Field Notes on McNair Project

As the first student employer of McNair Scholar Program in Texas A&M University-Commerce, I was opportune to go to the student’s center every morning between the hours of 11am and 1pm to distribute flyers from Weds to Friday for three days. While I was there passing out flyers for the program for the recruitment of students into the program, I discovered that some of the students did not want to be part of the program despite the fact that I explained to them about some of the benefits of the program. Most of the students told me that they don’t like to do research and that they don’t want to go to graduate school because it entails too much writing. Some of them actually took the flyers and said they would think about it. For that three days, a few people responded by coming to the office to submit their applications.

During the second week of publicizing McNair scholars program, I visited BSM to announce to the students who usually go there every Monday for free lunch after I had obtained the permission to do that. In between the lunch hour, I was called out to talk about the program. I came out, stood in front of everyone and talked between five to ten minutes explaining what they stand to gain when they become scholars. At the end of the announcement, I gave time for questions but to my surprise, no one said anything.

Even though, international students were more on that day, but they were still many students who were citizens and did not care to make inquiry about the program. At the end of the lunch, I left some flyers and applications behind with the student director of BSM. I have been doing follow-up but up till now, no one responded unfortunately.

Two days later, a few international students who were present at the BSM lunch time the day I made the announcement asked me if there was anything they could do to qualify, and my response was: “You must be a citizen or a legal resident”. “Too bad” all of them said in unison. I was so surprised to know that international students showed interest to become scholars. Maybe those it is meant for will still come or turn in their applications, I do not know.