The Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, also referred to as the McNair Scholars Program, is a

United States Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a cabinet-level department of the United States government, originating in 1980. The department began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and ...

initiative with the goal of increasing "attainment of PhD degrees by students from underrepresented segments of society," including first-generation low-income individuals and members from

racial Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of va ...

and

ethnic An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

groups historically underrepresented in graduate programs.Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program: Purpose

History

The McNair Program is part of the federal TRIO programs, a group of educational opportunity programs created and governed by the

Higher Education Act of 1965 The Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) () was legislation signed into Law of the United States, United States law on November 8, 1965, as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society domestic agenda. Johnson chose Texas State University (t ...

and its subsequent amendments. The Act and its programs were part of

Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), also known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. He became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, under whom he had served a ...

Great Society The Great Society was a series of domestic programs enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the United States between 1964 and 1968, aimed at eliminating poverty, reducing racial injustice, and expanding social welfare in the country. Johnso ...

program and were designed to address the lack of representation of disadvantaged groups in higher education. The name TRIO comes from the fact that there were originally three programs, but with revisions to the act, TRIO now encompasses over half a dozen programs including

Upward Bound Upward Bound is a federally funded educational program within the United States. The program is one of a cluster of programs now referred to as Federal TRIO Programs, TRiO, all of which owe their existence to the federal Economic Opportunity Act ...

, Educational Talent Search, Veterans Upward Bound and Student Support Services.U.S. Department of Education, A Profile of Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program: 1999–2000, Washington, DC, 2002. Notable alumni of the TRIO programs include

Oprah Winfrey Oprah Gail Winfrey (; born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American television presenter, talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, ''The Oprah Winfrey Show' ...

John Quiñones John Quiñones (born May 23, 1952) is an American journalist and host. After earning a degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he became an ABC News correspondent for '' 20/20'', ''Nightline'' and ''Good Morning America' ...

Angela Bassett Angela Evelyn Bassett (born August 16, 1958) is an American actress. Known for her work in film and television since the 1980s, she has received List of awards and nominations received by Angela Bassett, various accolades, including a Primetime ...

, Franklin Chang-Diaz, José M. Hernández,

Donna Brazile Donna Lease Brazile ( ; born December 15, 1959) is an American political strategist, campaign manager, and political analyst who served twice as acting Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). She is currently an ABC News contributor, ...

Patrick Ewing Patrick Aloysius Ewing Sr. (born August 5, 1962) is a Jamaican-American basketball coach and former professional player who is a basketball ambassador for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA), where he played most o ...

Henry Bonilla Henry Bonilla (born January 2, 1954) is an American politician and former congressman who represented Texas's 23rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. He was defeated in his bid for re-election by Ciro Rodriguez, ...

, and

Viola Davis Viola Davis ( ; born August 11, 1965) is an American actress and film producer. List of awards and nominations received by Viola Davis, Her accolades include both the Triple Crown of Acting and EGOT. ''Time (magazine), Time'' named her one of ...

. The program was named after African American scientist

Ronald McNair Ronald Erwin McNair (October 21, 1950 – January 28, 1986) was an American NASA astronaut and physicist. He died at the age of 35 during the launch of the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' on mission STS-51-L, in which he was serving as one of th ...

. In 1986, McNair died aboard the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' with the rest of his crew when the shuttle started to disintegrate shortly after its launch.

Administration

The Department of Education makes grants to higher education institutions (or combinations of institutions) to administer the program for eligible students.U.S. Department of Education,
Ronald E. Mcnair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program: Eligibility
" (accessed June 29, 2020). In 2001, the average grant awarded was $229,396. The program provides various activities to prepare students for doctoral study. These include academic advising, workshops, advice on graduate school applications and financial aid, test preparation, research conferences, and graduate school visits.U.S. Department of Education. Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program 2002–05 Facts and Figures at a Glance, Washington, DC, 2007. Undergraduate research opportunities and faculty mentorship are also an integral part of the program. John T. Ishiyama and Valerie M. Hopkins, "Assessing the Impact of a Graduate School Preparation Program on First-Generation, Low-Income College Students at a Public Liberal Arts University." Journal of College Student Retention 4 (2003), 4.

Eligibility criteria

Higher education institutions admit participants into their program who are "college students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have demonstrated strong academic potential." At least two-thirds of the participants in a grantee's program must be low income, first-generation students. Low-income is defined as family income that did not exceed 150 percent of the poverty line in the previous year. First-generation is defined as a student whose parents did not receive a bachelor's degree. The remaining percentage of participants can be from racial and ethnic groups traditionally underrepresented in graduate study. Underrepresented groups include

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

/Black,

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

, and American Indian/

Alaskan Native Alaska Natives (also known as Native Alaskans, Alaskan Indians, or Indigenous Alaskans) are the Indigenous peoples of Alaska that encompass a diverse arena of cultural and linguistic groups, including the Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlin ...

. When determining eligibility using the underrepresented criteria, students can be accepted at the discretion of the

Secretary of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

from a group not listed above if the group is shown to be underrepresented in certain disciplines through statistics. According to the Department of Education, as of 2007, "as a policy issue,"

Native Hawaiians Native Hawaiians (also known as Indigenous Hawaiians, Kānaka Maoli, Aboriginal Hawaiians, or simply Hawaiians; , , , and ) are the Indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaiʻi was settled at least 800 years ago by Polynesian ...

and other

Pacific Islanders Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subreg ...

(for example, people with origins in

Guam Guam ( ; ) is an island that is an Territories of the United States, organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. Guam's capital is Hagåtña, Guam, Hagåtña, and the most ...

American Samoa American Samoa is an Territories of the United States, unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States located in the Polynesia region of the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. Centered on , it is southeast of the island count ...

Mariana Islands The Mariana Islands ( ; ), also simply the Marianas, are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, between the 12th and 21st pa ...

, etc.) are considered underrepresented.

Program today

While the first grants were made to 14 institutions in 1989, the program now exists on over 200 campuses nationwide. In 2001, about 70 percent of participants were low-income, first-generation students, and about 30 percent were from underrepresented racial groups; women accounted for 67 percent of McNair participants. McNair participants have also been shown to enroll in graduate programs at a higher rate than other first-generation, low-income students across the country.John T. Ishiyama and Valerie M. Hopkins, "Assessing the Impact of a Graduate School Preparation Program on First-Generation, Low-Income College Students at a Public Liberal Arts University." Journal of College Student Retention 4 (2003), 4. McNair Scholars have gone on to attend and receive doctoral degrees from major universities,

References

External links

Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program

McNair Scholars Program

Schools with McNair Scholar Programs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ronald E. Mcnair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program United States Department of Education Federal assistance in the United States