3rd Annual Hill-Robinson McNair Lecture

Reposted from our partners from the McNair Scholars Program. Original Post to RSVP can be found here.

The UMBC McNair Scholars Program will present the 3rd Annual Hill-Robinson McNair Lecture, named in honor of Cynthia M. Hill, Former UMBC Associate Provost & Founding UMBC McNair Director, and Thomas Robinson, PhD., Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and McNair Research Methods Faculty for over 28 years. All are welcome and encouraged to attend, but advanced registration is required.

Annually, we will highlight a lecturer who is an accomplished UMBC McNair alum or UMBC faculty/staff member who is an alum of a McNair program from another university. This year’s lecturer will be Dr. Antione D. Taylor, Clinical Psychologist, Adjunct Assistant Professor, UMBC, Dr. Taylor is an alumnus of UMBC as a proud McNair Scholar. Click here to read Dr. Taylor’s full biography.

Title of Lecture: The Relation between Discrimination and Cognitive Function: Moderating and Mediating Factors

Discrimination is a chronic stressor that disproportionately affects African Americans. Chronic stress itself is a risk factor that has been linked to a plethora of negative brain health outcomes across the lifespan in both animal and human models that include damaging changes in brain structure and function, cognitive decline and increased risk for dementia. Despite an increasingly aging population, and that African Americans are disproportionately burdened by cognitive decline and dementia, little research has examined the relations of discrimination to cognitive functioning among African Americans. Using data from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span study, multiple regression analyses were conducted on a sample of 946 socioeconomically diverse African Americans to examine the interactive relations of discrimination (assessed by the Williams’ Everyday Discrimination Scale), age and poverty status on cognitive functioning. Further analyses examined potential biobehavioral mediators of the relation of discrimination to performance on neuropsychological measures. Dr. Taylor will discuss the results of these analyses.

The 2021 Hill-Robinson McNair Lecture is co-sponsored by: The UMBC McNair Scholars Program, The Dresher Center for the Humanities, The Center for Social Science Scholarship, Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies, Department of Psychology, and Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health.

For more information, please contact Michael A. Hunt, Program Director, UMBC McNair Scholars Program, michaelahunt@umbc.edu.