LSU McNair Scholars Program

McNair Alumni Natasha Lee-Johnson continuing to do great things! Congratulations NaTasha!

Congratulations to doctoral student Natasha Lee-Johnson on receiving TWO recent awards!

Natasha was awarded the American Association for University Women (AAUW) American Dissertation Award as well as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Research Dissertation Award.

The RWJF award will help fund Natasha's dissertation research on the pregnancy-related decision-making of Black women in Louisiana. She plans on first engaging with qualitative research through autoethnography of her own pregnancy and then conducting interviews with Black women in Louisiana. Natasha says this award opens up a world of possibilities such as traveling and assembling a professional team to allow her to dive deeper into her research and make a bigger impact.

The AAUW award is a nationally prestigious and highly competitive award that Natasha will use to support her final year of writing her dissertation. She says the award is a pivotal step toward realizing her goal of advancing health equity. It will alleviate financial strains as she becomes a new mother, immerse her into her mixed method research, and bolster her academic credentials for future opportunities all to become an impactful maternal health researcher.

Congratulations Natasha!

McNair Scholars, Kayla Dearman is combining creativity and scientific inquiry.

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Art + Design Senior Kayla Dearman has created and mastered the perfect technique to emulate water for stop-motion animation! Dearman’s technique was created with support from the LSU McNair Research Scholars program and LSU Discover

🔗 read more at www.lsu.edu/mediacenter/news/2023/10/05_dearman-animation.php

LSU grad student Alejandra Ham is avidly researching breast cancer with her passion to make a difference in the fight against the disease.

Watch: https://youtu.be/SqeUHpRCCRw

It was after seeing Star Trek's Captain Uhura, Ronald E. McNair set his eyes on the stars. May his memory "live long and prosper." Happy Star Trek Day! https://youtu.be/okF5UGpivR8

Today we celebrate President Lyndon Johnson Day. President Johnson helped create the TRIO programs an other supports for educational opportunity.

We recognize the hard work and sacrifices made by the pioneers in the suffrage movement.

LSU McNair Welcomes all our Tigers back. We know it's going to be a radical fall semester!

My Graphic See the graphic

The National TRIO Alumni Association would like to congratulate, Alumna Samantha LeBouef, a Ph.D. student in Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota on being chosen out of 100 doctoral students within the U.S. and Canada to receive a prestigious $20,000 P.E.O. Scholar Award from the P.E.O. Sisterhood. She was nominated by P.E.O. Chapter R of St Paul, Minnesota.

Samantha is a 2016 graduate of Louisiana State University, where she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, among many other honors.

Samantha, a doctoral candidate who will graduate in May 2023, has authored several articles in the premier family and education scientific journals. Her Ph.D. research focuses on first generation college students’ (FGCS) experiences of family support both during and after college, and the implications of that support for student success and well-being.

The goal of her work is to challenge the narrative surrounding FGCS which suggests that because neither of their parents obtained a four year college degree, these students begin college at a deficit. By leveraging FGCS family and diversity as strengths she hopes to improve the FGCS experience and ultimately student success. Samantha is poised to make a contribution to the research but also to the ways in which we support and mentor first generation college students not just into college but to thrive throughout college. This work is setting a critical foundation for her future faculty career.

The P.E.O. Scholar Awards program, established in 1991, provides substantial merit-based awards for women of the U.S. and Canada who are pursuing a doctoral-level degree at an accredited college or university. P.E.O. (Philanthropic Educational Organization) has helped more than 116,000* women pursue educational goals by providing over $383 million* in grants, scholarships, awards, and loans.

To learn more about P.E.O., its powerful educational philanthropies and see stories of women who have benefited from the programs, visit peointernational.org

Congratulations, Samantha!

We want to congratulate all of our research scholars to finishing a successful semester!

Congratulations to Riley Cantrell for presenting at LSU Discover Day! She placed 2nd for Humanities and Social Sciences senior college and 1st place overall for the Poster Presentation category.

Congratulations to Fredlicia Phillips for presenting her research at LSU Discover Day! Phillips also placed 2nd place in Manship School of Mass Communications.

Congratulations to Exquisite Williams who presented her research on, "Tales from Ladouleur: Fictive Grief and Blackness through the Lens of Fairytales" at LSU Discover Day!

Congratulations to McNair Scholar, Charity Williams, for presenting her research at LSU Discover Day! She placed 1st place in overall Visual Display and in Manship School of Mass Communication.

We want to congratulate all of our scholars who presented at the LSU Discover Day conference!

Today is the Discover Day conference! We encourage students to attend to see all the work undergraduate researchers have been doing!

Come to the Diversity and Inclusion Networking Event to learn about job openings and future opportunities with employers who value inclusivity in their everyday practices.

As this application cycle closes, we want to remind students of the benefits of our program and how we help close educational disparities! We look forward to bringing in a new cohort this semester.

The application window is coming to a close tomorrow at 11:59pm! We encourage all prospective scholars to submit applications and advance their undergraduate career.

We encourage our scholars to follow this guide to ensure research proposals are done correctly!

When considering the financial obligations of graduate school, we want to remind students that our research scholars have special privileges to help alleviate these costs!

Today is the priority deadline for the McNair program! We want to remind interested students of the many benefits of summer research!

Happy Trio Day! Trio programs have been around since the 1960s, and since their inception has allowed eligible students to succeed in post-secondary education! The benefits include personal and academic career counseling, career guidance, instruction, mentoring, and tutoring!

With it being Black History Month, we want to honor the courage of Ronald E. McNair. As a young boy, McNair refused to leave a segregated library and was later escorted out. This same library would later be named after his legacy. Thank you Ronald E. McNair!

We encourage students to attend this LSU Discover workshop to gain essential writing skills!

Congratulations to McNair scholar, Fredlicia Phillips, for being rewarded a LSU Discover Project Grant!

We look forward to seeing all of our scholars again and setting new guidelines for the semester.

With the start of a new school year, we want to encourage students to use on campus resources to help their mental health and wellness stay on course.

We welcome back our scholars for the Spring 2022 semester!