Each McNair Scholar has personal advising sessions where goals are set and individual plans developed for achieving goals, these are called Individual Development Plan’s (IDP’s). In addition, Scholars attend weekly seminars such as negotiating the graduate school process including selecting a graduate school, writing the personal statement, and obtaining financial aid, life skills, library methodology, making effective research presentations, just to name a few.
Although McNair is not a scholarship where we can provide funds towards the completion of our scholars’ degrees, we are a scholars program where we spend an average of $5000 annually on each scholar via research stipends, meals, GRE prep, travel to conferences, research opportunities, and graduate school visits, etc.
Other program features include:
- A course in research methods and proposal writing
- Orientation visits to research facilities and graduate schools
- Financial support for graduate school visits and/or national/regional conferences in their field of research.
- Faculty mentoring
- Preparation for graduate school entrance examinations
- Workshops for professionalization
- Opportunity to compete for the Scholar Research Institute (SRI)
- Annual research conferences
- Cultural enrichment activities
- “McNair Moments” – first-hand exposure to role models who have earned a Ph.D.
- Interactions with McNair alumni who have graduate school experience