Armando I. Bengochea

Armando Bengochea is a senior program officer for Higher Learning and director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), a program he had previously been involved with at both Brown University and Connecticut College. Mr. Bengochea has started or restructured a wide range of initiatives at Mellon that foster diversity, access, and inclusion in higher education for both students and faculty. He brought to the Foundation more than 26 years of experience as an academic dean.

After completing his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Bengochea earned a Ph.D. in politics at Princeton University where he wrote a political philosophy dissertation on Tocqueville. From 1986–2006, he worked at Brown University where he served as dean of freshman studies and associate dean of the college. In 2002, Mr. Bengochea helped create, launched, and then oversaw the university’s First Year Seminar program and for many years had oversight of signature academic advising initiatives and related curricular programs. As part of these roles, Mr. Bengochea planned and participated in many programs and initiatives in support of students of color. Throughout his 20-year career at Brown, he was charged with monitoring the academic and social well-being of Latino/a undergraduates across all four undergraduate classes.