The Mellon Scholars Program gives students the resources and support to develop individual research or creative projects and the tools to transfer them to a digital platform.

If you’re a student with a passion for an area of the arts and humanities and want to spend your time at Hope College immersing yourself in what you most love to study, then you’ll find a home in the Mellon Scholars Program.

This three-year academic program selects highly motivated students to develop their passions for the arts and humanities into original research, creative production and public scholarship through faculty mentoring, new media training and summer research fellowships.

The Mellon Scholars is a community of students and faculty mentors who benefit from the program’s resources that support:

  • Acquiring skills in new media
  • Project management
  • Original research
  • Travel to conferences and archives across the county and around the world

Hope College was the first liberal arts institution to develop an undergraduate honors program engaged with the digital humanities. The Mellon Scholars Program developed and named the now-established field of “The Digital Liberal Arts,” which has been supported subsequently by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at liberal arts colleges throughout the United States, including Carleton, Grinnell, Lawrence, Macalester, Middlebury, Occidental, Ursinus and Whittier. Its impact has been covered by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The New York Times and numerous other publications. 

“The Mellon Scholars Program provides students with a community of fellow students who are equally as passionate and excited about the arts and humanities as they are.”

—Grace Hulderman

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies.

Mission statement of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation