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LaShawn Thompson is a doctoral student in Experimental Psychology at Southern Miss,
and a member of the McNair Scholars program. Now LaShawn you distinguished yourself nationally
as an undergraduate in the McNair program, and now you're a graduate student in the McNair
program. Tell us what this has meant to you. Well the McNair program has really been a
tremendous experience and blessing to me. As an undergrad it gave me the foundation
that I needed for graduate school. As a graduate assistant for the program, I'm blessed to
provide that foundation for the undergraduates that I work with now. It also gives me the
opportunity to mentor them, and for them to have a positive mentorship relationship so
that they can see what that looks like once they get into graduate school.
One of your faculty mentors is Dr. Andrea Wesley. She is the Southern Miss nominee of
the IHL Black educator of the year award. Tell me how she's impacted your life.
She has impacted my life tremendously. She takes time out in every situation to help
me whenever I need it. Through our relationship I just have grown both professionally and
personally. I'm glad to call her my friend and my mentor.
I can tell you those experiences with mentors last a lifetime too. I still keep in touch
with my Southern Miss mentors, and it's been a lot of years. You're going to graduate in
May. What are your career plans? Right now I'm applying for some assistant
professor positions at universities and colleges, and I look forward to getting an offer very
soon. Well I expect you'll have plenty to choose
from. Thank you.
Final question: how would you advise a prospective student whose looking at Southern Miss as
a college choice? Okay. I give advice to my students who are
applying to schools and also my undergrads that are looking for a good school I think
that finding that school that provides support for you and that mentorship relationship that
you're looking for to get you through the process is the most important thing. I think
here at USM we have a diverse group of faculty members and staff that are willing to do that.
So, I'm proud of our diversity on campus and I think that we spend a lot of time focused
on that. I hope we focus on that in the future too.
We are a very diverse campus and that's something that we really embrace here, and I think it
makes us better. It does, it does.