Current Ronald E. McNair Scholars

Take a look at the names and faces below, their majors, and their research interests, and hopefully you will notice that these student scholars are much like you. With hard work and a dedication to serious research, any Blugold could have a chance to take part in this life-changing program.

Sherlyn Alam (she/her) was born in Chicago, Illinois, but she was raised in both Canada and Malaysia. She is a neuroscience major with a minor in public health. She is currently working with her mentor Dr. Crispin Pierce. She is researching both noise disturbances in neighborhoods by measuring the amount of sound and filtering the layers of it, then identifying the potential source of it and finding a solution to minimize it and minimizing respiratory illnesses in children using air ventilation systems. After she graduates, Sherlyn plans to pursue a master’s degree in biomedical sciences with the potential to work in a research lab or go on to medical school.  

Maddie Blong (she/her) is from Washburn, Wisconsin. She is a mathematics major with minors in American Indian studies and Spanish. With her mentor, Dr. Beemer, she is researching community detection of Indigenous beaders on Instagram using network decoding methods. Once she has mastered these methods, she will combine them with her knowledge of community detection algorithms. After she graduates, Maddie hopes to pursue a doctor of mathematics in relation to Indigenous studies. 

Brianna Dean (she/her) is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. She is a psychology major with a minor in sociology. With mentor Dr. J Muehlenkamp, her research is in examining overlapping symptoms between ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in adult populations. They will be developing and administrating surveys in the next two months, then data collection and analysis. After graduation she hopes to attend UW-Stout for their master’s program in clinical counseling and mental health. Then she hopes to become a clinical therapist. 

Morgan Fiebig is from Waukesha, Wisconsin. She is pursuing a mathematics major with a research emphasis and a minor in computer science. Along with her mentor, aBa Mbirika, she is researching second-order linear recurrence sequences modulo m. They have generalized a number of results from the Fibonacci sequence to other second-order linear recurrence sequences and have discovered some interesting behaviors within the fundamental sequence of the period. This summer they hope to further develop the theory which will robustly explain these behaviors and discover deeper connections in the Fibonacci and Pell sequences. After graduation, she hopes to go to graduate school and then work as a researcher.  

Tiffany Miron (she/her) is from Chisago, Minnesota. She is pursuing a major in public history and a minor in music on saxophone. Her research mentor is Dr. Joanne Jahnke-Wegner from the UWEC history department. Her current research project is on women pirates, and specifically how gender was a component within pirate society. This started as a project for her research methods course, where she started with a case study comparison of Blackbeard and Anne Bonny. She will continue developing this project on gender and piracy over the summer. After graduation, she intends to pursue a graduate degree in public history and later pursue a career in the field. 

Olivia Philippon (she/her) is from New London, Wisconsin. She is a sociology major with a minor in Spanish, and a certificate in legal studies. Alongside her mentor Dr. Peter Hart-Brinson, she is researching the interactions between unhoused individuals and business stakeholders and how those interactions socially construct feelings of safety and “safe spaces” in a community. As of now, she has done her literature review, and she will begin her data collection in the form of ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews in June. After she graduates, Olivia wants to go on to earn her doctorate with a concentration in community and urban or public sociology, and one day hopes to become a professor.  

Tia Ravara (she/her) is from San Leandro, California. She is a biology major with a minor in geology. Alongside her mentor, Dr. Jennifer Smith, she has been conducting research since January 2023. Together they have been looking at pictures taken in the field to analyze the activity patterns for animals in California and seeing how much humans affect these activity patterns. After she graduates, Tia plans to take a year off before she heads to graduate school to study ecology and evolution researching biogeochemistry.  

Carissa Saxton is from Fairmont, Minnesota. She is pursuing a rehabilitation science major on the pre-physical therapy track. Her mentor is Dr. Nicholas Beltz, and together they are researching a project titled “Validation of bioelectric impedance analysis to track off-season body composition changes in Division III American football players.” Currently she is working on collecting data and has planned to collect another set in August. After she graduates, Carissa plans to attend graduate school in pursual of a doctorate degree in physical therapy.  

Devin Sobottka (he/him) is from Knapp, Wisconsin. He is an ACS biochemistry major. With his mentor, Dr. Tyler Doyon, he is researching substrate characterization for ring-cleaving dioxygenases. So far, he has been working with a single enzyme testing many different substrates at milligram scale to determine the scope of its ring-cleaving ability and running NMR on the products of those reactions to both confirm product formation and determine the structure of the product. As his research continues his plan is to conduct high throughput screening on the lab's 40 enzyme library. Hits from the screening process will then be investigated. After graduation, he plans to pursue his PhD in biochemistry or organic chemistry. He is hoping to research and develop new ways of using enzymes for pharmaceutical drug development.