Page 4 - Diversity Initiative

Student Support

Shooting for the Stars

Brandon Zimmerman 09, 12 (MS) was shaped profoundly by his

time spent in the David T. Kearns Center, an award-winning
program designed to prepare low-income, frst-generation, and
underrepresented minority college students for doctoral studies.

Its where the relationships formed, Zimmerman said. Its a

familya family thats constantly supporting you. [It provides]
a network of people where you can be yourself, around people
whose jobmore than a jobis to help you succeed.

An optics major, Zimmerman is now pursuing his doctorate at
Rochester, while working for NASA. At the space agency, he

telecommutes as an optical engineer while also serving as a student
ambassador, advising on student outreach and internship funding.
His research focuses on using new techniques to identify natural and

man-made particles that afect Earths atmosphere.

As an undergraduate, Zimmerman was president of the National
Society of Black Engineers chapter and a member of the Omega Psi
Phi fraternity. He continues to work summers with Kearns as an
Brandon Zimmerman 09, 12 (MS)
Doctoral Student advisor and tutor.
My theory is that everyone says they want to change the world,

but how do you do that? You change the world around you,
Zimmerman said. Te way to do that is to change the world in
the same way it changed you.

Timeline

1852 Frederick Douglass delivers 1900 Susan B. Anthony convinces
4th of July oration at Rochesters Board of Trustees to admit
Corinthian Hall. women.

1881 First African-American student, 1931 Beatrice Amaza Howard becomes
Henry Austin Spencer, admitted. frst African-American woman
to graduate.