Samuel Griffin and Jake Webster – UA Robotics Team/Engineering
- June 2nd, 2017
- in Student Spotlight
The Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program is a federal TRIO program funded at 151 institutions across the United States and Puerto Rico. Each year in November, The University of Alabama invites McNair Scholars to visit our campus for a day to learn more about graduate programs. Scholars interact with current graduate students, tour the campus and the facilities, and meet with faculty members in their prospective departments. This year, students traveled from Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, and West Virginia to participate in the day’s activities.
Mary Helen Deck enrolled in the Manderson MBA program in Fall 2015. She had looked for a business program that would welcome her non-traditional pathway and that would equip her for the work she was most interested in. Manderson filled both requirements for her.
Mary Helen earned her Bachelors of Science (2013) at the University of Chicago where she studied sociology and political science. Her bachelor’s thesis was on why people volunteer in presidential campaigns. While a student at Chicago, Mary Helen worked as a docent in the Smart Museum of Art and interned with Teach for America as a summer intern helping to manage logistics, and then as a recruiter during the academic year. She also studied abroad, serving as an intern for a nonprofit organization in Cape Town, South Africa during the summer of 2007 and the following fall studied in Paris, France.
Before entering graduate school, Mary Helen worked as a teacher at KIPP Delta Collegiate High School as a Teach For America Corps member. It was her experiences in Cape Town and with Teach For America that solidified Mary Helen’s commitment to helping communities build their own strengths to offer opportunity to all persons. The versatility of Manderson’s MBA Program and opportunities to engage with the community and campus were very important in her graduate school decision.
Since arriving at The University of Alabama, Mary Helen has been engaged in several activities through the MBA Program. She is currently the Co-Captain of the MBA Case Team, is a graduate teaching assistant, and has volunteered with various organizations. Moreover, this summer she interned for CBRE and after graduation in May 2017, she will be working full time for CBRE in Charlotte, North Carolina. 
Rachel Thibodeau is a 4th year graduate student in the Department of Psychology working under the mentorship of Dr. Ansley Gilpin. She completed her undergraduate degree in 2013 at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX, and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Developmental Science and Cognitive Psychology with a minor in statistics at The University of Alabama (UA). Motivated by recent declines in academic performance, Rachel’s research interests focus on discovering mechanisms to facilitate emerging cognitive, emotional, and social skills in typically developing and at-risk children. Her Master’s thesis, featured in UA’s Three-Minute Thesis competition, tested the effects of a novel pretend-play intervention on children’s cognitive development. Rachel received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention for her Master’s thesis project. From this work, Rachel developed her dissertation research exploring how pretend-play can serve as a protective factor to minimize deficits in school readiness in an at-risk Head Start population. Rachel was recently awarded a competitive 2-year dissertation grant from the Administration for Children and Families to fund this research. Outside of her own research, Rachel has served as a graduate student research assistant on two externally funded studies where she has mentored over 150 undergraduate research assistants as they collected data from children and families throughout the community. Rachel has also recently established a Living Laboratory partnership with the McWane Science Center in Birmingham in order to further engage the community in her research. Through this partnership, Rachel has developed a new service learning psychology course for undergraduate students to learn about topics in child development through hands-on activities with children and parents at McWane. During her time at UA, Rachel has been the recipient of a Graduate Council Fellowship, Dean’s Merit Award, Graduate Council Research Fellowship, and an Outstanding Research by a Mater’s Student (Department of Psychology) award. She has 3 peer-reviewed publications and 14 presentations. Rachel has taught 3 courses at UA and currently serves as a representative for the Psychology Graduate Student Association. She is very grateful for the mentorship and guidance from the faculty in the Department of Psychology and for all the opportunities she has been given as a graduate student at The University of Alabama.