Overview
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program is the centerpiece of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s initiatives to increase diversity in the faculty ranks of institutions of higher learning. The MMUF program is administered at 48 institutions and a consortium of historically black colleges and universities within the membership of the UNCF. As of 2014, more than 4,000 students have been selected as fellows, more than 500 of whom have earned a Ph.D. and 85 of whom are now tenured faculty members.
The fundamental objective of MMUF is to address, over time, the problem of underrepresentation in the academy at the level of college and university faculties. This goal can be achieved both by increasing the number of students from underrepresented minority groups who pursue Ph.D.s and by supporting the pursuit of Ph.D.s by students who may not come from traditional minority groups but have otherwise demonstrated a commitment to the goals of MMUF. The MMUF program is designed to encourage fellows to enter Ph.D. programs that prepare students for professorial careers; it is not intended to support students who intend to go on to medical school, law school or other professional schools.
Toward a More Inclusive Academy: MMUF at 30
Current Fellows
Gabriel Vergara is a rising junior majoring in government, with a concentration in political theory. He is originally from Miami, FL and is of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. His research is focused on determining the relation of Fidel Castro to Niccolò Machiavelli through the work of Antonio Gramsci. By putting Fidel Castro in conversation with these Italian thinkers, Vergara hopes to uncover new aspects of power relationships and better understand the Cuban situation. This project is part of Vergara’s larger goal of putting Latin American thinkers in conversation with mainstream political theorists. At Cornell, Gabriel serves as a research assistant for Professor David Bateman of the Government Department, a Resident Advisor in Kay Hall, a member of American Enterprise Institute’s Executive Council, and the Treasurer of Amnesty International. In his free time, Gabriel enjoys playing basketball, going to the gym, and fishing with his family. Finally, Gabriel has a native fluency in English and Spanish, an intermediate fluency in French, and one day hopes to be fluent in German.
Marco Antonio Peralta-Ochoa is a rising junior double majoring in American Studies and Science and Technology Studies. Their research project deals with the development of Western Medicine whose practices and technologies were institutionalized off the treatment of colonized and enslaved bodies. With a particular focus on the experiences of test subjects and patients, they concentrate on the experiences of minorities with American health practitioners/practices as legacies of colonial treatment. Marco is interested in the foundations of modern medicine and the role that marginalized bodies have played in medical research. Adjacent to their academic interests, Marco is passionate about the neocolonial occupation of Palestine, the role of images and visual representations in scientific learning, and community based strategies geared towards ensuring the livelihood of vulnerable populations. On campus, they were formerly an intern for Voices for a Second Chance, D.C., a member of the Student Assembly, and translator and researcher with the Cornell Farmworker Program. After Cornell, Marco plans on pursuing a Ph.D. in Science History and Medical Anthropology and moving back to the West Coast to do research in the field of Science and Technology Studies.
Christian Thomas Nielsen is a junior majoring in Performing and Media Arts. From an early age, his Danish-Peruvian heritage and Spanish-American upbringing, ingrained a sense of duty to convey the positive lens through which he perceives diversity. His research delves into the upsurge of neo-nationalist xenophobia in Europe by examining Islamophobia in Denmark. Throughout Europe, along with much of the world, neo-nationalist governments have attracted voters by reframing aspects of globalization as threats to national identity. For the most part, the xenophobic narratives have been framed by the political right. During Denmark’s 2019 Parliamentary election, the traditionally internationalist Social Democrats managed to take power by adopting the Islamophobic policies of the country’s more conservative parties. Christian’s research examines how the left leaning Social Democrats perform neo-nationalist anxieties differently from their right-wing counterparts. Beyond Cornell, Christian will pursue a Ph.D in political anthropology where he aims to continue working on, and through, political identity and difference.
Lucy Contreras is a current senior double majoring in Government and Sociology and minoring in Public Policy and Education. She was born and raised in Chicago and is the proud daughter of two Mexican immigrants. Her research addresses the physical, psychological, and social effects of slaughterhouse work on Latino immigrants. Through her study, she intends to demonstrate how the routinized violence involved in slaughterhouse work perpetuates the trauma already held by Latino immigrants as a result of their pre-migration, migration, and post-migration experiences. She draws on literature and will be conducting interviews and surveys for her research. This project is part of Lucy's larger goal of espousing the abuses of animal agriculture, towards humans and non-humans alike. During her spare time, Lucy enjoys reading, hanging out with friends, and exploring nature. What she is most passionate about, however, is activism. She loves organizing demonstrations and other outreach events to advocate for marginalized communities, the environment, and animal rights. At Cornell, she is the president of the Cornell Vegan Society and Student Assembly's First-Generation Representative. She is also an opinion columnist for the Cornell Daily Sun and works for the Prisoner Express program. After Cornell, Lucy plans on pursuing a PHD in Sociology or Social Policy.
Laurence Steven Minter is a current junior majoring in Sociology and minoring in Inequality Studies and Education. As a proud Chicago native and Chicago Public School product, he has a profound interest in inequality facing underrepresented students in higher education. His research project focuses on the relationship between social movements and movement centers on college campuses. Using Aldon Morris’s typical local movement center framework, this research parallels the role of the black church during the civil rights movement to Wanawake Wa Wari (a cooperative living space for black women at Cornell University) during the Willard Straight Hall Takeover. Ultimately, he hopes to better understand Wari’s role in enabling the eventual creation of subsequent movement centers at Cornell such as the Africana Studies & Research Center and Ujamaa Residential College. This connects to Laurence’s larger goals of uncovering and promoting the underlying importance of movement centers within the context of student life in higher eduction institutions. On campus he serves as the President of the Alpha Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated and enjoys writing spoken word poetry. After Cornell, he plans on pursuing a Ph.D in either Sociology or Africana Studies.
Solomon Lawrence is a junior majoring in Africana Studies, and Government. His research focuses on racial segregation of public schools in central New York. Solomon intends on uncovering why segregated education persists despite the monumental efforts of the Civil Rights Movement. By highlighting systemic issues such as busing and white flight, Solomon plans on explaining how both state, and federal policies have failed to integrate communities in central New York. Solomon is intrigued by the malleability of American democracy. He believes that the institutions that empowered Brown v Board and led to desegregation efforts are the same democratic institutions that have slowly divested their commitment to integrate public schools. Solomon enjoys exploring this paradoxical nature of democracy and hopes that his project can highlight how policy can both exacerbate and remedy inequality. At Cornell Solomon runs for the varsity Track and Field team and works at the A&S Career Development office where he helps students revise their resumes. In his free time, Solomon enjoys cooking, traveling, and spending time with his poodle named Rex. After Cornell, he plans on pursuing a Ph.D in Political Science or Sociology.
Sarah Emily Lorgan-Khanyile is a senior majoring in Comparative Literature and English with potential minors in French and Law and Society. Her research project is focused on exploring the intersection between Jacques Derrida's notion of archive and Martin Heidegger's phenomenology and onto-theology. By linking the question of Being to the question of archive, Sarah hopes to reinform thinking of spectrality, testimony, temporality, address, and history while attending to their ethical, nomological, ontological, and institutional ramifications. Sarah's research interests focus on theories of lyric (exploring lyric temporality as a model for lyric exceptionality, the license for transgression afforded by the lyric, thinking beyond lyric subjectivity through the vocative and deictic forces of lyric, and the possibilities afforded by lyric "thinking" of alterity as in Celan, Heidegger, Derrida, Agamben, etc.). She works with Continental Philosophy on questions of aesthetics (i.e., Seele, Saito, Adorno, etc.), temporality, politics, theology (messianism, negative theology, immanence), ontology, phenomenology, ecocriticism, and the reception of German thought by French thinkers. She is also interested in questions of Psychoanalysis and Trauma Theory, such as problems of transmission and the conditions of possibility for survival in traumatic events. On the literary side, she is interested in English and German traditions of Romanticism, Holocaust literature, Modernism, and the Poetics/Hermeneutics of Literary Criticism. Additionally, Sarah has a burgeoning interest in Philosophy, Tragedy, and Poetry of Greek Antiquity. At Cornell, Sarah previously worked as the Student Administrative Assistant for the A. D. White Professors-at-Large program, a Student Events Assistant at the A.D. White House's Society for the Humanities, and currently works as a Research Assistant for Professor Jonathan Culler of the English Department. On campus, Sarah is currently the president of the Literary Society, a Meinig Family National Scholar, the events coordinator for Marginalia: Cornell's Undergraduate Poetry Magazine, a journal editor for Logos: Cornell's Undergraduate Philosophy Magazine, and a Communications Committee Member of Cornell Votes. Sarah has studied many languages, including French, Spanish, and German. She hopes to formally learn Italian. After Cornell, Sarah plans on pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (or possibly Philosophy). In her free time, Sarah loves writing poetry, HIIT classes, discussing international and domestic politics, and giving back to others with community service.
Marisabel Cabrera is a senior majoring in Linguistics and minoring in Computer Science. Her project studies how different types of inflectional morphological complexity in languages around the world influence the ability of cognitive systems, both human cognition and neural networks, to learn and represent abstract syntactic structure. This project incorporates cross-linguistic investigations of languages never studied before under cognitive systems, which introduces challenges to the architecture, behavior and decision-making of these models as our knowledge of these is primarily based on studying English and other majority languages. This research shows how different grammatical structures in language, along with their frequency and distribution among languages around the world, influence how we produce and process language. Ultimately, her project brings together the subfields of computational psycholinguistics, language typology, morphology and syntax. On campus, Marisabel serves as the current President of the Puerto Rican Student Association. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Linguistics to later work as a professor and researcher in academia, hoping that her research will be used to inform the development of automatic speech recognition systems, machine translation systems, chatbots, and most of all, tools used in the documentation of minority languages. Marisabel also enjoys playing piano, rock climbing, cooking, and traveling.
Trinity Stewart is a Junior studying Sociology, Religious Studies, and Anthropology, with a minor in East Asian Studies. Her research, while still in the development stage, focuses on the ways in which marginalized communities function within society, with a special focus on how the mechanics of discussions surrounding the marginalized relate to Western cultural apathy. She is particularly interested in the role of academia in productive activism and societal change, and hopes to incorporate diverse perspectives and methods from the fields in which she studies. On campus, Trinity serves as the interim Diversity and Inclusion Chair for Phi Sigma Pi National Honors Fraternity, and has previously held positions as a Residential Advisor for the Holland International Living Center, a Speaking Group Facilitator for the English Language Support Office, and Graphic Design Chair for Cornell E.motion. Trinity also serves as the Oral History intern at the History Center in Tompkins County. In her free time, Trinity enjoys photography, listening to music, and going on nature walks. After graduation, Trinity hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Anthropology.
Gallery
Benjamin Montano
Prof. Samantha Sheppard, MMUF Faculty Coordinator
Raven Schwam-Curtis
Allen Porterie
Dean Ekaterina Pirozhenko, MMUF Associate Director
Raven Schwam-Curtis and Allen Porterie
L-to-R: Prof. Samantha Sheppard, Jose Montano, MMUF Graduate Student Mentor Lissette Lorenz, Raven-Schwam Curtis, Allen Porterie, Dean Ekaterina Pirozhenko
Benjamin Elijah Mays
Benjamin Elijah Mays (1895-1984) was an educator, college president, and civil rights activist. His tenacious stand against racial discrimination and broad social vision inspired Martin Luther King, Jr.; his commitment to education earned Mays 49 honorary degrees. Read more about Benjamin Mays.