The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a four-year, $1,205,000 grant to the University of Washington Press to support the continued development and expansion of the pipeline program designed to diversify academic publishing by offering apprenticeships in acquisitions departments.
This new grant will provide for three annual cycles of editorial fellows at six university presses: Northwestern University Press, the University of Washington Press, the MIT Press, Cornell University Press, the Ohio State University Press and the University of Chicago Press.
The new grant builds on the success of the initial 2016 grant from the Mellon Foundation, which funded the first cross-press initiative of its kind in the US to address the marked lack of diversity in the academic publishing industry. Graduates of the first fellowship program hold professional positions at university presses across the country, including Columbia University Press, the MIT Press, University of Virginia Press, the Ohio State University Press and the University of Washington Press. In addition, for the four participating presses, the initial grant expanded applicant pools, improved outreach to underrepresented communities, created more equitable preliminary screening practices in hiring and enabled dedicated attention to diversity, equity and inclusion overall.
The 2016 grant also served as a catalyst for broader changes at the partner presses and within the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) as a larger organisation.
The new grant offers opportunities for more sustained engagement with issues of diversity, equity and inclusion among the new partner presses and the university press community more broadly.
The first and second grants combined provide for a total of 30 fellows in six years, which will generate marked shifts in acquisitions staff across university presses not possible without this kind of dedicated funding.
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