McNair Scholars 6th Annual Symposium: What a treat!

Today I attended the UVM McNair Scholars Symposium and was struck by the poise, knowledge, and presentation skills these young people possessed. I was able to stay for three of the presentations. The topics were impressive: Refugee Resettlement in VT, Affirmative Action from the African American perspective, and Improving support for African American students at two predominately white institutions. I couldn’t help but think about the amazing experiences these scholars had over the course of the summer in the McNair program. Each scholar gained the experience of doing authentic research, presentation skills for their conference at Penn State, as well as UVM, and learned to answer complex questions about their research in front of an audience.
Each year the Center for Teaching and Learning works with the McNair Scholars Program to kick off the summer with a two day “Laptop Training”. We have the pleasure of meeting the Scholars and working with them on a variety of research software as well as presentation skills. I hope they get as much out of that training, as I did watching them present at the Symposium. I was very proud of them and all that they accomplished this summer. I know they all have bright futures ahead of them as UVM graduates and McNair Scholars.