Inquiries and Guidelines
Higher Learning
Staff
Phillip Brian Harper
Program Director
Armando I. Bengochea
Senior Program Officer, and Director, MMUF
Dianne Harris
Senior Program Officer
Maria Sachiko Cecire
Program Officer
Dale Rejtmar
Senior Executive Assistant
Renee Johnson-Thornton
Senior Program Associate, and Associate Director, MMUF
Emma Taati
Senior Program Associate
Mary Bates
Program Associate
Susan I. Dady
Program Associate
Beatriz Dal Poz
Program Associate
Elizabeth Foley
Program Associate
Martha Sullivan
Program Associate
Yoona Hong
Program Assistant
Chris Jo
Program Assistant
Elizabeth LoCascio
Program Assistant
Elizabeth Spenst
Program Assistant
Inquiries
The Foundation encourages institutions to consider their ability to contribute to and sustain programs they seek to launch with Foundation support. Institutional eligibility is determined by staff on the basis of criteria established over several decades. For grants in the collaborative/cross-institutional category of the higher-education program, staff pay special attention to inquiries that link the projects of existing grantees to institutions not previously supported by the Foundation.
Initial approaches to the Higher Learning program, including emails, must come from a senior academic officer. Visits to the Foundation by corporate and foundation relation officers unaccompanied by senior academic officers will not be considered.
The Foundation makes grants to institutions and organizations, not to individuals. All grants result from invitations issued by the Foundation to institutions with which staff have engaged in preliminary exchanges. Uninvited applications cannot be considered. Inquiries about possibilities of support may be sent via the Foundation's grantee portal at https://mellon.fluxx.io. Inquiries should not be sent to more than one Foundation program.
The Foundation does not fund overhead, indirect costs, and capital costs (construction, renovation, equipment). In addition, the Higher Learning program does not fund projects in the social sciences or STEM fields, endowment management fees, one-off conferences, and undergraduate tuition or scholarships, financial aid, or study abroad opportunities. Generally, the Foundation expects research universities to cover general operating costs and equipment, including graduate student tuition.