CSUF undergrads tackle grad-level research on Skid Row, in outer space
For many students who are low-income, from an underrepresented demographic or the first in their family to attend college, just getting a bachelor’s degree is a feat.
At Cal State Fullerton, one group of such students looks beyond undergraduate graduation — way beyond.
The Ronald McNair Scholars Program helps prepare such students for a master’s or doctoral program before they’ve even finished their undergraduate work.
The students participate in research and scholarly activities, including completion of a “McNair thesis” under a CSUF faculty mentor, conference attendance and presentations, graduate school tours, on-going academic advisement, and professional development.
The scholars also participate in a summer institute — a series of workshops on time management and developing a graduate-level research project with a faculty mentor.
Eighteen McNair scholars recently completed about two months of graduate-level research at universities across the map. Topics included Mediterranean diets, schizophrenia and black holes.
Shayna La Scala partnered with USC researchers to study Los Angeles County homelessness and access to water, sanitation and hygiene to guide on-the-ground responses to their needs.
“We went beyond the numbers and walked the communities to ‘ground truth’ our data,” said La Scala. “We interviewed over 100 individuals living on the streets of Skid Row. We also interviewed employees in local businesses in downtown Los Angeles to gauge how they respond to the homeless population.”
In a second project at UC San Diego, La Scala studied how some drugs interact with the brain’s mGluR5 receptor and whether those reactions might show potential to serve as treatment for schizophrenia.
McNair scholar Darnell Calderon, a sociology major, partnered with grad students at UCI to explore coping mechanisms among families of incarcerated men. He’s also conducting research on determinants of anti-immigration attitudes.
Denyz Melchor, a physics major, traveled to Germany and Monash University in Australia to investigate the populations of black holes and the signatures of gravitational wave backgrounds of all distant binary black hole mergers. CSUF has been a center of research on gravitational waves.
Kimberly Hardaway partnered in a UCI study of how a Mediterranean diet of whole grains, nuts and extra virgin olive oil can reduce inflammation and slow progression of the blood cancers myeloproliferative neoplasms. The human services major discovered that learning more about the diet could empower patients to self-manage their symptoms and improve biomarkers associated with the disease.
She also learned that research doesn’t always result in lengthy presentations of difficult-to-understand slides. She created a poster and a card as a handout for doctors to share references to websites with recipes and details on how to alleviate symptoms.
“The project definitely helped me with my major and helped me with the research needed to create a poster about my findings,” said Hardaway, who has published research entitled “Money Hungry Doctors.”
“But now I know, with the ability to do research, there won’t ever be a day when I’m not learning or eager to learn more,” she added.
The McNair Scholars program is funded by the U.S. Department of Education. It was created to honor Ronald E. McNair, Challenger astronaut and physicist.
To apply
CSUF students from underrepresented backgrounds who have demonstrated exceptional academic ability and interest in pursuing graduate studies are invited to apply to be a McNair scholar. Go to fullerton.edu/mcnair/prospective/index.php or call 657-278-7667.
Cal State Fullerton News Service contributed to this report.