Hey all! Thank you for reading my blog and taking the time to better look at my experiences as a McNair scholar and navigating what it means to be a student researcher. Now that we are getting closer to the summer, I am getting antsy to begin working on my project. This summer is incredible for me: I am moving into my first apartment off campus, I am living in Eau Claire all summer to focus on my research, and I am so incredibly excited to be taking the next steps to my life as a professional.
Before I could begin my research, I needed to pick a mentor to guide me, provide expertise and facilitate my experiences in McNair. Picking a mentor is a crucial step in ensuring my success. Who I pick as a mentor will determine my path as an undergraduate researcher, which inherently impacts my grad school opportunities. I kept three things in mind while deciding who to choose as my mentor: my professional and personal relationship with them, their previous experience and research, and their willingness to foster a project, as well as present and publish it possibly in the future.
The mentor that I picked for my research over the summer is Dr. Jonathan Rylander. I know Dr. Rylander professionally from working in the Center for Writing Excellence, which is something I am incredibly passionate about. There, students come to us looking to strengthen their writing and skills, as we make writing more accessible and intersectional. With his prior research focusing predominantly on queer studies and higher education, I knew that he would be a good fit for my intentions in research. We have been meeting biweekly for the past semester, reading articles, writing grants, and discussing research.
I’ve known since before I even was accepted into McNair that I wanted to use my research for queer advocacy, by focusing on the ways in which higher education sometimes fails to meet the needs of queer students at their institution. I have been in task forces, interned in resource centers, facilitated gender affirming hormone therapy appointments, and really focused on what it means to be a queer advocate in Eau Claire. I’ve been the cog in the machine of the institution, and I know that the folks around me, as well as myself, work incredibly hard to give students the resources they need to be successful and have a safe and accessible college experience. I want to focus on the disconnect between queer college resources, and the needs of queer college students.