Mellon Grant, Association Support Will Establish a Career Pipeline for Diversity in Scholarly Publishing
New York, NY—The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) congratulates the University of Washington on the receipt of a $682,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a pipeline program to diversify academic publishing through funded acquisitions apprenticeships at four university presses. The collaborative project involves the University of Washington Press, the MIT Press, Duke University Press, and the University of Georgia Press. AAUP is proud to be supporting the University Press Diversity Fellowship Program through the Association’s annual meeting and other professional development activities.
The program will create cohorts of four fellows, one at each participating publisher, for each of the next three years. The program will recruit fellows who have significant personal experience and engagement with diverse communities and a demonstrated ability to bring the understandings gleaned from such engagement to the daily work of academic publishing.
The University Press Diversity Fellowship Program is a cross-press initiative intended to address the marked lack of diversity present across the publishing industry. Although university presses have long fostered and supported diversity-related disciplines such as Native and Indigenous studies, African American studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, the fellowship program represents a significant investment in creating career development opportunities and a supportive environment for diversity in the workforce that will shape these and future lists.
The program will offer each fellow opportunities for one-on-one mentoring as well as monthly video conferences led by staff at partner presses, covering a range of topics designed to supplement the hands-on training. Each cohort will attend two consecutive AAUP Annual Meetings, and will be supported in making the most of that professional opportunity.
“Diversity is one of AAUP’s core values. As our members’ works and readership reflect a broad diversity, so too should our community of colleagues,” says AAUP Executive Director Peter Berkery. “This fellowship program will offer new strategies to address an issue that’s becoming more pressing for our organization, higher education, and the entire publishing industry, each year.”
About AAUP
The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) is an organization of more than 135 international nonprofit scholarly publishers. Since 1937, AAUP advances the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge. The Association holds integrity, diversity, stewardship, and intellectual freedom as core values. AAUP members are active across many scholarly disciplines, including the humanities, the arts, and sciences, publish significant regional and literary work, and are innovators in the world of digital publishing.
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John Michael Eadicicco
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
jeadicicco@aaupnet.org
+1 917-244-3859