Meet the Class of 2020

UVM conferred degrees upon graduates of the Class of 2020 on May 17.

It wasn't the spring college students across the country had planned on, but UVM's Class of 2020 gave us so much to celebrate. In the weeks of quarantine alone, they shattered the university record for most Fulbright U.S. Student Awards received in a single year and they rose to the challenges presented by the pandemic; in fact, 95 nursing seniors asked for a head-start into the battle before them. And on May 17, 3,000 baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral degrees were conferred upon them in a way like never before.

Though the Class of 2020 faces unprecedented challenges in this road ahead, if one thing is to be certain for this remarkable class, it’s that they will continue to dream, dare and do things differently. Read on to meet one of this year’s outstanding undergraduates in CEMS.

Like many UVM students, Zach Bernstein ’20 loves to ski and be outdoors in Vermont. But he also spent a semester in New Zealand taking data science classes, hiking, and studying the history of that country’s indigenous Maori people.

“It was super eye-opening to see how they were overtaken by Europeans—a similar path as the U.S., but a completely different place.”

In high school, Zach Bernstein ‘20 came east to visit the UVM campus and “just fell in love,” says the Chicago native. “It’s gorgeous here; fall is just unreal—and on top of that, it’s a super-open, accepting campus,” he says. “As a young queer boy, who was coming out of the closet, that was a big priority for me.” This summer, Bernstein will head farther east, to Boston, to start a post at MassMutual as a data engineer in their Data Science Development Program. Through his new job, he’ll pursue a graduate certificate in data engineering—“and I’m hoping to end up working on transportation, perhaps for the FAA,” he says, digging into the data “about how people move, fly, drive.” Bernstein will be one of seven pioneering students graduating this year from UVM’s data science program that began four years ago. “It’s the intersection of computer science with statistics,” he explains. How has his time in Vermont moved him? “It's been life changing. I did a complete 180 and flourished into the person that I really feel like I'm meant to be over my four years at UVM.”