Sustainable Path

Tabea Zimmermann ’15 becomes 2013-15 EPA-GRO fellow

by Tony Moore

Each year, the Environmental Protection Agency grants only about 40 Greater Research Opportunities (EPA-GRO) fellowships to undergraduate students across the country. This year, Tabea Zimmermann '15, an environmental science major, was one of those students, and the path she's taken toward this moment makes perfect sense.

"The environmental and social ethic I gained in my upbringing overseas and my strong Dickinson education have been the keys to where and who I am today," Zimmermann says, noting that she lived in Mozambique and Nicaragua until she was 10 years old.

The EPA-GRO fellowship provides winners—each deemed "future environmental leaders"—with up to a total of $50,000 each over the course of a two-year period and a paid summer internship at an EPA facility between their junior and senior years.

"This internship will be a wonderful opportunity for me to work with scientists on pressing environmental issues, including water-quality research and water-resource management," Zimmermann says. "I know I will be challenged and pushed, and I look forward to learning and contributing to the research."

Zimmermann awaits her EPA assignment for summer 2014, but until then she'll continue pursuing her passions—this fall at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and through a study-abroad trip to Cameroon next spring, where she hopes to work on water-resource management projects.

"As the world becomes ever more connected, humans around the planet face similar environmental and social struggles," she says. "I believe it's possible to share the strategies and ingenuity being harnessed in communities to help one another address these complex challenges, and it would be a privilege to help facilitate these connections."

Learn more 

• The full list of EPA fellowships
• Environmental Studies & Environmental Science
• Interest in Environmental Majors Soars

Published July 11, 2013