{"id":18652,"date":"2014-06-24T16:13:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T16:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=18652"},"modified":"2025-01-28T22:12:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T03:12:51","slug":"rohan-freeman-creates-scholarship-for-minority-students-in-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/06\/rohan-freeman-creates-scholarship-for-minority-students-in-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Rohan Freeman Creates Scholarship For Minority Students In Engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"

In April 2009, Rohan Freeman\u00a0climbed Mount Everest, a lifelong dream. A month later, he climbed the world\u2019s highest peak. And a month after that, he came home and began the process of establishing his own engineering consulting firm.<\/p>\n

\"rohan[1]\"<\/a>
Rohan Freeman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always looking for that next big challenge,\u201d says Freeman, who recently completed an Ironman competition in Louisville, Ky. \u201cI ran track at UConn. To me, I needed some kind of pursuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

To help others pursue and rise up to their own personal challenges, Freeman has set up a scholarship. The Freeman Companies BRIDGE Endowed Engineering Scholarship will help support\u00a0minority students in the School of Engineering, with preference given to students specializing in civil engineering.<\/p>\n

Freeman, who graduated in 1995, was born and raised in Jamaica. He\u00a0came to the University of Connecticut to explore his interests in the field of civil engineering.\u00a0 His time studying was \u201cpositive,\u201d Freeman said, even though he was the only minority majoring in civil engineering at the time. \u201cThere was zero diversity,\u201d he said. In a way, he said, it prepared him for working in the field of civil engineering, which he says suffers from\u00a0the same lack of minority representation.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019d like that to change. To that end, Freeman established the scholarship.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s something we\u2019ve always wanted to do,\u201d he says. \u201cThe\u00a0 lack of participation of minorities in the engineering field\u201d is a problem that needs to be addressed, he said.<\/p>\n

Why is there such low minority representation in the field?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a good question,\u201d he says. \u201cI wish I knew the answer. I think the answer is bigger than I can answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0The kind of scholarship that Freeman\u2019s donation will set up is exactly the sort of thing that he wishes were in place when he was attending UConn.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cAbsolutely, I could have benefitted from it,\u201d he said. \u201cI had to work and find my way through school myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be eligible for the scholarship, students must be a Connecticut resident, demonstrate academic achievement, and be in\u00a0financial need. Also, they must have participated in the School of Engineering’s BRIDGE program (or a similar program), which prepares engineering students from\u00a0underrepresented populations for their first year at\u00a0UConn. Priority\u00a0will be given to students who\u00a0have overcome obstacles such as socioeconomic or educational disadvantage, or\u00a0are members of groups\u00a0underrepresented at\u00a0UConn, or have experience living in diverse environments.<\/p>\n

Freeman, who is dually licensed as a professional engineer and land surveyor, has had a number of prominent clients since he set up his company. Projects include survey stakeout services connected to\u00a0the construction of two new football fields at New London High School, land surveying and civil engineering services for a two-story dialysis center in New Haven, and land surveying and civil engineering services for what will be 275,000 SF of retail space in Naugatuck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alumnus Rohan Freeman hopes to bolster minority representation in engineering with a new scholarship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":224212,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[40],"class_list":["post-18652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 04:34:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224217,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18652\/revisions\/224217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/224212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18652"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=18652"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=18652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}