Scores and
More
15
Siena’s newest national champion
hitranjan Greer-Travis finished
his sophomore year in true scholar-athlete fashion: He first captured a summer research opportunity at the
University of Michigan. He then became
Siena’s seventh track and field national
champion (see list last column), winning the
hammer throw at the NAIA Outdoor Track
and Field Championships in May.
“It’s a blessing from God,” Greer-Travis,
known as “Tee,” said at the NAIA competition in British Columbia. “It feels good
to work hard and win.”
Track coach Tim
Bauer ‘82 concurred: “He’s
worked so
hard this year
to earn it.”
As a member
of the
Saints’ indoor and outdoor track and field
teams, Tee competed in hammer throw, indoor 35-pound weight, shotput and discus.
He won the national hammer title with a
throw of 176 feet 9 inches after only his
second year competing in that event.
The Saints’ Seven
National Track
Champions
Away from athletics, Tee is a philosophy
major with broad academic interests. He
also is a participant in the McNair Scholars
program at Siena Heights.
1988 Martha Hans Palmer
55-meter hurdles (indoor)
The McNair program provides low-income
or first-generation college students, and
students from groups underrepresented in
graduate education, with the undergraduate
mentoring and research experience needed
for future success in graduate school. The
federal program honors physicist Ronald
E. McNair, the African-American astronaut
who died in the Challenger explosion.
1995 Carl Brown
Discus (outdoor)
Tee is the first McNair scholar at Siena
Heights to be accepted into U-M’s Summer
Research Opportunity Program (SROP), offered through Michigan’s Rackham School
of Graduate Studies.
For eight weeks this summer, Tee will work
on research with a Michigan sociology
professor who shares some of the same
academic interests. For Tee, such interests
include the link between musicology
(the history and interpretation of music)
and ethnicity. His interest in AfricanCaribbean music already has led him to
review published research and present a
poster board on the topic.
1994 Carl Brown
Discus (outdoor)
1997 Josh Wonders
1000 meters (indoor)
1998 Ron Andrews
110-meter high hurdles (outdoor)
1999 J Nyack
200 meters (indoor)
2001 Chitranjan Greer-Travis
Hammer Throw (outdoor)
Toronto, a research symposium in Maryland, a graduate school fair at Ohio State
University, and a tour of historically black
Howard University in Washington, D.C.
He’s been active outside the classroom, too.
In addition to athletics, he is a founding
member of Alpha Phi Omega, a national
service fraternity, and has volunteered in
local schools, at a soup kitchen, and with
Habitat for Humanity, March of Dimes and
the CROP walk.
“The fun thing working with Tee is that he
has so many different intellectual interests,”
said Mark Schersten, associate professor of
philosophy, who works as a mentor with
Greer-Travis. “His mind is always alive,
jumping among different topics” and going
beyond the borders of a single discipline.
“I’ve had so many opportunities, and so
many people just waiting in line to help me
out,” Greer-Travis said of his Siena Heights
experience. “If they just see a spark of motivation in you,” everyone at Siena, from the
president to professors and coaches, will go
out of their way to help a student be all he
or she can be.
The summer program at U-M should help
him enhance that curiosity with “the more
disciplined, structured approach to research,” Schersten added.
“And just as people help me out, I want to
help out other people,” Tee said. “Everything I’m doing is so one day I can help out
somebody else.”■
As a McNair scholar, Greer-Travis also has
participated in a philosophy conference in