McNair Scholars Rise to the Occasion

The 2002 graduating McNair Scholars include Brian Armenta, Neftali Camacho, Lorraine Cuadra, Julie Davenport, Oranoos Haghighi, Hiroka Hata, Naomi Johnson, Raffi Kaprielian, Jeffrey Kim, Karen Mabb, Angelica Martinez, Debra McKean, Meeghan Simmons, Allison Vaughn, Holly Vuong and Taneeka Ward.

This year, 16 students in the prestigious Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program graduated during commencement ceremonies for the colleges of Agriculture, Science, and Letters, Arts & Social Sciences.

The program's purpose is to increase the number of low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students gaining admission to and completing doctoral levels of study. Once selected, the scholars work with faculty mentors who guide them through research proposals and projects. After writing up their research results, the students present their work at McNair conferences and symposiums in the United States and abroad.

"This program really changed my life for the absolute better," said Meeghan Simmons, an Animal & Veterinary Sciences major from Montclair. "I would love to come back any time and talk to new cohorts about how wonderful the program was to me."

Simmons hopes to study feral horses and the damage they cause to springs as she pursues her doctorate in conservation biology at the University of Reno.

Student projects range from community-based studies such as Lorraine Cuadra's "Helpless Children: A Contextual Constructionist Perspective of Child Abuse in Print Media" to medical research such as Hiroko Hata's "Folate Status of Women in Childbearing Age with Different MTHFR Genotypes." Other projects explore the sexual behaviors of college students, the pollinator foraging habits of bumblebees, and the effects of cultural orientation on conformity.

"I believe that the research I have done, and the experience I have gained by presenting it, have been extremely helpful in my getting accepted to graduate school for fall 2002," said Allison Vaughn, a Psychology major.

The Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program is a federal education grant and part of the TRIO family of federal programs. Named for one of the astronauts killed in the Challenger shuttle explosion in 1986, the program was approved by Congress that year. Cal Poly Pomona's McNair Scholars Program received its grant in 1999.

 

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