The Dartmouth Public Voices Fellowship, an initiative that partners Dartmouth faculty with OpEd Project journalists to increase the quality of professor’s engagement with major media outlets, has been extended for a third year. The fellowship will offer approximately 20 faculty members participation in seminars run by the OpEd project — a social venture dedicated to increasing the range of voices represented in national media — in addition to year-long coaching and mentorship, according to the project’s application.
College spokesperson Diana Lawrence said that 15 faculty members from diverse areas of study participated in last year’s fellowship program, publishing 44 op-eds in various media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Faculty members who participate in the initiative this year must commit to submitting at least two op-eds or media pitches over the course of their participation in the fellowship.
Lawrence said that the College has opted to continue funding for the initiative because the missions of the OpEd Project and the Dartmouth Public Voices Fellowship program are important.
“We want the world to know more about the research and thinking that goes on here among our faculty,” she said.
German professor Yuliya Komska, who participated in the program last year, said she decided to apply for the fellowship because she wanted to write for a broader audience. Komska noted that the fellowship’s seminars ranged from the basics of how to write an op-ed to more complex topics like pitching ideas to journalists and introducing academic expertise to a wider audience, among others.
“I actually got to work with real journalists who are mentors, and that was amazing,” Komska said. “It was a lot of insider insights, a lot of great writing advice, a lot of great pitching advice and a lot of reality from a journalist’s world people usually don’t have access to.”
Spanish and comparative literature professor Rebecca Biron, who was also a fellow in last year’s program, said that she joined the project in order to “discover bridges” between her academic research and a larger public voice. Biron, who spoke positively about her experience with the fellowship, particularly praised the guidance and mentorship of female journalists from the OpEd project and the positive impact the program had on her work.
“The process of it enriches the way you think about your own academic work,” she said. “So there’s an external value in getting Dartmouth’s expertise out into the world, but there’s also a personal value coming back at you as a thinker.”
Komska echoed Biron’s praise of the program’s positive benefits for her own academic work, noting that the program helped her affirm that her academic studies are relevant to everyday life. Komska also praised the program’s ability to work with humanities professors, since many do not usually write for the broader media, and encouraged fellow faculty members to engage with the fellowship.
“I don’t think I’m in a position to give advice but if I were, I would say, write and use this great opportunity,” she said. “It’s hard to find the time in the middle of everything we do...finding the time is a necessity in this case because it translates into rewards for yourself above all.”
Although the stated goal of the OpEd project is to diversify the pool of voices currently heard in the mainstream media by consciously encouraging female academics and other under-represented experts to share their work, Komska said the program should not be restricted to only certain academic groups. Noting that intellectual diversity can be understood broadly, Komska stressed that recruiting voices from a broad variety of disciplines, including those that are not often heard in the public media, extends the project’s goals.
Biron said that the program might be particularly useful for those who “don’t think they have any business” publishing in The New York Times.
While Komska said that the College’s decision to extend the fellowship clearly recognizes that what faculty members write outside “the pages of journals” matters to the College and is worth investing in, she did note that op-eds and similar articles “don’t count for anything” during the tenure or annual review process. Adding them, she said, would send a clearer message about whether the College truly values such contributions.
The Dartmouth Public Voices Fellowship is jointly funded by the dean of faculty and the office of public affairs, Lawrence said. Faculty applications must be submitted by March 13, and the program will officially begin in April.
Correction appended (Feb. 26, 2015):
A previous version of this story incorrectly quoted Lawrence as saying,“We want to know more about the research and thinking that goes on here among our faculty."Lawrence said,“We want the world to know more about the research and thinking that goes on here among our faculty."
