Last Thursday, TRIO was proud to display what its McNair Scholars were researching over the summer during the 2024 McNair Showcase held in the UWO Culver Center.
TRIO is a program funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Education that primarily aims to support first generation, lower-income and minority students.
This year was the 17th year UWO could offer the McNair Scholars Program sponsored by a TRIO grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
As TRIO often works with minorities and first generation students, the McNair Scholars Program mirrored these views, prioritizing students who otherwise might not have gotten an opportunity like this.
“The reason why I got in was one, the recommendation, and two I’m Native American,” said McNair Scholar Anastasha Westbrook, “and the program does try to include a lot of minorities.”
Westbrook’s project focused on crocodilian diversity ranging from the cretaceous era to around the present day.
Furthermore, a lot of the obstacles these students faced in life became their inspiration for their projects.
“I remembered it being when I was young, I experienced food insecurity. I remember when Michelle Obama did the healthy eating initiative… I remember being 10 and being like, I can’t afford fruits and vegetables,” McNair Scholar Aspyn Rafac said. “So that kind of sent me down the pipeline of looking at food insecurity in the United States.”
The program requires students to work alongside a mentor from UWO to help them get their feet off the ground and to have someone to guide them.
McNair Scholar Amanda Pierron studied the mobilization of feminism in the Upper Midwest from 1970 to the present day by state.
“[My mentor] did this work at the global level,” Pierron said. “So we wanted to take it on a smaller scale in US states because US states are extremely important to feminist-related issues.”
While students could get a good foot into their desired field by working alongside their mentors, in some cases they also formed great bonds.
“I’ve taken her classes a lot. I think I was in two semesters of her courses and then I went abroad with her too,” Thao said. “So I feel like we kind of have a special bond.”
The UWO McNair Scholars program received $272,364 in federal funds for 2023-2024. This money was used to fund 15 UWO students in their research over the summer.
“[The McNair program] really funded everything that I’ve done,” McNair Scholar Piper Novy said. “They funded me for instrument time for getting analysis data and stuff like that and they’ve been very supportive throughout all of it.”
On top of the funding used for the materials for their projects, students were also paid during the summer for their work.
“It gave me the opportunity to work on this over the summer,” McNair Scholar Damon Braatz said.
The McNair Scholars program is a very prestigious program that simply being a part of has long-term benefits for the scholars.
“I was able to get research experience that would help me get into grad school,” Westbrook said. “Kind of a caveat of how to apply to graduate school, how to actually get into grad school, and everything.”
Even more immediate than graduate school, scholars had a better opportunity to continue their research if they wanted to.
“[I plan to continue] working on those experimental studies we’re doing this semester,” said Braatz.
If you are interested in the McNair Scholars Program, you can find more information at uwosh.edu/mcnairscholars or by emailing McNair Program Director, Cordelia Bowlus, at .
