"Neither of my parents finished high school, so the fact that I’ve made it to college is incredible,” said William Freeman, a first-year cybersecurity student at the University of Oklahoma Polytechnic Institute (OUPI). “I really enjoy the academic environment.”
This spring, Freeman was one of four OU-Tulsa students honored as an OU McNair Scholar, a prestigious program designed to prepare first-generation and low-income undergraduate students for doctoral programs.
“The McNair Scholars Program is highly competitive. We only accept the best and brightest students,” said Sophia Bolin-Dills, director of the program at OU. “We serve 27 students every two years.”
As part of the program, students are encouraged to conduct research that will be presented at a McNair conference. Faculty mentors provide guidance throughout the research process and assist students with applying to graduate schools. For Freeman, this unique opportunity at OUPI was a key reason he applied to the program.
“As long as circumstances allow, I absolutely plan to go to grad school. I want to see just how far I can go,” Freeman said.
Freeman is currently collaborating with his mentor, Associate Professor of Software Development and Integration John Hassell, Ph.D., on the development of an intuitive tool designed to assist faculty in generating quiz and assessment materials directly from their course content. The goal is to enable instructors to quickly produce banks of multiple-choice questions, appropriately tailored in difficulty, to support both teaching and learning. This tool promises to be a valuable resource, significantly reducing the time faculty spend preparing quizzes and assessments.
Another McNair Scholar, cybersecurity student Ryder Ford, is using the program to benefit the OU-Tulsa community. Ford, along with his mentor, Associate Professor of Applied Artificial Intelligence Greg Macdonald, Ph.D., is leveraging artificial intelligence to create an AI tool to assess simulated patient exams for the OU-Tulsa School of Community Medicine’s simulation lab.
“Our goal is to design an AI assessment that generates a graded evaluation, providing both scores and targeted areas for improvement,” Ford explained. "Such a tool will reduce the time and effort required to perform the assessment allowing more timely feedback on the encounter.”
Both Ford and Freeman joined with Josiah Rhodes in Spring 2025 to accompany Shelbie Raney in this school year's McNair Scholars cohort. All are eager to continue their research throughout their time at OUPI.
To learn more about OUPI and explore its opportunities, visit ou.edu/polytechnic.
