McNair SROP Michigan State University

Michigan State University Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Achievement Program/ Summer Research Opportunity Program (also referred to as the Ronald E. McNair Summer Research Program, or McNair Summer Research Institute, or McNair SROP) is a nationally recognized undergraduate research opportunity named after Dr. Ronald E. McNair, a Challenger space shuttle crew member. McNair is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

HIstory After the death of Ronald E. McNair in the USS Challenger Space Shuttle accident in January 1986, members of Congress provided funding for the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program to encourage minority, low-income, and first-generation college students to expand their educational opportunities and pursue graduate studies.

The program is designed to encourage first-generation and low-income college juniors and seniors to enter doctoral study. At Michigan State University, McNair operates simultaneously with SROP, an undergraduate research program geared toward underrepresented minority students. The SROP initiative gives minority students the opportunity to acquire research skills necessary to be successful in graduate school. SROP is funded by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and Michigan State University. The program was brought to Michigan State University in 1994.

Purpose :The McNair/SROP Scholars Program encourages the target population to pursue graduate studies and expand their educational opportunities. The program focuses on preparing students for intensive research and the competitive graduate school admissions process.

The McNair/SROP Scholars Program provides an environment that is conducive to learning and personal development, while supplying a dedicated staff and faculty to assist students with their research and post-baccalaureate pursuits. Each student workswith a knowledgeable faculty mentor who has expertise in the research field. Students are exposed to a meticulous graduate school preparatory program, an abundance of research resources, and a generous stipend. In addition, McNair/SROP offers a broad array of experiences that prepare students to enter graduate school and persist at this advanced level.'

Research Examples and Abstracts

2005 McNair/SROP Scholars

"Hands on Hips: A Womanist Privilege of Africanity in the Creative Expressive of Gloria Naylor's Mama Day and Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo."

by Geneva S. Thomas, Michigan State University

Mentor: Dr. Pero Dagbovie, Department of History, College of Social Science, Michigan State University

ABSTRACT:

Africans were forcibly taken empty handed from the western and central parts of Africa, from the shores of Senegal to the interiors of Angola. Still, Africans brought with them their immaterial ways of knowing. Coming from this perspective, �Hands on Hips: A Womanist Privilege of Africanity in the Women of Gloria Naylor's Mama Day and Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass, Cypress &Indigo� is a preliminary epistemological research which seeks to explore via textual performance analysis both the Womanist and Yoruba-based Gelede philosophical and performative occurrences in the novels� female protagonists. Both novels socio-historical contexts lie in post-Civil Rights, based in the cultural milieu of southern sea-islands. Toward a Black literary space as performativity, this case study seeks to both demonstrate and locate descriptors of Womanism, while considering the philosophical behavior of Gelede as a value of West African women that has been retained in a North American context. Its centrality is concerned with how Naylor and Shange have creatively captured the world views of Black women and how we contemporarily perform our Womanist and spiritual potentiality.

Culturally Sensitive Social Work Practice for the Hmong in the United States

by PaDao Thao, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Mentor: Dr. Steven J. Gold, Department of Sociology, Michigan State University

ABSTRACT:

This is an analysis of the applicability of customary United States social work practice to the needs of the Hmong, a refugee group with origins in a cultural, social and linguistic context very different from that of the contemporary U.S. Given these differences, this research proposes the use of social work practice informed by the knowledge of Hmong history, language and culture as offering the most effective means of assisting this population.

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McNair/SROP Scholars have taken their research skills and knowledge to top university's including UCLA, Case Western Reserve, Emory University, Northwestern University, Boston University, University of Michigan, Washington University in St. Louis, and Michigan State University. We are pleased that our students are responding well to the program services.