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Beloit College Alum Becomes Tenure-track Professor

Beloit College graduate Michael “MJ” Strawbridge ’19 is teaching his first semester as a tenure-track professor this fall at Washington University in St. Louis.

Just five years after graduating from Beloit College, Michael “MJ” Strawbridge ‘19, is preparing for his first semester as a tenure-track assistant professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.

A scholar on Black identity and its intersections with politics and mass media, MJ began his academic journey in the McNair Scholars Program under the guidance of campus mentors, including former director Atiera Coleman and current Associate Provost Ron Watson.

“I remember when I came back for my senior year and told them I wanted to get my PhD, I was expecting this big shock moment from them, and they were like, ‘Okay.’ They had been waiting for me to figure it out,” MJ said.

Michael was a football and track and field athlete at Beloit, but it took him a while to discover one of his other passions, research. He initially ran from the calling of academia, citing a family full of teachers and the capacity to skate by on ability rather than studying.

Michael credits his journey to the McNair Scholars Program, a TRIO-funded program to help first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented minority students pursue research and prepare for graduate school.

MJ, who ended up majoring in political science and media studies, began at Beloit interested in law, but left hoping to pursue a fully funded PhD, which he didn’t know existed before his McNair experiences.

“McNair was integral to my entire pathway and gave me the space to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do,” MJ said. “I had ideas and ambitions to do big things, but no idea how I would go about executing them. McNair was a safe space where I could ask a dumb question to figure it out. McNair staff were telling me things I didn’t even know to ask about, and it made a huge difference.”

MJ earned his doctorate at Rutgers University immersed in quantitative methodology and American politics research. He’s now a scholar of Black politics, and his research focuses on how identity plays a role in our understanding of politics and mass media. This fall he’s teaching a course on “Race and Ethnic Politics in the U.S.”