Recent Queensborough graduate Renzo Samame hopes to make education more available for immigrant children, while he pursues his own goal to attend medical school

When he was seventeen years old, Woodside resident Renzo Samame came to the United States from his native Peru to visit his grandmother, a naturalized US citizen. “I fell in love with this country, and wanted to stay,” he says. A couple of years later, he enrolled in Queensborough Community College. Renzo found Queensborough’s International Student Affairs department and Center for Immigration to be helpful to his particular situation as a student from another country. The services provided at Queensborough helped him to get better acclimated to higher education in his new home.

On June 1, 2007 Renzo earned his Liberal Arts and Sciences Associate degree from Queensborough, and received the John F. Kennedy Memorial Award for demonstrating outstanding College and community leadership. His work for Queensborough’s CSTEP (College Science and Technology Entry Program) consisted of helping other minority students as a teaching assistant and being a strong advocate for the enactment of the Student Adjustment Act, known as the DREAM Act, that would serve to assist immigrant children receive an education. Renzo has also volunteered at the Margaret Tietz Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Jamaica, and in the emergency room of Flushing Hospital.

Renzo Samame aspires to advance his interest in science and medicine and to attend medical school to become a physician. He will attend Hunter College starting in fall 2007 majoring in biochemistry.

Read the article about Renzo in The Queens Courier titled "Making a Science of Helping Others."