Emily Skillings Awarded Howard Foundation Fellowship

Emily Skillings

Our newest faculty member, Emily Skillings, who will begin teaching with us this fall, was just awarded a Howard Foundation Fellowship by the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation.

The Foundation awarded 14 fellowships totaling $560,000 to support early mid-career individuals. Each recipient received an unrestricted $40,000 fellowship. The funds provide time to advance independent creative and scholarly work on a major project.

Per the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, "Since 1954, over 500 Howard Fellows have used the fellowship to transition from promising early-career status to recognized leaders in their fields. Howard Fellows have authored bestsellers, directed Oscar nominated feature-length films, and earned some of the world’s most prestigious honors including Pulitzer Prizes, the Rome Prize, and the Whiting Award. They have gone on to MacArthur, Guggenheim, and Carnegie Fellowships.

"The Howard Foundation carefully selects its Fellows through a rigorous and competitive multi-round process. This year’s Fellows stood out among a competitive candidate pool of 258 applicants, across 41 states and the District of Columbia."

Emily Skillings was awarded her fellowship in the field of poetry, for a project titled Of Pearl.

Per Skillings's biography for the fellowship, "Emily Skillings is the author of the poetry collections Fort Not (2017) and Tantrums in Air (2025), both published by The Song Cave. Tantrums in Air was named one of the best poetry books of 2025 by The New York Times. Skillings is the editor of Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works by John Ashbery, which was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2021. She is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective, small press, and event series. Her work has been supported by residencies and fellowships from the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts."

We look forward to welcoming Emily to Villanova this fall!

For more information about Emily Skillings and the Howard Foundation Fellowship, visit the Foundation's website.

VU English Major Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Marie-Helene Bertino, who graduated as a Villanova English major in 1999, was just granted a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. According to Yale News, fellows are "selected from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants to be part of the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows." They are selected based upon "prior career achievement and exceptional promise," and they are awarded a monetary stipend to pursue their work.

Marie-Helene also happens to be part of the 100th cohort of Guggenheim fellows, as the program was established one hundred years ago. Per the Fellowship's website, "For a century, Guggenheim Fellowships have helped artists, writers, scholars, and scientists at the highest levels of achievement pursue the work they were meant to do. Since our founding, we have supported over 19,000 Fellows."

Marie-Helene, currently the Ritvo-Slifka Writer in Residence and a lecturer in English at Yale, is the author of numerous books, including the short story collections Safe as Houses (2012) and Exit Zero (just released last month!), as well as the novels 2AM at the Cat's Pajamas (2014), Parakeet (2020), and Beautyland (2024). One of the stories from her debut collection Safe as Houses, "Great, Wondrous," was inspired by her time as a student at Villanova.

You can read more about Marie-Helene and her work at her website.

Photo retrieved from us.macmillan.com

Three English Majors Win Fulbright Grants

Please join us in congratulating graduating English majors Isabel Forward, Caleigh Manyak, and Clare Reckner, who have been awarded Fulbright US Student Grants for 2020-21. 

Isabel Forward graduated this month with a double major in English and Secondary Education, with minors in Spanish, Peace and Justice, and Latin American Studies. She plans to spend her Fulbright year in Colombia working as an English teaching assistant. On her return she hopes to go to law school and pursue a career in domestic policy reform.

Caleigh Manyak was an English and Global Interdisciplinary Studies (GIS) major, with a concentration in Arab and Islamic Studies. She intends to spend working as an English teaching assistant in Brazil. She plans to go on to do a Master's degree in Education Policy.

Clare Reckner graduated this spring with a degree in English, with a concentration in Writing and Rhetoric, and a minor in Communication. She plans to spend her year working as an English teaching assistant in the Czech Republic. On her return she hopes to go to law school.

You can read more about this year's Fulbright award winners and learn how to apply yourself here.

Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Teaching Fellows - November 19-20

The University of Notre Dame is coming to campus looking for talented, bright, and "faith-filled" students in all majors/minors who are interested in the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Teaching Fellows Program. These students become full-time teachers in under-resourced Catholic schools and also full-time graduate students at Notre Dame, earning a cost-free Master of Education degree.

Catherine Wagner, ACE's associate program director for ACE, says: "Develop your spirituality, live in community, attend class at Notre Dame during the summer, meet new people, and grow like never before. We're looking for the tenacious, resilient, and hard-working young people who are up to the challenges of teaching. Are you one of those people or do you know someone who is? Don't hesitate to reach out -- we'd love to learn more about you!"

You can learn more about Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Teaching Fellows program at the Post-Grad Fair on Tuesday, November 19th from 5:00-7:00pm.

Contact: Catherine Wagner (cwagne10@nd.edu) with any questions or click here to schedule a one-on-one meeting for Wednesday, November 20th.

Below are some of the Villanova alums who went on to become ACE teaching fellows!

Villanova English Major Meg Carter wins Fulbright Award to Spain

Many congratulations to graduating English major Meg Carter, who has won a Fulbright award to work as a teaching assistant Galicia, Spain.

Fulbright English Teaching Assistants provide part-time assistance to permanent teaching staff at secondary schools, and in a few cases elementary schools and formación profesional schools (vocational training), in English language classes and in other subjects taught in English (such as social studies, science and technology, art, or physical education), for 16 fifty-minute (approximately) class periods per week. 

Meg said: "As an English and Spanish double major, I am thrilled to be an English Teaching Assistant in Spain. I look forward to sharing my love of language with my students as they learn and practice English. 

"While in Galicia, I hope to further my understanding of Spain’s cultural and linguistic diversity by improving my Spanish-speaking skills and learning Galician (Galego), which is one of Galicia’s co-official languages.

"I will also be taking on a community engagement project that cultivates cross-cultural learning between the United States and Spain. In my application, I proposed a theatre workshop focusing on American playwrights and plays, and a pen-pal program, though these projects have not been officially confirmed yet."

Postgraduate Teaching and Administrative Fellowships

The Alliance for Catholic Education at Saint Joseph’s University (ACESJU) is currently accepting applications for both:

• Teaching Fellows (Masters degree in education from Saint Joseph’s University
• Administrative Fellows (Masters degree in Church Management from Villanova University or Organizational and Strategic Leadership from Neumann University)

The fellowship is a great opportunity: it pays better than a lot of Graduate Assistantships and allows someone to serve and grow professionally and spiritually.

Students from all majors are encouraged to apply.

ACESJU is a two-year, post graduate fellowship program that fosters a vocational commitment to Catholic education through the four program pillars of Education, Spirituality, Community and Simple Living/Social Justice.
The fellows accomplish the following in the two-year fellowship:

• Work (Teacher or Administrator) full-time in urban, Catholic school
• Earn a master’s degree with PA certification
• Live in community with other education fellows
• Receive an annual stipend of $12,000 and free housing
• Grow in spirituality while living simply with a concern for social justice.

We encourage you to consider this wonderful opportunity to serve some of the neediest children in the Philadelphia region.

TO APPLY - it can be done quickly online here.

For more information please contact Mr. Rory Sweeney. – email: rsweeney@sju.edu.

Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program

Overview
The Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program provides specialized training in the curatorial field for students across the United States from diverse backgrounds. The program aims to make a critical impact on American art museums by expanding the diversity of their curatorial staff and developing gifted curators who are committed to engaging with the full spectrum of museum audiences. The program is organized around two components for which candidates must apply:

1. Summer Academy: Summer Academies, to be held at each of the six partner museums, are one-week immersion programs designed to provide a rich experience in the museum environment and expose the participants to career options related to art and art history, with an emphasis on the curatorial field. Each Summer Academy includes workshops, tours, field trips, and networking events with museum professionals. Fifteen students will be selected to participate in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s 2018 Summer Academy during the week of June 17–24. At the end of each Summer Academy, participants are invited to apply for the Fellowship Program.
2. Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program: Two fellows will be selected following each Summer Academy. Fellows participate in the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program throughout their undergraduate career with the goal of entering into a graduate program. The two-year fellowships provide students with hands-on experience inside a museum setting, working with curators and staff on exhibitions, collections, and programs. Fellows are matched with a museum mentor/curator who works to enrich the academic experience and broaden the fellow’s understanding of art and art history. Fellowships are part-time during the academic school year and full-time during the summer at a partner museum. Fellows receive a yearly stipend of $10,000.

Background
In July 2015, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation joined with the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) to announce the results of the first comprehensive survey assessing the ethnic and gender diversity of the staffs of art museums across the United States. Among museum curators, conservators, educators, and leaders, only four percent are African American and just three percent Hispanic. The published report, Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey, addresses the pilot phase of this program in more detail (see https://mellon.org/programs/arts-and-cultural-heritage/art-history-conservation-museums/demographic-survey/ ).

Partner Museums
The program is being implemented at six partnering institutions. Each museum holds a world-class, encyclopedic collection that represents the broad range of artistic production across history and around the globe.
1. Art Institute of Chicago
2. High Museum of Art, Atlanta
3. Los Angeles County Museum of Art
4. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
5. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
6. Philadelphia Museum of Art

Eligibility Requirements
The program is intended specifically for undergraduate students from historically underrepresented groups in the curatorial field and who, if selected as a fellow, can commit to two years in the program prior to graduating. Applicants should express an interest in art, art history, or the museum field. In addition to having a strong academic record, applicants should be able to demonstrate, through areas of study, extracurricular activities, background, or other experiences, how they will contribute to the program. Applications for the 2018 Summer Academy are due by Wednesday, January 31, 2018.

Webpage
www.philamuseum.org/MellonUndergrad

Philadelphia Museum of Art Staff Contact
Teyona Jackson
Coordinator of Mellon Undergraduate Fellows and Delphi Project Foundation Programs
MellonUndergrad@philamuseum.org

This initiative is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Congratulations, Jordan Dillard!

We devoted an earlier post to English major Jordan Dillard's application to Shooting Touch, a Boston-based organization that sends fellows to Rwanda for 11 months to aid the Basketball Health Corps in a number of different outreach programs for local youth.

Jordan reports that as of yesterday she is "officially one of two Shooting Touch Fellows for 2017-2018!"  Her video received, in Jordan's own words. "2.5k views, wow";  she is "overwhelmingly thankful for the opportunity" that Shooting Touch has provided her.

Summer Opportunity for Juniors

Last summer, English major Chidimma Uwalaka  completed an “amazing” fellowship in Brooklyn, New York, and she is now a Campus Ambassador for Uncommon Schools, a charter management organization that “starts and manages outstanding urban charter public schools that close the achievement gap and prepare low-income students to graduate from college.”  She asked that we share the following information about a position with Uncommon Schools.

From Chidimma:
Are you a college junior passionate about urban education and school reform? Know someone who is? If so, APPLY to the 2016 Summer Teaching Fellowship here, and encourage your peers to do the same. The application deadline is quickly approaching; March 4th is the last time to submit for this amazing opportunity to teach deserving students, earn a paycheck, and live in an awesome city for FREE! For more information, feel free to contact me via email at cuwalaka@villanova.edu. As a 2015 alumna of this amazing fellowship, I am more than happy to answer any questions and help with the application process!

Fulbright Fellowship Workshops

As you may know, Villanova has been recognized for the number of students who win awards from the Fulbright Program, which is the U.S. government’s “flagship international educational exchange program”—and students from the English department have been among the most successful in the competition for these awards.  Click here to read more about Villanova's success.

This week, our Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships will be hosting two workshops on the Fulbright awards. The workshops will cover the components of a Fulbright application, how to choose a country, and how to make oneself a competitive candidate.

The workshops are Monday, April 13, at 4:30 pm, and Thursday, April 16, at 3:00 pm.  They will both be in Garey 101 and will last approximately one hour.

To RSVP, or to set up an appointment to discuss their candidacy, students should contact Kurt Davies, Assistant Director of Fellowships (kurt.davies@villanova.edu).