Just a quick progress report. I talked today to Dr. Linda Byrd-Johnson regarding the failure to renew UT's TRIO funding for the McNair Scholars program. She reports being flooded with Tennessee e-mails, but still refuses to see her job more broadly and to exercise reason and good sense (to save the program).

She reported that both her superiors, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Auer Jones, so far refuse to act. So I hope you kept a copy of the initial note (if not, a version below) and will send a note to Jones at diane.jones@ed.gov.

Many thanks to those on this site who acted. I encourage you to keep up the pressure. I'm about to unleash a second wave of various methods to reverse this bad decision.

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UT's McNair Scholars program is a superb resource. It takes kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who have made it to college and helps them prepare for graduate education. It is one of the most successful McNair programs in the country, and each year it also does a regional conference of other similar programs.

Now the program may lose its federal money (called the TRIO program) because its 2008 application was three minutes late. UT's Office of Research Administration blames a slow link in the grants.gov site. Sadly, so far all attempts to correct have fallen on deaf ears.

I recommend politeness but persistence, and spreading the word to other internet sites so we can magnify the message so it will not be ignored. --Mark Harmon