Provost’s Award for an Exemplary Director of Graduate Studies

The Provost’s Award for an Exemplary Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) honors a full-time faculty member assigned with advising graduate students about program requirements, career prospects, funding possibilities, and other matters pertinent to graduate education; this award honors exemplary work done by directors of graduate studies as advisors and administrators.  Such work includes mastery of the program’s disciplinary and professional regulations, advocacy on behalf of students, development of curricular innovations designed to improve retention and degree completion, as well as enhancement of student academic and professional development initiatives, and commitment to strategic advising.

Frank Kelderman is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English. He received his M.A. in American Studies (2009) from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and his Ph.D. in American Culture (2015) from the University of Michigan. In 2015-16 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College.  In 2016, Dr. Kelderman came to the University of Louisville, where he teaches Native American and Indigenous studies, nineteenth-century American literature, and multi-ethnic literatures of the United States.  Since Spring 2022, he has directed the M.A. program in English and the Ph.D. program in Rhetoric and Composition as Director of Graduate Studies in English.  He is the author of Authorized Agents: Publication and Diplomacy in the Era of Indian Removal (SUNY Press, 2019), as well as of a number of articles and book chapters.  He was a faculty fellow in the Commonwealth Center for the Humanities and Society in 2018-19.  

Dr. Kelderman was nominated by a colleague, who included eight letters of support from colleagues, and doctoral and master’s students.  His nominator writes that “Frank’s deep understanding of both students’ concerns and the larger systems involved, his advocacy for students, his commitment to community-building, and his creation of new systems to improve workflow have made an enormous impact on our program and our students.”  One of Dr. Kelderman’s colleagues writes in his letter of support that “Frank clearly understands not only how the Graduate Program works in the larger system of the University, but sees how best to work within those systems to provide the experiences and education that graduate students need to engage with and understand…Yet, at the same time, Frank never loses sight of the needs of individual students.”  Many students had wonderful things to say about Dr. 

Kelderman, but this comment from a new master’s student is typical: “He not only is a wonderful professor, but also an exemplary DGS.  In my experience, Dr. Kelderman is attentive, gathering understanding of my personal goals within my program and my interests to gauge the best class choices and path forward as I move through my degree.  He has helped me create a plan to move from the present to graduation in a way that feels attainable.  I can see that he truly cares for me, not only so that I will have the best experience in my graduate studies here at UofL, but as a person as well.”  Dr. Kelderman is a relatively new DGS, but as his letter writers observe, he has met the criteria for the award and is an exemplary advisor, advocate, and administrator.