In a few short weeks, the University of California, Riverside will graduate its first cohort of students awarded the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF). UC Riverside was awarded a $500,000 grant in 2014 by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the MMUF program on campus. The purpose of MMUF is to help diversify college and university faculty by mentoring and preparing undergraduate students for graduate school and academic positions.
“UCR’s participation in the MMUF program is a testament to the strength of our student body as a whole,” said Georgia Warnke, program coordinator for MMUF at UCR, and the director of Center for Ideas and Society. “We are especially proud of our graduating fellows, however. As individuals, they are extraordinarily accomplished; as our first cohort they have collectively established a legacy of great success for the fellows who follow them.”
The three students graduating this year are Jazmine Exford, Maria Liliana Ramirez, and Cynthia Romero. A fourth student, Ariana Elizalde, may finish her undergraduate work over the summer and will then take a gap year before applying to graduate school.
Source: UC Riverside’s First Student Cohort of Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship to Graduate