of success in using joint appointments and we are extremely grateful to The Mellon Foundation for their generous support of our efforts and their confidence in our ability to adapt this model of sharing resources to 21st century needs." The five colleges include four private, liberal arts institutions -- Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges -- and the flagship state campus, the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The first Five College joint appointments were made in the early 1970s with the support of a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) of the U.S. Department of Education. Currently, the five campuses have fifteen joint faculty positions, several of which, including ones in Peace and World Security Studies and in Geology, are long-standing. The newest of these appointments were made under a previous grant of $600,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded in 2002. The result of that grant has been the addition of five new joint faculty appointments: two in Asian/Pacific/American studies, one in Russian history, and two in film and video production. Each of these appointments constitutes a key element in an overall plan developed by the collaborating departments to coordinate their curriculum as a hedge against an unprecedented number of anticipated retirements in the next five to ten years and as a vehicle for introducing new courses and keeping pace with the most current research.

Building on what that grant has put in place, this new grant from Mellon will enable the schools to introduce another variation on the joint appointment model, one that will allow positions to be shared on a multi-lateral basis by two, three, four, or five institutions. Under the new model, too, the participating institutions will be expected to commit to continuing the position on a long-term basis after the initial three-years of grant support.

"This new grant from Mellon promises to give the Deans a very desirable level of flexibility in responding to departmental needs and initiatives both in the long and short term," observed Smith College Provost and Dean of Faculty Susan C. Bourque. "Adding new sharing configurations to the joint appointment," she said, "opens up new possibilities and encourages innovative thinking on the part of us all about how to ensure a vital curriculum in the face of the dual pressures of retirements and budget constraints."

Posted 4/29/05

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