Ronald McNair Program
College access
Exposes McNair scholars to STEM and creative-industry careers, produces recruitment-ready video content, and increases participation and retention on the path to graduate study.
We support music-industry and STEM career exploration, outreach and recruiting, participant retention, and college and career readiness with the SEL books, keynotes, and the recording and music video program.
FAQs
Straight answers.
The emotional and identity dimensions of entering spaces where few people share your background: imposter experience, isolation, and sustaining long-horizon work with delayed reward. These are the attrition factors in doctoral pipelines, and they are rarely addressed by academic preparation alone.
Quote, W-9, invoice. SAM.gov registered. Purchase orders and card accepted.
It addresses the attrition factors in doctoral pipelines that academic preparation does not: imposter experience, isolation, and sustaining long-horizon work with delayed reward.
Directors asking how to improve retention in students at this level know the losses are rarely about capability. Whether a scholar persists depends on advising, funding, and fit as much as anything we provide.
The advanced edition is written for adult readers. For a McNair cohort, programs generally use it as a discussion framework in cohort meetings rather than as an individual workbook — the value is in the shared vocabulary it gives a group.
It usually matters more here than in any other program we work with. McNair exists because doctoral pipelines have not served underrepresented students, and a scholar preparing to enter those spaces is acutely aware of what material assumes about who is reading it. Programs looking for black psychology books, black psychologist books, african american psychology books, mental health books by black authors, or culturally relevant social emotional learning are trying to find scholarship that reflects their scholars rather than treating them as an exception to a norm. Ask us directly what our material does and does not do on that front, and request a sample. Your cohort will evaluate it more accurately than we can describe it, and this is not something to take on a vendor's word.
Yes. Keynote sessions are available for cohort events, symposia, and graduate preparation programming.
Two, actually. As team building — recording requires a group to coordinate and critique each other's work, which builds the peer trust a cohort needs. And as science communication practice, since producing audio or video about your own research is a transferable skill for conference presentations and public scholarship. Sessions can be built around either purpose. Tell us which one you want.
Yes, in the sense that matters for McNair: what sustaining a long-horizon academic career actually requires emotionally, and how scholars navigate spaces where few people share their background. The recording programming also has a practical application — producing audio or video about your own research is a career prep skill for conference presentations, public scholarship, and job talks.
Melody and rhythm aid recall, and cohorts have used the method as a memory device. At the doctoral level the more useful application is usually the shared vocabulary it gives a group rather than individual memorization.
No. We send our own staff to run the programming. We do not train your staff to run it. Recording and production is a skill set, not a procedure. Trying to hand it off in a few hours would be like teaching a doctor to perform surgery in an afternoon — you would get a session that technically happened and a result nobody wants to hear. Scholars use the equipment during the session. Running it is ours.
No. We are supplemental. We do not replace your SEL curriculum, your trauma-informed practice, or any program you already have in place. If you run a core SEL program, keep it — ours adds a music-based component alongside it. If you have trauma-informed protocols, training, and referral pathways, those stay in force exactly as they are. Nothing in our material substitutes for them, and our facilitators are not a substitute for your clinical, counseling, or behavioral staff. Your research mentorship structure and faculty relationships are the program. This is a cohort support addition.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Keynote works for research symposia, cohort gatherings, and graduate preparation events. For a McNair audience it doubles as a model of science communication — complex material delivered so a mixed audience actually retains it.
45 minutes to 2 hours. Most schools book a class period or 90 minutes. The 90-minute format is the one we recommend when you have the room. 45 minutes works for a single class period or a tight bell schedule, and 2 hours suits a half-day event, a grade-level rally, or a Black History Month or Red Ribbon Week program. Tell us your bell schedule and we will fit the session to it rather than asking you to build around us. Purchasing? Quote, W-9, invoice. SAM.gov registered. Purchase orders and card accepted.