Research Associate, Higher Learning - New York, United States - The Andrew W Mellon Foundation

Description

Mellon Foundation

Research Associate | Higher Learning**Mellon Foundation ("Foundation") believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and we believe that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom to be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. The Foundation makes grants in four core program areas - Higher Learning, Arts and Culture, Public Knowledge, and Humanities in Place - and through its signature Presidential Initiatives. The Foundation seeks a Research Associate for our Higher Learning program.


About the program:

• The Higher Learning program strives to make advanced humanities knowledge as broad, deep, and varied as possible, in terms of both the perspectives it represents and the audiences it reaches. Understanding such optimized knowledge to be an intrinsic social good, we work with colleges, universities, and allied organizations to ensure that its value is widely recognized and that the power deriving from it is equitably distributed. We support curricular, scholarly, and structural innovations that further these goals, at all levels of the postsecondary educational system.

Higher Learning's program strategies are to:

• Create broad, equitable access to humanities higher learning opportunities
• Elevate the knowledge that informs more complete and accurate narratives of the human experience and lays the foundation for more just and equitable futures
• Accelerate the demographic transformation of US academic faculties and institutional leadership to better reflect the population and center humanities expertise
• Recent examples of projects funded through the Higher Learning program include "The Defense of

Academic Freedom:

A Center and a Campaign," "TENTACLES Initiative," and "Philosophy in Media: Mellon Fellowships in Race and Social Justice."Please visit the Foundation's grants database to see all of the grants made through Higher Learning.

Position Summary:

• The Research Associate will report directly to the Higher Learning Program Director and provide support to or work in close collaboration with Higher Learning Program Officers, other team members, and the Office of Learning and Evaluation.

The Associate's core function is to produce concise analytical reports that are carefully researched, written, and illustrated, evaluating past and current grantmaking initiatives, providing information in support of prospective future initiatives, and serving the assessment and research needs of the program officers.

Additionally, the Associate participates in Higher Learning's grantmaking and grant management processes, assisting in the preparation of grant proposals, communicating with principal investigators and financial directors at grantee institutions, monitoring and evaluating the progress of grant-funded activities, and helping to prepare materials for review by the Foundation Officers and Trustees.

The Associate also contributes as needed to Foundation-wide research and evaluation activities, as well as to various collective activities and special initiatives.

Work time will be split approximately 75% on research activities and 25% on grantmaking support, though these percentages may vary throughout any given year or from year to year.

This position combines independent work and collaboration with colleagues across the Foundation.

The work is highly detail-oriented and requires consistent accuracy, the ability to anticipate outcomes, multi-tasking capability, flexibility, cool-headedness, self-direction, patience, efficiency, and discretion.

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Position Details:

• In addition to fulfilling other responsibilities as necessary, the Research Associate will:
• Conduct research in connection with past, current, and new program grantmaking initiatives and strategies;
• Prepare carefully developed, elegantly crafted, concisely written, and clearly illustrated analytical and evaluative reports as needed, in support of the Higher Learning program's grantmaking efforts;
• Prepare briefing materials and reports for the Higher Learning Program Director and Program Officers, and for other key Foundation staff, as assigned;
• Assist in the preparation of special reports on program activities for Trustees, Foundation Officers, Senior Leadership, and program staff;
• Support and coordinate special research projects for grantmaking work and other initiatives for Higher Learning in conjunction with the Foundation's other program areas and grantmaking offices;
• Participate as needed in meetings with current and potential grantees; take meeting notes and maintain records on potential grants and grant activities;
• Assist Program Officers with the development of new proposals for funding, including advising grantees in preparation and revision of the narrative and financial components of proposals;