Sophomore Monique Cadle and classmate Chris Reina, a junior, have been accepted into the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program through Claremont Graduate University, supporting six weeks of research study, graduate-level courses, room and board, and a stipend.
Ronald McNair was a first-generation, low-income student from South Carolina who graduated magna cum laude in physics from North Carolina A&T State University in 1971. In 1976, he obtained a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McNair was one of 35 applicants, selected from a pool of 10,000, for NASA's Space Shuttle Program, and was the second African American to fly into space.
Along with six crew members, McNair tragically died when the Challenger space shuttle exploded in January 1986. The federally funded national McNair program, created in 1986, is dedicated to preserving the physicist's legacy of scholarship and accomplishments. McNair fellowships encourage first-generation, lower-income and underrepresented undergraduate students to pursue graduate studies by providing opportunities to define goals, engage in research, and develop the skills and student/faculty mentoring relationships critical to successes at the doctoral level. There are more than 150 McNair programs at universities across the nation.
While at CGU, Los Angeles native Cadle, an international/intercultural studies major with a leadership sequence, will be conducting field research on gentrification in South Central Los Angeles.
Reina, a McKenna Scholar from Escondido, will conduct research related to the role that communication and other social skills play in determining successful transformational leaders. He is a psychology major with a leadership sequence.
------By Samantha Stecker '08