Lilly Fellows Program announces the selection of Elisa Torres as one of ten Lilly Graduate Fellows.
The Lilly Graduate Fellows Program is a part of the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts that supports outstanding students who want to explore the connections among Christianity, higher education, and the vocation of the teacher-scholar as they pursue graduate degrees in humanities and the arts.
Belmont Abbey College graduating senior Elisa Torres has been selected as a Fellow. An English and Theology double major, she also completed minors in Christianity & Culture, Medieval Studies, and Philosophy. Torres was the English Department’s Student of the Year and wrote her senior thesis on the concept of “piety” in Virgil’s Aeneid.
The ten Fellows were selected by an eight-member selection committee who interviewed sixteen finalists (selected from fifty-six applicants) March 31-April 1, 2017, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The Fellows will meet together for three days at an Inaugural Conference from July 31-August 3, 2017, also in Indianapolis, with their mentors, Lisa DeBoer of Westmont College and John Ware of Xavier University in Louisiana. Following this Inaugural Conference, the Fellows will embark on a long-distance colloquium, engage in one-on-one mentoring relationships, and participate in three additional conferences. All ten are pursuing terminal graduate studies in humanities or the arts.
The Lilly Graduate Fellows Program is funded by a generous grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. Thus far, the program has selected a total of ten cohorts of Graduate Fellows from the current 100 schools that make up the Lilly Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities. Lilly Graduate Fellows participate in a three-year program in which they meet regularly with a mentor, attend four conferences, participate in a long-distance colloquium, and receive three annual stipends of $3000 ($9000 total) to use at their discretion. For more information on the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program, visit http://www.lillyfellows.org/.
Founded in 1991, the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts seeks to strengthen the quality and shape the character of church-related institutions of higher learning through three programmatic initiatives. In addition to the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program, it offers postdoctoral teaching fellowships for young scholars who wish to renew their sense of vocation within a Christian community of learning in order to prepare themselves for positions of teaching, scholarship, and leadership within church-related institutions. It also maintains a collaborative National Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities that sponsors a variety of activities and publications designed to explore the Christian character of the academic vocation and to strengthen the religious nature of church-related institutions. The National Network represents among its current membership of 100 schools a diversity of denominational traditions, institutional types, and geographical locations.