Meet the Staff

Kathleen Cargill, M.A., ABD, Director

Kathleen Cargill, McNair Scholars Program Director, is from a low-income, first-generation background and was a non-traditional aged college student. She received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, a Master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Florida, where she is ABD in Anthropology. She has directed the McNair Program successfully for 14 years. Her professional experience includes 14 months as a Student Support Services (SSS) Counselor and 5 years as a Senior Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) Counselor.

As the first director of the McNair Program at CSS, Ms. Cargill developed a logical and easy-to-follow plan for participants to move from application through research to entrance into graduate school (phase system). Other innovations include Excel spreadsheets used to effectively disseminate graduate program/ scholarship/summer research and fellowship information to McNair scholars. Third, Ms. Cargill and her team facilitate 6 academic year seminars and 9 summer skills building seminars designed to prepare participants for graduate application, graduate-level research, and the professional presentation of their research. Fourth, the team developed 'Tool Kits' for the Graduate School Launch, National Fellowships Launch, and Summer Research Launch. Each Tool Kit provides participants with the forms and processes they need to apply for research, scholarships and graduate school.

Ms. Cargill oversees the ongoing development of a network of faculty and administrative support within CSS as well as between CSS and the University of Minnesota - Duluth (UMD) for the McNair participants, and a second network of coordinated services between the CSS and the University of Wisconsin - Superior (UWS) McNair Program. Interested faculty research mentors are oriented to the McNair Program and monitored as they mentor the participants. The Program reports to the Vice President for Academic Affairs and is part of the Academic Leadership Group for The College of St. Scholastica.

Under Ms. Cargill's direction, the McNair Scholars Handbook is now a 90-page guide to the program's components: research, writing, professional presentation of research, professionalism, seminar descriptions, conferences and travel, mentoring, and a calendar of activities with monthly and annual program benchmarks and deadlines. Other handbooks include: Mentors' Handbook and the Parents/Family Handbook.

In order to keep the McNair Program abreast of changes in education on the national and local level, Ms. Cargill uses a network of resources including: the MN ACE Women's Network (State Coordinator 2008-2010), the Council of Graduate Schools, the Council on Undergraduate Research (liaison, Councilor in the Undergraduate Research Program Division 2006-present, andChair of the Program Incubator Committee), the COMPACT for Faculty Diversity, the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science (GEM), National Mentoring Association, the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals, and the National Association of Fellowships Advisors (NAFA, liaison), as well as the state, regional and national TRiO associations. She is also a Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology. The Council on Undergraduate Research awarded Ms. Cargill the 2007 Volunteer of the Year for outstanding leadership.

Phone: 218-723-5910
E-mail: kcargill@css.edu
Office: Tower Hall 2136

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Carrie Taylor Kemp, M.A., Assistant Director

Carrie Taylor Kemp, a St. Scholastica McNair Program alumna, graduated December, 2004 from the University of Minnesota-Duluth with a Master's in English (literary studies concentration). One of her theses focused on integrating an introductory level of broad-based art and literature education to advanced placement high school English students. She began her graduate work at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, serving as an assistant editor for the Irish academic quarterly journal New Hibernia Review. At St. Scholastica she received her Bachelor's degree in English, served as editor and news editor of the CABLE, and studied abroad through the Ireland Program. Since graduate school, Ms. Taylor Kemp has also worked at a Duluth advertising firm.

Ms. Taylor Kemp assists the Director with daily maintenance of the program, including: federal and TRiO regulation compliance, grant writing, APR completion, budget maintenance, inter/intra-campus program marketing and recruiting. She is the lead program advisor, which includes case file management and day-to-day contact with a majority of student participants. Additional tasks include assisting participants in: applying for graduate school, summer undergraduate research, discipline-specific conferences and organizations, and nationally-competitive fellowships and scholarships; visiting graduate schools; facilitating the research model (in coordination with faculty mentors); serving as the main contact for faculty mentors; planning and leading the summer seminars; supervising writing skills by leading GRE writing preparation and personal statement generation; and editing the McNair Scholarly Review.

Professional organizations for which Ms. Taylor Kemp is a member include: College English Association (CEA), where she presented at their annual conference in 2004; Council for Undergraduate Research (CUR), and has attended conferences in 2007 and 2008; the Council for Opportunity in Education (COE), where she attended the annual conference in 2006; and the National Association for Fellowships Advisors (NAFA), having attended the biannual conference in 2007 and assisted in developing an undergraduate research initiative as an institutional-wide expansion-including organizational schema, budget and job descriptions. Internally, Ms. Taylor Kemp serves on the Legislative Committee and has also served on committees to select bibliographic citation and qualitative analysis software for the College.

Phone: 218-723-5944
E-mail: crtaylor@css.edu
Office: Tower 2132

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Pamela Christensen, Administrative Assistant

Pamela Christensen, the Administrative Assistant for McNair program, is from a low-income and first-generation background and has been with the McNair Program since November, 1998. Ms. Christensen has over 100 hours of professional development training.

Working with the institution's Grants Accountant, Ms. Christensen balances the program's expenditures and is the McNair liaison to the Purchasing Department. She coordinates all travel plans for program participants and staff, as well as coordinates major program events such as the Honors Ceremony and the CSS Undergraduate Research Poster Session on campus and at the Capitol Rotunda, St. Paul, MN. She is the McNair liaison to the staff of Information Technology. She develops, implements, maintains, and evaluates the McNair Program's Student Tracking Database, Budget Projection System and Accountability and Documentation Systems using all of this data to prepare reports for College personnel and for the U.S. Department of Education.

Phone: 218-723-5932
E-mail pchriste@css.edu
Office: Tower 2138

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