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Bartlett let her choose between a number of projects that were geared toward her interests and her scholarly level. She decided to examine the role of Native American heritage in casino marketing materials because it relates to her majors in human resource development and business marketing education. “It was very independent,” she says, qualifying, “My mentor was always there to guide me. If I needed a little push in a direction he would do it.” Yang determined that while most marketing materials and casino Web sites have references to Native American themes, their tribal histories and cultural identifiers are often not prominently represented. She presented her findings 18 CONNECT! FALL 2007 alongside other McNair Scholars at a July poster presentation and was invited to present at the McNair Scholars National Convention in early November. Encouraging undergrads Naima Bashir, who graduated in spring 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in family social science, spent the summer of 2006 with the McNair program, studying the impact of parental involvement in schools within the Somali community. She continued her research last spring through the Universitywide Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), which offers a stipend or expense allowance for Recent graduate Naima Bashir started her research into Somali parents’ involvement in schools during her undergrad years. SCREENSHOT: Aaron Doering
students to assist with an existing faculty research project or to carry out their own project under faculty supervision. A native of Somalia, Bashir says the research experiences educated her about graduate school expectations and application procedures and helped her conquer a fear of public speaking. “Just being exposed to higher education in that way helped me,” she says, adding that she hopes to encourage other immigrants to pursue college and graduate school. Today she is a first-year graduate student at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Students sometimes benefit by discovering what they don’t want to do for a living, says Catherine Solheim, a family social science professor who mentored Bashir in both McNair and in UROP. “McNair and UROP are great ways for students to find out if doing research and going to graduate school fit well with who they are and where they want to go in life,” Solheim says. “If they get excited, then they have great support to pursue those goals. They might find out that the grad school path isn’t where they want to go, though, and that’s fine as well.” Benefits for mentors as well Solheim says she admires the University’s undergraduate research programs for the opportunities they offer students. She also appreciates the diversity McNair feeds into University graduate programs. For her part, the professor says she benefits from the students’ enthusiasm and from interacting with people of different ethnic backgrounds. Like Solheim, Bartlett found the experience of mentoring a McNair student to be intellectually stimulating. He volunteered to be a mentor after learning about the program from some former student participants. Because Yang was new to academic research, he supported her at every step: from selecting a topic to framing the research question and providing her “an avalanche” of background material. But she learned quickly and took control of the project, he said, doing the research and arriving at the conclusion. “I think that’s a big part of being a scholar is making some of those decisions and being able to defend those decisions in the face of appropriate scholarly critique,” Bartlett says. “That’s something that is so unique about the McNair program, and something the University of Minnesota should really be proud of.” “With the McNair program they really prepare you. It was really inspiring. My perspective broadened a lot. ” —CHAO YANG Yang, now a senior, is preparing to apply to graduate school and hopes to stay at the University. She’ll have ongoing support from the McNair program, including help with graduate admissions preparation tests and the application and funding process. “With the McNair program they really prepare you,” Yang says. “It was really inspiring. My perspective broadened a lot.” Named for Ronald McNair, an African American astronaut who died in the Challenger explosion, McNair is one of three federally funded Trio programs that support under-served student populations. Of the 300 students who have participated at the University of Minnesota since 1991, when the campus location was founded, 54 have earned master’s degrees, 26 have received professional degrees, 12 have earned doctorates, and 60 are still enrolled in a graduate program. The McNair program is available at 178 institutions nationwide, and eligible participants can come from any college or university. Chao Yang CEHD.UMN.EDU 19
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