The McNair Scholars Program prepares qualified undergraduates for entrance to a PhD program in all fields of study. The goals of the program are to increase the number of first-generation, low-income and/or underrepresented students in PhD programs, and, ultimately, to diversify the faculty in colleges and universities across the country.
UCSB’s Spring 2012 McNair Newsletter includes a “Junior Scholar Profile” of Anthony Hearst who is majoring in Chemical Engineering. Anthony is particularly interested in crop production and methods to accurately collect data to help improve the quality and sustainability of agricultural production. Accordingly, he is doing research in the Department of Geography’s Visualization & Image Processing for Environmental Research Lab—better known as the Viper Lab—under the guidance of Professor Dar Roberts and PhD candidate Keely Roth.
Anthony is pursuing the field of Remote Sensing as it applies to technologies such as global positioning systems, imaging spectrometers, and computer modeling in order to study industrial and ecological processes on a macro scale. He hopes to eventually engage with underrepresented students and spark their interest in studying Atmospheric Science, a field in which there are few minorities.
The McNair Scholars Program was established in memory of physicist and Challenger astronaut Dr. Ronald E. McNair. “The program is one of several TRIO programs funded by the Department of Education supporting the academic achievement of students from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education. The UCSB McNair Scholars Program provides undergraduates with opportunities to participate in academic year and summer research activities. McNair Scholars attend courses, seminars and workshops on topics related to graduate school preparation; complete a research project under the guidance of a faculty mentor; and have the opportunity to present their research at local, regional and national conferences” (source).
