That Anna Zimmermann, Class of 2007, was awarded both Goldwater and Udall scholarships during her junior year should not come as a surprise. The biology major from Saint Paul, Minnesota, is serious about researching the effects of environmental pollution, and she's even traveled to the other side of the world to do it.

"I'm interested in how human actions affect ecosystem health and productivity," explains Zimmermann, who is supplementing her biology major with Kenyon's interdisciplinary concentration in environmental studies. Her achievements as both a student and a researcher resulted in the Goldwater scholarship, awarded to accomplished students of the sciences, and the Udall scholarship, presented to future leaders in environmental affairs.

Zimmermann is also a Chinese minor, and she spent the fall of her junior year in a Chinese immersion program in Beijing. There, she embarked on an independent research project studying pollution in that city. Beijing, she says, has turned from a city filled with bicycles to one congested with automobiles. "I studied Beijing's development, how that was affecting the environment, and how that in turn was affecting people," she explains. She interviewed residents about their own driving habits and studied the effects of pollution on the city and its people.

The study, she says, was eye opening. "Beijing is extremely polluted. You go outside and you can see the smog. All the water you drink you have to boil. Seeing the consequences of living in a really polluted society was a powerful experience."

Back at Kenyon, Zimmermann immerses herself in her local environment. She chairs REEL (Resource and Energy Efficient Living), was active in organizing the Week of Sustainability event on campus during the spring of 2006, and is involved with PEAS (People Endorsing Agrarian Sustainability). But she looks forward to the future--when she can, she hopes, return to China and continue to research that country's environmental problems.