The biggest surprise to all six Denison students was learning that they were the only undergraduate McNair Scholars invited to the International Journal of Arts and Sciences Conference, which took place in Gottenheim, Germany, in December. They had come to present their summer research findings alongside international doctoral students, professors, and some of the world’s most elite minds.
Phillips was ready for the challenge. He’d spent the previous summer researching and writing a paper called “What Makes You a Black Man?: The Analysis of the Construction of Black Masculinity,” and he couldn’t wait to present it. Applying to attend this conference had been the suggestion of someone familiar with his research, and he encouraged his fellow McNair Scholars at Denison to apply, too.
“We worked our tails off to do the research,” says Phillips. “And we held our own at the conference.” Others of the six projects included Herring’s “The Framing of African-American Hurricane Katrina Victims on CNN and FOX News Networks,” and Owens’ “African American Women’s Presence in US Politics.”
The scholars took a train to Gottenheim, where they presented their research at the International Journal of Arts and Sciences Conference. From left, in front, are Beza Ayalew and Courtney Herring; and in back are Karlin Tichenor, Donterio Porter, Tyra Owens and Charles Phillips.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program is named for a gifted astronaut who died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger during its tragic 1986 flight. The program prepares talented undergrads with strong academic potential and disadvantaged backgrounds for the next steps in higher education — graduate school and doctoral studies.
Lisa Scott, Denison’s director of institutional equity and diversity, says the program challenges students to spend a summer researching an important topic. Undergraduates rarely participate in this conference and others like it, she says, simply because they haven’t completed graduate-level research.
While there, the students traveled in the region. Karlin Tichenor paused by the Rhine in Basel, Switzerland.
If any of the students were nervous going into the conference, it didn’t last long. “It was the most informal thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Tichenor, who noticed the presenters simply read from pages without the aid of elaborate graphics.
But that’s the point, says Scott. The conference seeks to take its participants back in time to when research was exchanged through written notes and face-to-face communication at local venues. It’s the frosting on the cake of all the research conducted during the McNair program, she says, and she encourages all qualified students to participate. “That’s exactly what the liberal arts are for — to go broader and deeper,” she says.
Support for the students’ travel came from the Douglas W. Mabie ’86 and Andrea Ravenscroft Mabie ’87 Endowed Scholarship Fund; the Creed C. Black Endowed Scholarship, established in 2007 by Douglas ’76 and Margaret Black in honor of Doug’s father; and the Denison Provost’s Office, which covered portions of the trip from endowed funds designated for student research and for student travel to give invited academic presentations.
Courtney Herring, Donterio Porter and Tyra Owens at the conference in Gottenheim.
For most of the McNair Scholars, the trip to Germany was their first overseas experience, so each brought home indelible memories, like Porter’s observation that German meat is generally undercooked and German graffiti, inexplicably, is rendered in English.
And as a group, they came home feeling well prepared for future graduate studies and more international travel. “The end is not May 17,” says Porter, referencing graduation day. “There’s a whole different world out there.”
