Dania Abreu-Torres Selected as ACS Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow

Trinity University is excited to announce that the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) has selected Dania Abreu-Torres, Ph.D., as a Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow. Abreu-Torres is one of nine fellows chosen from a competitive selection process among the 15 ACS member institutions. Abreu-Torres will serve her fellowship in the role of associate dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, with the aim of bridging collaborations between the deanship, faculty, staff, and students.

The Mellon Academic Leadership Fellows program provides programming, mentorship, and professional development aimed at fully supporting fellows’ transitions into higher education leadership. Each fellow will take on a two-year role at their institution involving a portfolio of responsibilities or a distinct institutional project.

Abreu-Torres, Spanish professor and director of the Mexico, the Americas, and Spain (MAS) program, focuses her research on Caribbean and Latin American literature and film. As a fellow, her project will include connecting the arts and humanities to the most pragmatic areas of students’ lives by creating partnerships with the Center for Experiential Learning and Career Success (CELCS) and working in tandem with the Humanities Collective and the Center for International Engagement (CIE). She expects to continue the open collaboration she has cultivated as a faculty member and director of MAS in order to help students gather new perspectives and experiences in the School of Arts and Humanities. Abreu-Torres’ approach aims to enhance students’ awareness of how what they are learning in the humanities are not only abstract realities but also ingrained in the cultures that influence human behavior in the real world and in their daily lives.

“There are many ways to grow and be visible, to engage with students and strengthen their relationships with faculty and staff, and to highlight the importance of the humanities not only on campus but beyond Trinity,” Abreu-Torres says. “I am very grateful for this opportunity and excited to work with all my colleagues in the humanities, learn from them, and create new ways of collaboration.”

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities.

Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through their grants, they seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.