The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program at UC Berkeley seeks students with exceptional academic promise in the humanities or social sciences and potential for academic careers that will expand scholarly inquiry through historically underexamined questions and disciplines. The program provides mentorship and resources, guiding students’ intellectual and professional development, and supporting their academic aspirations. The MMUF program prepares students to become successful graduate students, faculty members, and role models for future generations.
Fellows meet regularly with faculty and graduate-student mentors, and through weekly workshops that feature speakers and skill development, they have opportunities for professional enrichment and preparation for graduate school. Fellows develop their research and analytical skills, applying them to their senior theses, which also serve as final research projects for the program. Ultimately, the MMUF program at UC Berkeley prepares Fellows to apply to and enter graduate schools, and to earn doctoral degrees that will lead to faculty careers.
Since the program’s inception in 2008, Berkeley MMUF Fellows have been accepted into graduate programs at the University of Chicago, Princeton University, New York University, Purdue University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, University of Michigan, University of Southern California, and Cambridge University and Oxford University (UK), among others.
Applicants must be second-semester Sophomores (or have at least 4 academic-year semesters remaining as undergraduate students at UC Berkeley) and have a GPA of approximately 3.4 or higher. The MMUF program commits to funding Fellows for two years.
About the Mellon Mays National Program
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation was established as a nonprofit philanthropic organization in June of 1969 with a mission to “aid and promote such religious, charitable, scientific, literary, and educational purposes as may be in the furtherance of the public welfare or tend to promote the well-doing or well-being of mankind.” In 1988, under this broad charter, the Mellon Foundation established the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), which is “committed to broadening the range of scholarly perspectives in the US academy, with a focus on the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.
About Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays
Benjamin Elijah Mays was born in 1895 in South Carolina and graduated from Bates College in Maine in 1920. He attended the University of Chicago for his master’s and doctorate degrees, and was ordained into the Baptist ministry while working on those degrees. Dr. Mays taught at Morehouse College and South Carolina State College. He served as dean of Howard University School of Religion from 1934 to 1940, and then as president of Morehouse College for the next twenty five years. Dr. Mays also served his community, becoming the first black president of the Atlanta school board.
Dr. Mays received nearly thirty honorary doctorates as well as other honors and awards. Dr. Mays was a role model for one of his Morehouse students, Martin Luther King, Jr., serving as his unofficial senior advisor. Mays also gave the eulogy at King’s funeral.
Among his books were the first sociological studies of African-American religion: The Negro’s Church, 1933; The Negro’s God, 1938; and Disturbed About Man, 1969. He also wrote an autobiography: Born to Rebel, 1971. These books reveal a combination of sharp intellect, religious commitment, and prophetic conviction.
The American National Biography website has a comprehensive biography on Dr. Mays