McNair Students, Unfazed by Disadvantages or COVID, Target Graduate Study

Zara Williams started working here 20 years ago, just after NJIT joined the federal McNair Scholars Program to help underrepresented students achieve graduate degrees, and has now seen 22 students complete their doctorates.

"Seems like it went pretty quickly," said Williams, the program's assistant director, in reflecting on her office's success. But she said this year's crop of new students will be especially memorable because of the challenges they face in studying during a pandemic.

"I think all of the students have been committed, but I think with this group of students, they really had to go the extra mile. Before COVID, I did get a chance to meet some of them when I was recruiting them. I know they truly missed having that in-lab experience during the summer."

To enter the program, students must meet first-generation and income requirements or be a member of an underrepresented group in graduate education. They must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.2, hold second-semester sophomore or junior status (seniors are considered under special circumstances), major in a STEM field, endeavor to enroll in graduate school by the fall following graduation from NJIT and have a sincere desire to attain a doctoral degree.

Three of the current students are Ricky Palaguachi, Tyler Rodriguez and Jehan Shalabi.

Palaguachi, a junior from Little Ferry who's studying computer science and applied mathematics, spent this summer developing a project to measure the public's concern of COVID policies via Twitter. His primary adviser was Ying Wu College of Computing Prof. James Geller.

Palaguachi, graduate student Michael Renda and other team members used existing algorithms to collect two million tweets on subjects such as business and school closures, distancing mandates and face coverings. The software ranked the tweets as positive, neutral or negative. He was able to see how public perceptions changed as policies from businesses and schools evolved from theoretical concerns to real-world ones. "I think that's one of the most notable outcomes," he said, agreeing that it would also be interesting to study tweets specifically from the NJIT community.

Palaguachi's parents are both immigrants from Ecuador. He said he'd like to study data science or machine learning when he reaches graduate school.

Rodriguez, a junior biomedical engineering major from North Plainfield, studies under Assistant Prof. Saikat Pal in the Newark College of Engineering. He is working on new methods of determining spinal cord injuries by examining computer simulations of bones. He and teammates hope to acquire a large data set of real CT-scan data so they can dig deeper.

Rodriguez said his family came from Puerto Rico. He said he's motivated by their poor health history and by his own interest in all things mechanical and electrical.

Palaguachi and Rodriguez are also both members of Albert Dorman Honors College. Shalabi, another junior from Paterson, transferred to NJIT from more humble roots at Passaic County Community College.

She's studying how to use drones to carry small cellular antennas, which can improve mobile network performance. "They act as flying base stations," Shalabi explained. She is custom-coding in Python and sharing her work into Airsim, which is an open-source drone simulator from Microsoft.

Like her peers, Shalabi is looking forward to her future. A possible goal for her senior project might be real-world testing. "I'm definitely thinking of continuing for my master's in electrical engineering and then my Ph.D. after that," she said. Also like her peers, she started from humble roots and works harder than most — her parents came from Palestine in 1990, she started college at 16 and earned a NASA internship the next year.

Williams and several McNair alumni all said they wish the program was more visible on campus. One went full-circle: Shivon Boodhoo grew up in Trinidad, graduated from Orange High School, received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. all at Newark College of Engineering and now works in the university's research office as director of special projects and faculty awards. She said the McNair program taught her to consider possibilities for herself of which she never dreamed.

"Before the McNair program, I felt that the Ph.D. program was out of reach for me, both because I didn't have previous exposure to research and as an immigrant there was a great deal of pressure to get a job immediately after graduation, which I did," Boodhoo added.

"The program helped tremendously with learning to present my work, effective public speaking and learning to clearly articulate my ideas in non-technical terms," she said. "This training was invaluable when I taught as an adjunct and as I served on several committees over the years, making sure I had a voice that was articulate."

Durga Misra recently became director of the McNair program and is a professor of electrical and computer engineering. He follows Angelo Perna, who served NJIT since 1967 and passed away in July.

Misra has taught many McNair students through the years. Past students, he said, "worked very hard and moved way beyond their situation and status, compared to their initial arrival at NJIT."

"As you have learned, these students are low-income, first-generation college students. … Even though we do a lot of personal counseling to boost their confidence more needs to be done. We are planning to add more activities for the students."