McNair Faculty Mentors

Among the variety of resources that we offer to our McNair scholars at St. Edward’s University, one of its most innovative and unique is the Pre-Graduate School Partnership.

This mentorship program pairs McNair Scholars with seasoned UT graduate students, who are also McNair Scholars, in their area of study to learn about unique aspects of graduate study. McNair Scholars and their mentors design the specific details and tasks of the partnership experience. Activities, assignments and tasks are determined through negotiation between scholars and their graduate student mentors, and a partnership contract ensures that there is both structure to and accountability for the experience.

Some examples of activities might include:

• attending graduate classes, seminars and departmental research colloquia,
• observation of graduate student teaching,
• discussions of an academic discipline, graduate study and career development with faculty and graduate students,
• attending meetings of graduate professional organizations, journal groups, lab sessions and other academic gatherings for graduate students and faculty, and
• undertaking a research project.