Opportunity awaits McNair scholars

The McNair Scholars Program led to Yaa Takyiwaa ’18 becoming a senior analyst at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and she also credits it with her success in the 2023 Miss New York USA competition.

Takyiwaa says the interview drills she and her mentor, former postdoctoral research associate Josh Sammons, conducted before her presentation at the annual McNair conference in 2016 still help her today.

“The number one skill that I had while I was interviewing for this pageant was good communication,” says Takyiwaa, a Miss New York USA finalist who won the top interview award at the competition. “My mentor drilled that [McNair conference] presentation with me for hours. I feel like he could do the presentation right now with how much we practiced. At the time, I was very frustrated, but now I am an amazing presenter and researcher, overall, because of his training.”

Congress brought the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program (known as the McNair Scholars Program) to fruition in 1989; it is now funded at more than 150 institutions.

Designed to honor McNair following his death in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the program prepares underrepresented and financially challenged students for graduate and doctoral studies.

Binghamton University’s program, which received a five-year grant renewal from the U.S. Department of Education in 2022, provides scholars regular access to research opportunities, mentoring, graduate school application preparation and visits, as well as conference participation.

A showcase to succeed

Working in a lab, training in research techniques, and learning to read research papers properly were all benefits participants expected to reap from the program. Alumni say they also left with new social capabilities that went beyond networking.

“My favorite part was being around people who had the same career aspirations as me,” says

Takyiwaa, who majored in integrative neuroscience and comparative literature. “It’s cliché to say being around like-minded people, but in order to succeed and in order to network, you have to be around people who want to get to the same places as you.”

McNair is one of many initiatives under the Federal TRiO Program umbrella. TRiO’s educational outreach programs, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, aim to recognize and serve those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“My mission is to make sure the underrepresented get all of the resources that they need so that they can thrive once in graduate school,” says Gervlyne Auguste, assistant director of Binghamton’s McNair Scholars Program. “Sometimes they may not even know what they need, so it’s always nice to guide them to their path and make sure they’re utilizing all services available to them.”

What distinguishes the McNair Scholars Program from the TRiO family is its ability to step away from the typical STEM-based scope for research. While it is research-focused, it does not limit exploration to the sciences, allowing students to collaborate with any campus department.

Projects could range from diabetes studies in rats to dance-form studies in theater, regardless of the student’s major. For Auguste and others, this flexibility is one of the program’s greatest strengths.

“That’s the beauty of McNair,” says Celine Lodge ’22, a registered nurse at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital who was a McNair scholar and a psychology and nursing major. “Your background doesn’t even matter — they’re giving us everything we need to succeed and showcase our true capabilities despite the disadvantages that were unconsciously placed in our lives.”

Auguste joined McNair’s executive board in 2016 when its admission rates were waning. She says her goal for the program was to create an environment in which students were able to use each other as support systems and learning tools since they were all going through the same process, just at different rates.

“The best part of being a mentor is seeing their accomplishments and celebrating the little things along the journey,” Auguste says. “My favorite part of the program is seeing the conference room bubbling with 1,500 conversations, whether they’re asking for food or figuring out life; just seeing the students be so happy that they have learned so much.”

Bryan Blaker ’20, a clinical research associate at SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital, says Auguste achieved her goal while he was a scholar in 2017.

“I still have a group chat with the other scholars from my year,” Blaker says. “Seeing people that are in the same major as you or doing something you want to do in the future and hanging out in the same place, going through the same struggles, creates something in you that makes you think, ‘If they can do it, why can’t I?’”

With the help of the other TRiO programs and the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), recruiting students became the easy part purely due to word-of-mouth.

Joshua Gonzalez ’18, MA ’20, an asset management real estate professional at New York City Economic Development Corp., says his EOP class introduced him to the program. He was encouraged to join McNair because the summer students presented their research at symposiums and received a stipend. This funding enabled many of the students to stay focused on their research instead of having to balance school and outside work.

“The fact that they were able to pay us for that summer like an internship, and how flexible they were, definitely made it possible for me to invest my time in my research,” Gonzalez says.

The program-renewal grant allows the summer program stipend to increase to $5,000 per student. This also enables research to be more experimental and in-depth.

“Growing up in Harlem, most people from my neighborhood were never able to pursue education opportunities,” Gonzalez says. “Through McNair, my research was honed — there was funding to support us traveling and applying to graduate schools. They even offer GMAT prep books and with that I was able to get into graduate school again at Columbia University.”

Building for the future

For many of the program’s alumni, their research set a sturdy foundation for the work they do today. Gonzalez specialized in geographic information systems and urban planning while at Binghamton, and his McNair project focused on economic geography and local business development. He manages the Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT) in Sunset Park, a culturally significant neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“I was able to funnel my research and the experiences I had into a full-blown professional career,” he says. “We own and operate a diverse portfolio of over 65 million square feet of real estate that help activate micro-economies across the city.”

Similarly, Blaker’s current field of work doesn’t stray far from his McNair research. Blaker studied the effect of the herbicide atrazine on fruit flies in the lab of Anthony Fiumera, associate professor of biology. Today, Blaker is working to commercialize and prove the safety of higher doses for certain amino acids in clinical spaces with SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital.

“I think [McNair] opens the door to a lot of opportunities that we are deprived of,” Blaker says. “There’s discrimination in this country, but this program helps us navigate it and forces open doors that are usually closed. I know so many people from this program that are still in touch with me and say, ‘I wouldn’t be able to do this if it wasn’t for this program.’”