Published: April 11, 2020
Christian Hill with a robotic hand

Students from diverse backgrounds aim for excellence in doctoral pursuits

ISRAEL MILES | PHOTOS BY ELLIOT WHITEHEAD

Pursuing graduate school is often a challenging and intimidating process for even the most seasoned students, but especially for students coming from first-generation, low-income, or underrepresented backgrounds. However, the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program (also known as McNair Scholars), founded in 1986, is an initiative to increase the attainment of PhD degrees by students from underrepresented segments of society.

“The McNair Scholars Program is a TRIO Department of Education grant,” Yvonne Skoretz, Doctorate of Education (EdD) and Director of the McNair Scholars Program at CU Boulder, said. “It was founded in honor of Ronald McNair, who was a first generation, low-income minority student and who went on to obtain a PhD from MIT. He then became an astronaut and later died in the Challenger mission. This grant was created in his image and is built to encourage that same demographic who have the goal of getting a PhD. We are here to support them [with] research, scholarly activities, graduate school visits, and [by] giving support on how to be competitive for graduate school.”

The McNair Scholars program offers accepted students a summer course in grant writing with an emphasis on preparing for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP). The program also gives students tutoring support, preparatory material for the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) and access to McNair Research Internships, which includes a stipend and working directly with a McNair Faculty Mentor. Two of the most critical components of applying to graduate school is having experience in research and connecting with faculty.

“We follow a very similar process to UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program),” Dr. Skoretz said. “You make an agreement with a faculty mentor with PhD credentials who will oversee your research project. You can also work with a graduate student as an additional supervisor. You work at least 20 hours a week over the course of a [six- to ten-week] project. You will be writing the research question, collecting data and making conclusions. Finally you’ll create a poster or oral presentation where you will travel to a McNair Scholars research conference, or another conference in your field, and then present.”

Since students have the freedom to choose their own faculty mentor and research topic, there is a huge variety of academic pursuits in the McNair Scholars program.

This past summer, McNair Scholars who participated in research travelled to the 27th annual University of Maryland Baltimore County McNair Research Conference. Not only did students participate in the research conference, but the weekend trip also consisted of visits to local universities, a graduate school fair and a dinner cruise on the harbor to meet and connect with other McNair Scholars and alumni.

“This past summer, I wanted to develop a low cost, replicable and conductive polymer,” Christian Hill, a senior Computer Science major, said. “It’s predicated by research done by a research group in Denmark, where they infuse a highly conductive polymer, combining graphene with silicone putty. I was very interested in it, because it’s kind of cool when people take normal materials and make them computationally enriched. The issue that I saw was that there’s no way for me to recreate it. So I thought, ‘well be the change that you want to be, I’ll just do it.’ Everything I make is open source. You can take my designs, add to it, critique it, anything.”

Hill worked in the ITLL lab with Dr. Mike Eisenberg, who passed away March of 2019, creating numerous inventions and experiments, seeking to augment the human body. He also has a passion for the development of open-source projects and making it easier for people, particularly children, to get involved with technology.

“One of my first experiments was a tactile illusion glove that made it seem like you had fingers that were a foot long,” Hill said. “The thing is, I had no experience with hardware at all. So I spent three months trying to figure out how to plug a button into an Arduino microcontroller and get it to work, which is something that I could do in 10 minutes now. One practice that Mike [Eisenberg] always has us do at the end of our projects is to create an instructable and make it open source.”

Hill has continued inventing in conjunction with the McNair Scholars program and plans on pursuing a PhD in Computer Science. He has also worked with the Atlas Director Dr. Mark Gross and Atlas Assistant Professor Dr. Ben Shapiro.

“Recently, I’ve joined a grant under the eyes of Mark Gross,” Hill said. “The idea focuses on kids developing electrical circuits. There’s always the chance of having a short circuit or broken connection. The issue with kids is that they don’t really have any tools to debug this. They could use a multimedia, but that gives you too much information, it can be really daunting. The idea of the grant is to create tools that help kids debug electronic textiles. Another project that I’ve worked on was creating interior subjective sensation devices to help kids empathize with animals. It’s a puppy puppet that allows you to hear frequencies that are outside of your normal hearing range. And then there’s a set of cat whiskers. Essentially I created a cat whisker wearable that gives you the spatial perception of a cat.”

Hill was accepted to the first cohort of McNair Scholars over two years ago. The McNair Scholars program aims not just to improve your research experience, but also to prepare a competitive and wholesome application to graduate schools, fellowships and grants.

“Every summer, McNair hosts the graduate aid and the NSF GRFP course,” Blake Ocampo, senior in biochemistry, said. “It was extremely helpful, they helped me write an entire first draft of my GRFP including three pages for my personal statement and two pages for a research proposal. They also helped me organize all the components for an application like my CV, so I walked out of the course way ahead of the game compared to a lot of other people that are usually scrambling. I feel so much more prepared.”

Ocampo plans on achieving a PhD in Chemistry and was also a part of McNair’s first cohort. Ocampo has participated in multiple McNair based research conferences in addition to visiting universities he was interested in, all funded through McNair Scholars. His most recent research was focused on the application of molecular synthesis to solar cells.

“My most recent project was on the synthesis of a certain molecule called 1,3-diphenylisoindole and seeing if it is capable of doing singlet fission,” Ocampo said. “The idea is that when a chromophore relaxes from an excited state, rather than losing this energy as heat, it will excite the chromophore next to it, and it has been calculated to have the potential to increase solar cell efficiency from a limit of 33 percent up to potentially 45 percent. This is nearly a 50 percent increase in efficiency, which could revolutionize the solar energy industry if it could be made widely applicable.”

Ronald McNair, for whom the program is named, was born Oct. 21, 1950. He first received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, graduating magna cum laude. He then graduated from MIT with a PhD in laser physics in addition to four honorary doctorates and multiple fellowships.

For students who want to apply to the McNair Scholars program, applications open December 2019. Applicants must be Pell grant eligible, and have the intention of pursuing at least a Master’s degree, however competitive applicants will have the intent of obtaining a PhD. The program is STEM-focused, but open to all majors.

“The most important thing is that you have a voice, and it needs to be heard,” Dr. Skoretz said. “I’m from a McNair background. I’m first generation and grew up in poverty, and I remember one day thinking I want to be a teacher. I didn’t think I could go to college. And then I found through the McNair program that I could. I just feel blessed every day.”