Summer research projects are a popular choice for Macalester students, but Mariah Geiger ’15 (Farmington, Minn.) went a little further afield to do hers.

Geiger, an international studies major and community/global health concentrator, was named a McNair Scholar at the University of Minnesota last year, the first one from Macalester in many years.

The McNair Scholars program seeks to increase racial and income diversity among graduate students.  To this end they offer a yearlong program of seminars and support to qualified undergrads, including a summer-long research project (with stipend) during which students are paired with U of Minnesota professor-mentors.

Geiger’s research concerned how to share with a community the results of public health research, in particular studies aimed at preventing tobacco and other drug use among Latino teens. She was partnered with Jean. L. Forster of the U of M’s Department of Epidemiology.

Now back at Mac for her senior year, Geiger will continue to attend McNair seminars designed to help its scholars enter graduate school. She also plans to apply for a Fulbright that would allow her to do ethnographic research in Ecuador, the country where she studied for a semester last year. “McNair has really prepared me to do that kind of research,” she says.

After working in public health for a year or two, Geiger hopes to earn a master’s degree in public health or a PhD in anthropology.

Meanwhile, she’s enjoying one more aspect of being a McNair Scholar: Geiger and her mother are the first family to have two generations represented in the program. Geiger’s mother, Melody Geiger, was a University of Minnesota student when she took part in the program two decades ago. Today, having since earned a master’s degree, she works in student support services at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Says Mariah, “My mom has been a big inspiration for me.”

November 5 2014

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