MacArthur Program
The MacArthur Program provides intellectual and financial support for graduate students committed to studying the developing world and its peoples
The central aim of the MacArthur Program is to integrate students and faculty sharing common interests and commitments concerning the developing world into an interdisciplinary community of study, discussion and research. The MacArthur Program provides significant benefits for graduate students at the University of Minnesota. For the students who win MacArthur Scholars Fellowship awards, the program also provides financial support. Participation in the MacArthur community is what gives the award its greatest value to the Scholars. Studying, socializing, debating together, they find the MacArthur Program a "home" within the University. There they are both supported and challenged in setting their professional goals and values.
Each year the Program makes about twelve fellowship awards for up to four years of study. MacArthur Scholars are supported jointly by the MacArthur Program and the academic department in which they are enrolled. The package of financial assistance varies from student to student, with the possibility of doctoral students receiving a maximum stipend of approximately $20,000 and tuition in the first year, and departmental assistantships with tuition in the second and third years. In addition, the Program makes every effort to provide funding to help support the student's field research, generally during the fourth year.
MacArthur Scholars enroll in widely differing graduate programs in the social sciences, biological sciences, humanities, agricultural sciences, public health and public affairs. Current MacArthur Scholars are majoring in anthropology, economics, soil science, history, American studies, agronomy, political science, conservation biology, English, cultural studies, sociology, ecology, philosophy, public affairs and planning, fisheries and wildlife, art history, geography, languages, comparative literature, women's studies, water resources science, and applied economics. They participate fully and earn degrees in their academic departments.
In the activities of the MacArthur Program students are united by interest in the challenges facing the Global South, wrestling with issues common to those societies and to minority communities in North America. The Program emphasizes study and research on four broad dimensions of world society: global governance and transnational norms; environmental sustainability and social justice; war and peace in historical context; and production, performance and representation of identities. Interdisciplinary workshops designed especially for MacArthur Scholars bring visiting scholars, policy makers, activists and advocates from around the world who present their research and experience from many disciplinary and theoretical perspectives and discuss them in small groups with the students. Students likewise discuss their own research and interests with the visitors, and take advantage of the experience of MacArthur faculty in disciplines other than their own in seminars and informal discussions. A true community of scholarly interest and exchange has grown among them.
The MacArthur workshops have treated topics such as urbanization and sustainable livelihoods; regional destabilization and low-intensity conflict in Southern Africa and Central America; reform in socialist countries: implications for the developing world; food security and insecurity in the contemporary world; democracy and development; transnational social networks; and the cultural politics of sport and the Olympic Games. MacArthur Scholars may take workshops and seminars in the program for academic credit and apply them toward a Ph.D. minor in Development Studies and Social Change.
The MacArthur Program is intentionally interdisciplinary in nature. One of the core seminars designed for MacArthur Scholars, which they take in their first year in the program, is "Approaches to Knowledge and Truth: Defining Ways of Knowing." It introduces students to the common intellectual project of scholars while exploring the various methodologies and research agendas developed by the disciplines represented in universities today. Throughout its activities the program encourages cross-disciplinary questioning, discussion and collaboration. The Program offers a yearlong seminar specially designed for advanced students preparing for dissertation research. Among the topics that students and faculty address are current research agendas, the ethics and politics of fieldwork, cultural sensitivity, interviewing techniques, and new research methodologies. As students present their projects for cross-disciplinary scrutiny the research designs are refined, improved, strengthened. Questions raised and suggestions made from other disciplinary perspectives help broaden the significance of the proposed research. Many seminar participants have gone on to win highly competitive research grants.
MacArthur Scholars are eligible for annual competitions sponsored by the Program for awards to do predissertation fieldwork or carry out internships related to their studies. Helped by these grants, MacArthur Scholars have made preliminary research investigations for their doctoral projects, and carried out internships in over forty countries, serving with organizations including the International Labor Organization, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Trickle Up in Honduras, South African Council of Churches, People's Union for Civil Liberties in Bihar, India, Americas Watch, the Colombian Commission of Jurists, the Legal Services Project of Profamilia (Bogotá), and CEPAD Community Development Loan Program (Nicaragua).
MacArthur Scholars have come from over thirty countries and each year new national representatives join the group. Slightly less than half of our students are from the developing world with the remainder from North America and Europe. Staff- and student-designed events keep MacArthur Scholars in regular contact and foster a strong sense of community. Students use the MacArthur Program offices and commons for mail, coffee breaks, meeting friends, "brown-bag" discussions, relaxing, studying and recreation. They not only become good friends across disciplinary boundaries but also frequently collaborate in exploring issues and at times they design joint research projects. Within a large and dispersed university population the Program offers a definable community of shared interests and friendship among students and faculty.
In 2005-2006 the Program at Minnesota is in its sixteenth year. While most of the more than one hundred students currently enrolled are resident at the University, at any time a number are away doing research. About 140 have completed degrees at Minnesota and are employed in universities and private and public research and development agencies. All of the graduates of the Program who have sought academic employment have been placed; MacArthur Scholars have accepted appointments at, among others, the University of California-Davis, Vassar College, Cambridge Universtiy, Harvard University, Pace University, the University of Oregon, the University of Mozambique, Dartmouth College, the University of Cape Town, Middlebury College, University of Vermont, Syracuse University, University of the Witwatersrand, Makerere University, San Diego State University, Williams College, St Lawrence University, Laval University, Erciyes University, Carleton College, University of Minnesota, Barnard College, and State University of New York at Buffalo. Those now in the program have career goals in the academic world, in human rights and environmental organizations, agricultural and economic development, planning, and advocacy. A number will return to academic and governmental positions awaiting them in developing countries. Most MacArthur Scholars attest that their participation in the MacArthur Program has made a significant contribution to their academic, cultural and professional lives.
Mailing Address:
The MacArthur Program
Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
560 Heller Hall (main office located in 537 Heller)
271 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN, 55455
Telephone: (612) 624-0832
Fax: (612) 625-1879
E-mail: icgc@umn.edu
Web: http://www.icgc.umn.edu
Director:
Professor Allen Isaacman