About McNair Scholars Program

Dr. Ronald E. McNair was born in Lake City, South Carolina on October 21, 1950. He died in the Space Shuttle Challenger accident on January 28, 1986. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering physics, magna cum laude, from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1971.

In 1976, he received a Ph.D. degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation from MIT, he became a staff physicist at the Hughes Research Lab in Malibu, California. He then joined NASA in 1978 as a candidate astronaut. During Dr. McNair eight years at NASA he logged over 191 hours in space.

That fateful day January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion took the lives of Dr. McNair, and six other crewmen: Mr. F. R. Scobee, Commander M. J. Smith (USN), Lieutenant Colonel E. S. Onizuka (USAF), Dr. J. A. Resnik, Mr. G. B. Jarvis, and Mrs. S. C. McAuliffe.

Eyes On the Stars

StoryCorps, an independent nonprofit, released an animation titled Eyes on the Star. The story narrated by his brother Carl McNair tells the story of how Ronald overcame obstacles in his early life and went on to become a hero in his small hometown in South Carolina.