by Andrew Tellijohn

Professor Ken Bartlett and student Chao Yang review
casino marketing materials for her research project.

Undergraduate Chao Yang always wanted to attend graduate school, but she had little knowledge of what that might entail. Her parents never attended college, and she had no experience doing intensive research. Then a friend introduced her to the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, which prepares low-income, first-generation college students for doctoral studies. Through McNair, Yang spent this summer researching alongside Ken Bartlett, associate professor and chair of the Department of Work and Human Resource Education.

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 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 University-wide Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), which offers a stipend or expense allowance for students to assist with an existing faculty research project or to carry out their own project under faculty supervision.

Recent graduate Naima Bashir started her research into Somali parents' involvement in schools during her undergrad years.

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.”

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.

Kinesiology school active

The School of Kinesiology has actively promoted undergraduate research opportunities for years. Rachel Eggenberger was a kinesiology honors student when her adviser, kinesiology assistant professor Moira Petit, suggested she apply for UROP. She participated in Petit’s study examining whether playing Dance Dance Revolution—in which players dance along with lit-up prompts—stimulated bone growth in youth.

“It was a really good experience to get involved with research but not have quite as much responsibility [as a principal investigator],” she says, adding that it was a great way “to learn how things work without having to get super stressed about it.”

She always planned to attend graduate school for physical therapy, but UROP helped her feel more prepared for her continuing studies. “It was helpful to already have had some experience,” she says.

“The difference between a UROP student and a research assistant in a lab is they have their own research project,” says Tom Stoffregen, a kinesiology professor who has mentored several UROP students, including one over the summer. “There’s an ownership there and an opportunity to contribute. … To put it in very simple terms, it gives them a chance to act like a graduate student for awhile.”

Stoffregen says the number of labs and frequency of projects within his department make it practical for undergraduates to assume a short-term research role. The exposure to research and the existence of funding mechanisms for such projects can only help with their academic development.

Petit says “self-motivated and incredibly bright” students typically can thrive by getting involved in such hands-on research. Graduate and faculty researchers benefit as well from those students’ willingness to help with data analysis, data entry, and the like. “They help with tasks that we otherwise would have to hire someone to do,” Petit says. “But they do a number of different tasks... . The nature of the work lends itself to providing opportunities for students.”

The student becomes the teacher

Ideally, students selected for these research programs attend graduate school and eventually become faculty, as with Tabitha Grier. Now an assistant professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, Grier was a McNair Scholar in 1996 at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. While a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, where she earned a master’s and Ph.D. in educational psychology, she co-created the African American Student Support Network. This summer, she and Amber Riley, a McNair scholar who is a senior at Carleton College, researched the experiences of five African American students who use the network at a predominantly white campus.

Tabitha Grier followed the path from McNair Scholar through earning a Ph.D. and becoming a faculty member.

“It was a very good match,” Grier says, adding that the more Riley learned, the more interested the student became. “That’s what made it exciting for me. Her inspiration was contagious.”

Riley grew up in south Minneapolis and had few family members with much experience in higher education. She loved working with Grier on the project, which concluded that academic administrations should ensure networks exist to help provide minority populations a safe haven on campuses. “A group like this is really a powerful group for African American students,” Riley says.

The research experience helped her tailor her interests, and now she’s planning to apply for an out-of-state community psychology program. “It was an empowering process,” Riley says.

PHOTOS: Dawn Villella