FEATURED SPEAKERS
Friday, July 18, at 6:30 p.m.
Keynote Speaker:
Lori Francis
Assistant Professor in Biobehavioral Health and
the Center for Human Development
Family Research in Diverse Contexts
Dr. Lori Francis is an assistant professor of biobehavioral health and in the Center for Human Development and Family Research in Diverse Contexts at Penn State. She is a developmental psychologist with expertise in early childhood influences on problematic eating behaviors and the development of overweight and obesity.
Francis is a McNair alumna of the State University of New York – University of Buffalo McNair program. She received her doctorate in human development and family studies from Penn State in 2003. After completing her degree, Francis spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow under the guidance of Dr. Leann Birch, distinguished professor of human development and family studies and director of the Center for Childhood Obesity Research. Her research has focused on factors within the immediate family environment that promote inadequate growth patterns in children, particularly those that influence sedentary behavior and poor dietary patterns. The common link through her research is the endeavor to understand the ways in which external influences, including parenting practices, emotion, television viewing, stress, and poverty influence children's self-regulatory capacities, and the extent to which self-regulation is linked to weight status and excessive weight gain.
Francis is a Health Disparities Scholar, funded by the National Institute of Health's National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities through 2008, and a Cardiovascular Health Disparities Fellow, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute through 2009. Through this funding, Francis is committed to conducting research that increases our understanding of the factors that contribute to the disproportionate burden of obesity in children from low-income and minority families, with the ultimate goal of developing an intervention program to prevent the development of obesity in young children. Francis's current research aims to identify family and neighborhood environments that produce the best health outcomes for children, and protect against metabolic and cardiovascular risk.
Her teaching interests include cultural health psychology, ecological and family systems theory in behavior modification, and developmental approaches to disease prevention in children and adolescents. At Penn State, Francis has served as a trusted and well-respected faculty adviser and mentor to students in both the McNair Scholars and Summer Research Opportunity Programs.
Saturday Luncheon
Saturday, July 19 at 11:45 a.m.
Featured Speaker:
Donald Asher
"America's Job Search Guru"
Managing Partner
Asher Associates
San Francisco, California
Donald Asher is an internationally acclaimed author and speaker specializing in the field of careers and higher education. He is the author of ten books, which are available worldwide in English and have been translated into Korean and Portuguese. He is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, CareerJournal.com and CollegeJournal.com; education columnist for MSN Encarta, one of the top worldwide destinations on the Web; and the career columnist for US Airways Magazine, with 2.7 million readers monthly. In the past he has been a contributing writer for Dow Jones publications such as The National Business Employment Weekly and Managing Your Career magazines; the NACE Journal; the San Francisco Chronicle; the San Francisco Examiner; Monster.com's college edition; MonsterTRAK.com; award-winning career portals JobStar.org and WetFeet.com; the Los Angeles Times' career development web site, etc.
Known in the United States as “America's Job Search Guru,” Asher is a consultant to top MBA programs and undergraduate institutions nationwide on hidden-job-market and self-directed-search issues. For more than a decade he has served as the keynote speaker for the Career Development Series of national teleconferences sponsored by the University of Tennessee. He presents at more than 100 colleges and universities annually. He has been a featured speaker at the annual conference of the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals, the National Teleconference on Graduate Admissions, and the national McNair conferences at Penn State and Delavan, Wisconsin.
Asher’s books of interest include Who Gets Promoted, Who Doesn't, and Why; Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way into the Graduate School of Your Choice (the best-selling guide to the graduate admissions process); Cool Colleges for the Hyper-Intelligent, Self-Directed, Late Blooming, and Just Plain Different; How to Get Any Job with Any Major; Asher's Bible of Executive Resumes; The Overnight Resume; and From College to Career. In 2007, Who Gets Promoted was named a Top Ten Business Book of the Year by national career columnist Joyce Lain Kennedy.
When not on the road, Asher divides his time between San Francisco and northern Nevada.
Closing Breakfast Session
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 9:00 a.m.
McNair Alumni Panel: Life beyond the Bachelor's Degree
Featured Panelists:
Saalim Carter
Doctoral Student – History
University of Chicago
Penn State McNair Alumni, Class of 2007
B.A., Penn State, History, 2007
Maria Gutierrez-Jaskiewicz
Doctoral Student – Egyptian Art and Archaeology
University of California-Berkeley
Penn State McNair Alumni, Class of 2005
B.A., Penn State, Art History, 2005
Dr. Angela Hess
Assistant Professor of Anatomy
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Penn State University McNair Alumni, Class of 1998
B.S., Penn State, Microbiology, 1998
Ph.D., University of Iowa, Human Anatomy and Physiology, 2002
Dr. Michelle Jones-London
Scientist/Program Director
National Institutes of Health
Penn State University McNair Alumni, Class of 1996
B.S., Penn State, Biology, 1996
Ph.D., Penn State, Neuroscience, 2001
Joshua Walker
Doctoral Student – Atmospheric Sciences
University of California-Davis
Penn State McNair Alumni, Class of 2007
B.S., Penn State, Meteorology, 2007
service of McNair Scholars Program, The Graduate School Office of Graduate Educational Equity, and Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity
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