The Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship program announced last week its selection of 15 fellows for the academic year 1979-1980.

The fellowship provides a $14,000 stipend for each fellow to spend a year at Harvard, teaching in the humanities and researching in their academic field.

Richard M. Hunt, director of the Mellon program and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), said yesterday the fellows were chosen from a "highly competitive" group of 185 applicants from universities across the United States.

Although Harvard benefits from the fellows' teaching services, Hunt said, "the major purpose of the fellowship is to relieve these assistant professors of their oppressive work load so that they can continue their scholarship and return to their institutions with better prospects for getting tenured positions."

Julia Brown, one of the newly selected fellows and assistant professor of English at Boston University, said yesterday she was looking forward to continuing her research on the Bronte sisters at Harvard. Her current three-course work-load at B.U. allows her little time to pursue her own academic interests, she added.

Brown said at Harvard she would like to teach either a freshman seminar on "Freud and the Victorian novel," or a departmental course on 19th century novelists.

Most of the fellows contacted expressed an interest in conducting freshman seminars, a choice which has been popular among Mellon Fellows in the past, Hunt said.

Diana E. Kleiner, another new Mellon fellow and assistant professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts said yesterday she intends to teach a seminar on art patronage in ancient Rome, or on political propaganda in Greek and Roman art.

Anthony Spalinger, lecturer in Near Eastern Languages at Yale, said yesterday he would prefer to teach a course in Ancient Egyptian culture and civilization.

"I understand there has been great interest in Egyptian language at Harvard," Spalinger said, adding he thought the increasing interest in Egyptology might be due, in part, to the popularity of the King Tutankahamen exhibit.

Bonnie Costello, assistant professor of English at Boston University said yesterday, she plans to teach a freshman seminar in landscape and the mind, which would study "the interaction of imagination and reality in modern poetry."

Competitors for Mellon Fellowships submitted written applications in November. The applications were screened by Hunt and the 17 humanities departments.

The departments then made final recommendations to the selection committee composed of senior faculty, which interviewed the finalists and selected the fellows.

Hunt said this is the fourth year that the Mellon Fellowships have been awarded. He added that "in the past, those completing the program have had success obtaining tenured positions."