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Kathleen Greene>> The McNair Scholars Program was funded in 1986 in honor of the late Dr.
Ronald E. McNair.
Graciela Orozco>> He was one of the astronauts on the space shuttle Challenger that blew
up.
Kathleen Greene>> And to honor him the Congress legislated this program, the Ronald E. McNair
Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, that?s the full title and it?s a national program
to honor the memory and legacy of Dr. Ronald E. McNair. It was established to prepare low-income
and first generation college students or those who are underrepresented in higher education.
Graciela Orozco>> The ultimate goal of McNair is to get you a Ph.D. and get you at a university
teaching.
Kathleen Greene>> To have them diversify the faculty.
Graciela Orozco>> I became a part of the program in Fall of 2010.
Kathleen Greene>> We take students when they have at least 30 hours, so basically around
their sophomore year. They must meet the target eligibility criteria.
Graciela Orozco>> I had to write a letter and I had to go through an interview process.
Kathleen Greene>> And once they get in they meet weekly with our Associate Director Lora
Boyer and Don Tveite, our writing specialist, to go over what it takes to be in graduate
school. In the summer they do work with a faculty mentor on a research project.
Graciela Orozco>> The research that I did this summer, I worked with Dr. Stacy Hutchinson
on the irrigation transects on Konza and when she was a master?s student she had done research
on that same area and hers was trying to figure out water use coefficient for the plants and
that just kind of tells farmers when you?re going to need to apply water to the plants.
What my research was, looking into the effects that temperature played on their water use.
So there?s fluctuations in their water use, obviously, throughout their growing season
and the fluctuations earlier in the growing season were all in response to precipitation,
but then once it got to be July and August, then it was all in response to temperature.
Kathleen Greene>> We follow them all the way up through graduation. Help them write an
application to help them get admitted to a graduate program.
Graciela Orozco>> So it opens a lot of doors for you.
Kathleen Greene>> To help them become graduate students and to get into fields that otherwise
they would not have the opportunity to get into.