… Good News Everywhere You Look. OK, that’s a long headline. It’s the kind of issue you’re going to run into with students like Steven Garza ’13.
I first came across this senior when he gave a presentation about his McNair scholarship work. Over the summer, he had worked with Joe Tullbane (International Education) and a slew of ex-diplomats on the dissemination of Russian weaponry. (That’s the sort of experience the McNair scholarships make possible. Granted to first-generation college students or those from groups traditionally underrepresented, they are designed to prepare undergraduate students for doctoral studies through involvement in research and other scholarly activities.)
At the presentation, three things struck me immediately:
- Joe’s statement that Steven’s work was in line with the experience of a Washington, D.C, think tank: the career environment to which he might, indeed, be headed.
- Steven’s own authoritative presence as he gave his presentation.
- A remark he made about his father, in response to a searching question from a St. Norbert Times student reporter. His father, he said, could never for one minute have imagined the kind of educational opportunities that would be available to his son.
Great story, I thought.
But, as often happens, when you start asking questions and getting to know more about the subject of your story, it’s like Christmas – too many good things at once! We discovered that Steven was also looking forward to a J-term course about the Cuban Revolution – in Cuba. And then we learned he was in line for an internship at the White House – he’s working there right now. What to do? We wanted to tell all three stories, so we did. We ran with:
- the White House piece as a news story in the March @St. Norbert.
- the Cuban story as a feature in your upcoming St. Norbert College Magazine (out next week).
- the McNair story as a video piece, slated as a multimedia piece for the magazine’s online edition.
You can read the first of these here (along with news of Bojan Francuz ’13, who is interning at the European Parliament). And we can promise you the remaining two Garza stories will be worth the wait!
As I was writing this post I visited the McNair Scholarships website, and landed on this short bio about the McNair who began it all. Worth a look, and worth a moment, too, to ponder the reach of this significant program.
