Ronald McNair,
A MAN OF Honor:
The Ronald McNair Undergraduate Research Program was designed to help encourage students to attend graduate school. Ronald McNair was an astronaut from South Carolina who was killed in the Challenger, spaceship. in 1986. Following his death this program was set up to encourage minority students and first year college students to go to graduate school in order to further their studies in a science field. The program is becoming known in many schools throughout the United States. This past summer nineteen students including myself, were the first group to do the program for the University of South Carolina. We were paid a stipend of $2400 along with a $300 moving in expense and housing expenses. We stayed in Rutledge College a dorm in the horseshoe. We worked with some professors in the Engineering department in order to set the basis for our research. Each student picked their own interest of research put it had to be related to the sustainbility model. This model is something that the Engineering department was working on, and the purpose of it is to find out better ways to sustain our planet and meeting our needs of today without jeopardizing future generations needs. The program lasted eight weeks, I enjoyed myself and I had a chance to meet a lot of cool people. During the summer of 2001, I will be doing another program similar to the McNair program but it is called the MGE (Minority graduate Education), but I will be doing it at North Carolina State Univerisity. I be working with an epidemologist on his research.