Higher Learning

Three interconnected strategies guide Mellon’s Higher Learning grantmaking.

Creating equitable broader access to humanities higher learning opportunities

Mellon works to provide liberal-arts educational opportunities to the largest possible share of the population while also striving to ensure that all postsecondary students—whether at the associate degree, bachelor’s degree, or graduate level—see humanities study as a viable and rewarding path. Thus, in addition to supporting specific initiatives such as higher education in prisons, the Foundation also funds curricular and co-curricular programs that demonstrate the broad application of humanities expertise in the world beyond the academy.

Elevating the knowledge that informs more complete and accurate narratives of the human experience and lays the foundation for more just and equitable futures

Mellon supports knowledge production in the humanities by funding fellowships, seminars, curricular development projects, and regranting programs that center paradigm-shifting work in an array of emerging and established fields. We seek in particular to amplify perspectives and contributions that have been marginalized within the conventional scholarly record, and that promote the realization of a more socially just world. Scholarship produced by alumni of our flagship Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program exemplifies the kind of work we seek to uplift in every area of humanities inquiry.

Accelerating the demographic transformation of US academic faculties and institutional leadership to better reflect the population while centering humanities expertise

Mellon has been long committed to the ideal that the US professoriate be reflective of the population at large. In addition to sponsoring pipeline programs designed to ensure that the humanities faculty ranks are informed by a wide variety of experiential perspectives, the Foundation supports professional advancement and mentoring programs for established humanities professors, with the aim of fostering multivocality and elevating humanities knowledge across all levels of academic leadership.

How to apply

Mellon’s Higher Learning program makes grants to institutions and organizations. Mellon does not make grants directly to individuals, although we do support regranting programs that benefit individuals. All grants result from invitations issued by Mellon to institutions with which staff have engaged in preliminary exchanges. While we are unable to consider uninvited proposals, we do welcome inquiries from US colleges, universities, and higher education-related organizations, and especially from institutions not previously supported by Mellon. We review inquiries, which can be submitted via our Grants Portal, on a rolling basis.

Please do not send inquiries to more than one Mellon grantmaking area. If you already have an account on Fluxx, please contact program staff directly.