Senior Sarah Melendez participated in the Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program with political science professor Gabriel Sanchez. Through the program, Melendez completed research on the youth vote for the 2008 presidential election.
Daily Lobo: What is the McNair Program?
Sarah Melendez: The McNair Program is a program for under-represented undergrads. It gives you the opportunity to work with a mentor during the summer and to do research with them.
DL: What were you researching?
SM: I was studying the youth vote during the 2008 election, and I focused more on attitudes and also participation levels. Participation not only as voting, but participation in the sense of rallying, protesting, volunteering for campaigns, donating money, convincing someone else to vote and using the Internet to talk about politics.
DL: What did you find?
SM: I found that, surprisingly, a lot of the normal aspects that would affect the youth, like socioeconomic status, didn’t really affect the youth in their participation levels.
DL: How did you collect your data?
SM: Through my mentor, Dr. Sanchez, I was using the research project he is working on called the Collaborative Multiracial Post Election Survey, which was conducted in 18 states.
DL: What have you done with
your research?
SM: I did a regression analysis on the youth vote, and now I am a part of a second term in McNair called the Research Opportunity Program, so we are kind of building it for next summer, and right now we are doing community based research and we will assess AmeriCorps, the UNM Service Corps and the impact it has on the community, its students and the institution.
DL: What do you hope to find?
SM: My hypothesis is that the UNM Service Corps will have a great impact on not only the students, but also on the communities that the students will go out into.
