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Growing up in the small, rural town of Winnebago, Minnesota, Emily Hynes ’18 had never personally known anyone who had earned a Ph.D.

Even as she began her first year at St. Olaf College, earning a doctorate or pursuing a career in research was not on her radar.

“I hadn’t considered that as a possibility any more than I had considered becoming an Olympic swimmer or astronaut,” Hynes says wryly.

Then the TRIO McNair Program at St. Olaf showed her what was possible.

The TRIO McNair Scholars Program is a graduate school preparatory program funded by the U.S. Department of Education and sponsored by St. Olaf. The TRIO McNair Program was founded in 1989 and initiated at St. Olaf College in 2007. It has been led for decades on campus by Janis Johnson, who recently retired, and longtime colleague and now–Director Melissa Hinderscheit Melgar ’04. The St. Olaf TRIO McNair Program has served more than 200 students who are from first-generation college backgrounds and are underrepresented in higher education. The majority of St. Olaf McNair Scholars have gone on to earn their master’s degree or doctorate, with many becoming leaders in their fields.

With the support of funding through the McNair Scholars Program, Hynes began her research career by spending a summer working on a St. Olaf Collaborative Undergraduate Research and Inquiry (CURI) project titled The Musical Geography of 1920s Paris. She worked alongside Associate Professor of Music Louis Epstein to digitally map 8,000 performances of the Ballets Russes.

“With TRIO funding my participation in the project, I felt a need to prove myself and go above and beyond to show that I could be an asset to the team,” Hynes says. “I realized that there were so many opportunities that I was capable of pursuing, including graduate school.”

“I wouldn’t have a doctorate if it weren’t for the TRIO McNair Program.”

— Emily Hynes ’18

Epstein encouraged her to consider musicology as a career path. Hynes leaned into the hands-on learning opportunities available at St. Olaf, and went on to graduate cum laude with a Bachelor in Music and a major in vocal performance. She was accepted into the Ph.D. program in musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Moving across the country was so difficult, but because TRIO McNair had organized so much grad school preparation for the TRIO fellows, I felt like I was as prepared as I could possibly be,” Hynes says. 

Even better, there was another Ole at UNC who understood exactly what she was going through. Johnson and Melgar put Hynes in contact with another TRIO McNair alumni, Aaron Harcus ’11, who had earned a Ph.D. in music theory at City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center and was now an assistant professor of music theory at UNC.

“When I went to UNC to tour the campus and meet the faculty, I got to meet Aaron in person,” says Hynes. The UNC Music Department was small enough that Hynes ended up having Aaron as an instructor for her first graduate school seminar, and went on to take two more classes with him. 

“Aaron was so wonderful and relatable, and I felt like our shared backgrounds as Oles and TRIO McNair Scholars made me more comfortable asking him hard questions about philosophy and literary criticism that I was scared to ask other professors,” Hynes says. “When I started grad school, I really felt the pressure to learn as much as I could as fast as I could, especially since I was coming into the Ph.D. program straight from undergrad.”

Hynes says her experience at UNC was bolstered by the kind and supportive mentorship that Harcus provided. “With Aaron, I felt more comfortable asking questions because he already knew that I came from a first-gen background and felt some imposter syndrome as a result of it,” she says.

Hynes paid forward this mentoring experience by working with another TRIO McNair Scholar, Marisabel Cordova ’21. During the summer of 2020, as many research programs shut down around the country amid the pandemic, Hynes virtually mentored Cordova on a research project titled “Musicology for All.” Cordova graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor of Music Degree in elective studies.

Hynes’ master’s thesis, “Deep Mapping Prison Music in the American South, 1933–1940,” analyzed the intersections of digital humanities, musicology, and carceral studies. She was highly involved in digital humanities projects that utilize interactive mapping and storytelling to display data, make arguments, and communicate musicological findings to a broader audience. Her dissertation, “Commodifying Criminality: Prison Music as Authenticating Strategy,” revolved around the music-making of Black incarcerated persons. It focused on how prison music recordings entered popular culture in the United States through covers and samples. 

“One highlight from my Ph.D. program was attending conferences and meeting other scholars who were just as fascinated by music as I was,” Hynes says. “I also had the opportunity to travel across the southern United States to conduct archival research, and I spent the summer of 2019 working at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.”

Hynes completed her Ph.D. in musicology in May of 2024, and is now music faculty member at UNC-Greensboro.  She is also the music and tech director at Barriskill Dance Theatre School in Durham, North Carolina, as well as an active performer.

“Since the TRIO McNair Scholars Program brings together a cohort of students from different backgrounds, I became friends with scholars of different identities and from different cultures,” Hynes says. “I think this had a positive effect on me because I grew up in such a sheltered, rural environment, and learning more about my friends’ lives broadened my perspectives and influenced my own beliefs about people, politics, and scholarship.”

For all of this, she says, she has the TRIO McNair Scholars Program to thank.

“I wouldn’t have a doctorate if it weren’t for the TRIO McNair Program,” Hynes says. “I never would have thought I was smart enough, or that someone from my background could get a Ph.D.”