‘Harmony Fellowship’ Will Strengthen Connections Between Faculty, Staff in ARHU and SPH

SLLC’s Nacie Grigsby will work with Elaine Rudder in the School of Public Health.

By ARHU Staff 

Assistant Director for Academic Administration for the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Nacie Grigsby has been awarded a “Harmony of Interdisciplinarity Fellowship” to build better connection and community among and between faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Humanities and the School of Public Health (SPH) who are committed to anti-racist cultures, climates, pedagogy and research, with a focus on faculty and staff of color. She is working alongside Assistant Program Director of Human Resources in the SPH Elaine Rudder on the project. 

Launched by ARHU Dean Stephanie Shonekan in Fall 2023 to foster collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to curriculum, research and programming, the fellowships provide funding for faculty and staff—in ARHU and beyond—to spend time developing an idea that must be implementable and could be piloted in the 2024–25 academic year. Grigsby and Rudder are among seven pairs of fellows to receive the inaugural fellowships. 

In their proposal, Grigsby and Rudder wrote: “This work is both to further our interdisciplinary thinking about how to address the culture and climate of ARHU and how to collaborate across disciplines to think about our own community and how we can do better and be better.”  

They seek to “create spaces that prioritize Black and brown staff voices” to develop a deeper understanding of wants, needs and challenges, with the ultimate goal of promotion and “increased representation within the ranks.”  

Among their plans is the development of a staff mentorship program similar to UMD’s ADVANCE program, which supports the recruitment, retention, advancement and professional growth of a diverse faculty at UMD. They also hope to work with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion to offer the opportunity to dialogue on the topic.