About the Lilly Fellows Program
The Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts, established in 1991, addresses two critical problems faced by church-related institutions of higher learning in the United States:
- Many church-related colleges and universities seek to recover or refortify a sense of purpose and identity, but there has been no sustained national conversation expressly designed to renew and deepen a sense of corporate vocation among these institutions.
- Settings for the formation of younger scholars who wish to pursue their vocational commitments at church-related colleges and universities scarcely exist in the United States.
To address these issues, the Lilly Fellows Program created three distinct but integrated programmatic initiatives:
- A national network of church-related institutions of higher learning representing a diversity of denominational traditions, institutional types, and geographical locations, which sustains among them a discussion of Christian understandings of the nature of the academic vocation. In 1995, the Lilly Fellows Program established a National Network Board, which devises and supervises a number of projects including mentoring programs, summer seminars, and a variety of national conferences and workshops.
- Postdoctoral fellowships that offer young scholars in the humanities and the arts an opportunity to renew and deepen their sense of vocation, and to enrich their postdoctoral intellectual and spiritual life within a Christian community of learning. Postdoctoral Fellows are prepared through a variety of teaching experiences, participation in a weekly colloquium, and regular association with mentors, to seek permanent employment within church-related institutions of higher learning.
- Financial support each year for 15 young scholars of exceptional academic talent who are exploring vocations in church-related higher education. The support is maintained for the duration of their first three years of graduate school.
These initiatives bring focus, clarity, and energy to a critical aspect of a much larger project: The imaginative reformulation and implementation of an agenda for church-related higher learning for the 21st century.
Learn more at the Lilly Fellows Program website.
Questions?
Contact Shannon Jammal-Hollemans by e-mail at lilly@calvin.edu, or by phone at 616.526.8424