The classic three pillars of an academic position are teaching, research, and service. While the University Administration sometimes seems to think of "service" as being synonymous with "sitting on committees", many of us enjoy taking the broader view.
As part of my service activities, this weekend I had the pleasure to talk with a roomful of fantastic young scholars from the McNair program (officially known as the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program). The program was named after one of the astronauts who was killed in the Challenger disaster). He was also a physicist with a Ph.D. from MIT. The McNair program identifies promising undergraduates who either are low-income, are first-generation college students, or are from an underrepresented minority group. It then provides extensive mentoring to encourage the students to continue on to graduate school. The mentoring takes the form of supporting the students in research projects in their own ...
