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Ursinus Scholar Earns Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship

Patricia Lott, an Assistant Professor of African American and Africana Studies, American Studies, and English, is one of 32 new Career Enhancement Fellows and will receive funding to pursue professional development opportunities and continue her research.

The program provides fellows with a six-month or one-year sabbatical stipend; a research, travel, or publication stipend; mentoring; and participation in a late summer professional development retreat. Lott was chosen for a six-month fellowship. 

“I’m very excited for this opportunity,” Lott says. “It’s very significant for me because I’ll be able to work on my book project, work with my mentor and deliver talks in promotion of the book.”  

The Career Enhancement Fellowship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, creates career development opportunities for selected faculty fellows with promising research projects. Lott is working on a book project titled, Memory’s Ruins: The U.S. North’s Forgotten Confederacies with Racial Slavery

A career enhancement retreat is an essential part of the fellowship program. It provides opportunities for fellows to connect in person with their mentors, who are senior academics who help advise early-career faculty on next steps in professional development. Lott will be working with Roderick Ferguson, currently a professor of African American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

The program seeks to increase the presence of junior faculty members who are underrepresented in their fields, as well as other faculty members committed to eradicating racial disparities in core fields in the arts and humanities. 

Woodrow Wilson fellows also build community with their fellowship class, career enhancement fellows from past years, and other special guest scholars. Administered at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation since 2001, the Career Enhancement Fellowship has supported more than 370 junior faculty members over the past 18 years. 

This year, Lott is also working with students on a digital history project that reflects on issues of race and equity at Ursinus. —By Ed Moorhouse