Lilly Fellows Graduate Program

Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts

You are embarking on an adventure. Pursuing a graduate degree in humanities or the arts will push your creativity to its limits as you refine your mind and cultivate your identity as a scholar, a professor, a teacher, an artist. Of course, you will not do this alone; the faculty at your graduate institution, fellow students, and other mentors--in short, a network of colleagues--will help you meet your potential.

The Lilly Graduate Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts extends this network of colleagues beyond your individual graduate program into a community of scholars and artists interested in research and teaching within church-related institutions of higher education. Within this network you will find colleagues and mentors who integrate scholarship, creative work, research, and a vocational interest in Christian higher education, and who will challenge and support you as you move from your undergraduate experience, through your graduate program, and then into a professional career among scholars who integrate faith and learning.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Cohorts of the Lilly Graduate Fellows is a three-year program which commences every other year, with the next cohort beginning in fall 2021. The 2021-2024 Lilly Graduate Fellows will enter graduate school in fall 2020 or in fall 2021. In academic year 2020-2021, the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program will select a cohort of 10 fellows who are entering PhD or equivalent graduate programs in humanities and arts at schools of their choosing. Finalists will be selected in both academic years, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, and will commence with the program in fall 2021.

Over a three year period, these Fellows, along with two mentors who are senior scholars at a Lilly Fellows Program Network School, will communicate and collaborate with each other in areas of research, teaching, and professional development.

The program will reach completion with the introduction of the Graduate Fellows to representatives of the Lilly Fellows Program National Network at the Network’s annual national conference. More specifically, Lilly Graduate Fellows will participate in the following programmatic objectives:

Four Conferences: Lilly Graduate Fellows attend four conferences over the course of three years. These conferences allow Fellows to collaborate with each other and with senior scholars and luminaries who integrate research, teaching, vocation, and an interest in church-related higher education.
Mentoring Relationship: Lilly Graduate Fellows will develop a relationship with two mentors who are senior scholars at a Lilly Fellows Program Network School.
Online Colloquium: Lilly Graduate Fellows and mentors, over the course of the three-year program, will participate in common readings and online discussions that explore the intersections of Christianity and higher learning by drawing on classical and contemporary works of art, literature, theology, history, and philosophy. This colloquium requires an average time commitment of two to three hours per week. Cohorts in the past have engaged such thinkers as Simone Weil, Augustine, Dostoevsky, Dante, and Flannery O’Connor.

Lilly Graduate Fellows will receive three annual $3,000 fellowship awards for use at the Fellows’ discretion.

ELIGIBILITY

Nominees must:

have received their undergraduate degree from LMU after April 2015, and by the end of the 2019-2020 academic year;
have been accepted into a Ph.D., M.F.A., Th.D., or comparable terminal degree program in the humanities or arts (art, art history, creative writing, history, interdisciplinary studies, languages and literatures, music, music history, philosophy, religious studies, rhetoric, theater history, theater arts, or theology) at a North American institution by June 1, 2020;
be U.S. citizens;
desire a teaching career within a Church-related school in the humanities or arts; and
demonstrate a willingness to “engage modes of Christian practice and inquiry in the context of the academy and their academic disciplines.”

NOMINATIONS

All nominees for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program must be submitted by their institution. Each Network Institution can nominate up to three nominees. To inquire about nomination by Loyola Marymount University, please contact Katherine Brown at Katherine.Brown@lmu.edu for further information and details about the nomination and application process.

LMU may submit up to three nominees during the academic year 2019-2020 for the 2021-2024 Program Cohort. Nominee submissions must be received by November 8, 2019.

For questions about the Program or how to nominate yourself or a student, please contact Katherine Brown at Katherine.Brown@lmu.edu. To learn more about Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts, please visit the Lilly Program website.