Three Students Attend National McNair Conference

The conference celebrated the academic accomplishments of undergraduate scholars representing 19 colleges and universities from across the country. The two-day event afforded 81 McNair Scholars an opportunity to present the results of their faculty-mentored research.

Tenzin Choeyang ’19 of Queens, New York, presented findings from her summer project, where she worked with Ivan Ramler, associate professor of statistics, on creating a teaching tool for introductory statistics courses. The statistics program ‘R’ scrapes television show data from the Internet Movie Database (imDb) for students to analyze. The aim of the research is to make statistics more accessible to students from a variety of disciplines through using data from the television show of their choosing.

Scholars also met with graduate program representatives, faculty and graduate students in their fields of study, and attended panel sessions about the graduate school admissions process.

“I learned a lot from this conference,” said Laura Ramirez-Tlapa ’19 of Queens, who also attended. “Paying attention to detail in a graduate school application can make a big different in the rest of your academic future.”

Abigail Enders ’19 of Centreville, Maryland, also attended the conference.

The McNair Scholars Program is a federally funded TRIO program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. It is named in honor of Dr. Ronald E. McNair, a pioneer African American astronaut who died in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. The McNair program is designed to motivate and support students who are underrepresented in graduate education, who meet economic eligibility requirements, and who may be the first in their families to attend college. The program is also meant to increase the attainment of the Ph.D. by students from underrepresented groups.