The department of Modern Foreign Languages welcomes Douglas Bush, their first-ever Spanish Mellon Postdoctoral fellow.
Ohio Wesleyan, along with the other Ohio Five schools, has received a $2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
“It has been a long and exciting process, one in which foreign language faculty members and administrators from the Five Colleges of Ohio, and in collaboration with The Ohio State University, met on several occasions in order to define the post-doc characteristics and potentials,” MFL department chair Juan Rojas said.
This grant is in place to add foreign language faculty through a post-doctorate fellow program and provides Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows at the Ohio Five Colleges. These faculty members are given two years at their appointed college.
“During the process we had meetings and seminars where many faculty members from the five universities shared ideas on how to enhance the teaching-learning process of foreign language, and to build faculty interest and expertise in the uses of blended learning pedagogies,” Rojas said.
Assistant professor of Spanish David Counselman said, “the postdoc will have the opportunity to help create events or other extracurricular opportunities, related to languages and/or their specific area of expertise.”
“Ohio Wesleyan University will benefit significantly from having, in the next four years, two foreign language Mellon Post-Doc fellowships because, besides fostering the academic career of the selected scholar who has recently obtained his Ph.D degree, it will bring new ideas, knowledge, and experience to our students,” said Rojas.
“Dr. Doug Bush, the selected Mellon fellow, will also have the opportunity to engage in an active liberal arts community for a two-year term as he will be teaching three courses per year.”
“A modern foreign languages Mellon Fellow Postdoctoral position is a unique possibility in academia as post-doctoral opportunities in the area of humanities are not very common,” Rojas added.
Junior Macie Maisel, said, “I am a Spanish major and hearing that the modern foreign languages department has received such a great opportunity is very exciting. This will help grow and expand the department and most likely improve the department.”