Lydia L. English, Ph.D.
Director and Program Officer for Higher Education

As Director of the MMUF program Dr. English leads 35 institutions and the consortium of member colleges and universities that belong to the United Negro College Fund in a mission to increase the number of underrepresented minorities and those committed to eradicating racial and ethnic disparities in the faculty ranks of institutions of higher learning.  Since coming to the Foundation she has added seven new schools to the program, including the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Additionally, Dr. English makes grants to the Social Science Research Council, the United Negro College Fund and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation among others to administer graduate student education and faculty development programs that support the MMUF initiative.

In other areas of grant making Dr. English has focused on marine, tropical, and animal ecology programs, mentoring programs and the preservation of the Sahaptin Indian language.  

She has traveled extensively for her work including:  to all of the MMUF institutions from Maine to California; to ecology programs in Costa Rica; Woods Hole, San Juan Islands, Washington; Kruger National Park, South Africa; Dakar, Senegal for a faculty development program; and to Cape Town, South Africa for MMUF and to develop a program for women middle managers in higher education institutions. 

Lydia L. English has been director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program since June 1999. Prior to coming to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Dr. English was Associate Dean of the College at Brown University where she was campus coordinator for MMUF. 

Dr. English earned her Baccalaureate degree from Brown University, Magna Cum Laude, and her PhD in Social/Cultural Anthropology from Yale University.

Carma L. Van Allen
Associate Director

Carma L. Van Allen joined the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as Program Associate in August 2000.  Ms. Van Allen plays a key role in communicating with MMUF campus coordinators, Mellon fellows, and other grantees.  Ms. Van Allen administers the MMUF database and the student online survey, as well as oversees the production of the program’s print materials and the MMUF website.  She travels extensively for the program, and has visited all of the MMUF campuses and other program sites.  Ms. Van Allen plays a leadership role in the administration of MMUF and other programs in Minority Education. 

Ms. Van Allen brings excellent experience to her work with MMUF.  She earned her bachelor's degree from Brown University with a concentration in Sociology and her MA in Higher Education Administration from the University of Michigan.  Ms. Van Allen has worked in various projects to develop leadership programs for students.  For three years she was Associate Director of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers at Philips Academy-Andover, a national program to encourage undergraduates to pursue careers in teaching at the secondary and collegiate levels.  Prior to joining the Mellon Foundation, Ms. Van Allen was Assistant to the Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at New York University.  Ms. Van Allen served as an advisor to students, a role that she still maintains for MMUF.

Elizabeth A. Foley
Program Assistant 

Elizabeth (Liz) Foley joined the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship staff in January 2006.  During 2005 Liz worked with the program on a temporary basis, and gained extensive experience with the MMUF database. Liz is now primarily responsible for the maintenance of the program’s database of over 2500 Mellon fellows.  In March 2006 Liz oversaw the program’s transition to an upgraded incarnation of the MMUF web survey supported by a new server platform.  The MMUF web survey allows fellows to update the program on their progress through undergraduate and graduate school. The new web survey and supporting database, with their improved capacity for collection, storage, and analysis of data on the program’s ever-growing body of fellows, will be critical as the program rapidly approaches its 20th anniversary.

Liz attended Bryn Mawr College and has worked in a broad range of industries, including publishing, finance, and advertising. In addition to her work at the Foundation,  she is pursuing a screenwriting career.

Raisa E. Reyes
Program Assistant 

Raisa Reyes joined the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and Diversity Initiative Programs at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in July of 2008.  Raisa is primarily responsible for maintaining the MMUF website, drafting the program’s print materials, supporting the Associate Director, and helping to plan the Annual MMUF Coordinators Conference and other programmatic meetings.  Prior to her position at Mellon, Raisa interned at Scholastic Inc. as a Children's Defense Fund/Scholastic Fellow, and at the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women as a project assistant.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a Gates Millennium Scholar, Raisa majored in Comparative Literature with concentrations in Russian and Spanish Literatures; she minored in South Asia Studies and Spanish, studying in both India and Spain while pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree.  Raisa is fluent in English and Spanish and is looking to improve her French and learn Russian.