Fellows greeted by a flourishing program at IU

Even as it attains its first flush of institutional maturity with the passing of its tenth year, the Minority Faculty Fellowship Program continues to flourish. This year saw the appointment of six new fellows (See five featured in these pages, along with last year's academic year fellow; the sixth will be featured in the next issue of this newsletter.) During the 1995-96 school year we sponsored one academic year fellow; now we have another scheduled to arrive in the spring of '97. In addition, more departments than ever before are taking an active role in evaluating candidates--this year, for example, the School of Nursing sponsored a summer fellow.

Through the years, the program has evolved and grown. Features have been added in an effort to make it a more productive and effective experience for the fellows. In one such innovation, each fellow is assigned an informal faculty mentor from within the hiring department. The mentors take on the responsibility of guiding the visiting fellows through their first few days, providing information and advice about departmental or teaching matters, and providing introductions with other faculty and staff on campus. Fellows and MFFP staff also meet bi-weekly for brown bag lunch meetings where fellows have the chance to air and share research interests, teaching experiences, news about the university community, and opinions on everything from U.S. immigration policy to the latest summer movie.

Once again, this year's fellows found Bloomington an exciting place to spend a summer, or a year. Between jazz at Bear's place, visits to Brown County, Monroe County Task Force meetings, enthusiastic students, and research in locales as diverse as the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, migrant labor camps around the state, and IU's main library, the people featured on the following pages worked hard and left happy with their experiences.