COLLEGE OF

Education and Human Development

McNair Scholar 2019 - Ianna Oatis

Ianna Oatis is a senior at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities majoring in Global Studies. Her research interests revolve around historical memory and public history with a global perspective. Ianna has interest in pursuing a master’s degree in public history or museum studies.

Ianna Oatis

My dream is that all history is accessible to everyone. We can learn so much from not only studying the past, but also learning how to preserve our present for future generations. Whether we are right or wrong, we have too much to learn from each other for anything to get lost.

Ianna Oatis

Research project

Understanding the Higher Education Movement: Making Connections between Race, Universities, and Historical Injustices

Abstract: The conversation around race and higher education has been a subject of much debate and contention in recent years. Student protests across the country have challenged administrations to confront head on institutional histories and their ugly racial pasts. This project works to not only contextualize the origins of contemporary conversations around historical injustices, but also connect racial injustices of the past to the present. This research is guided by the following central question: why is the higher education movement gaining traction now?

Faculty mentor

Dr. Yuichiro Onishi is an associate professor in the Department of African American & African Studies and Asian American Studies Program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Dr. Onishi also attended the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D. in History in 2004. His research is very interdisciplinary and diverse with areas of interests including but not limited to African American intellectual history, transnational American studies, public history, Asian American Studies, and the RIGS (Race, Indigeneity, Gender and Sexuality) initiative. Dr. Onishi has published many works that show his breadth of knowledge on all his research interests. He has been a mentor with the McNair program for three years.