A high-five occasion: President Jon Westling and Jennifer Gruber at Commencement this May

Police officer, veterinarian, firefighter, football player, ballerina. We all had our childhood dreams of what we wanted to be when we grew up, but few of us go on to pursue them. Rhodes Scholar Jennifer Gruber ('99) never lost sight of her dream of becoming an astronaut, and she is now on her way to accomplishing that goal. Gruber, who earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in aerospace engineering in May, also delivered the student Commencement address, which she describes as a "call to action," encouraging her classmates to "go out and go for the big stuff." An ambitious charge to impose on a mob of jubilant graduating seniors, but Gruber has high expectations for her generation. "Let us take it upon ourselves to make this an age of greatness," she urged them.

This sort of optimism and determination is no surprise coming from a student who has regularly challenged herself by going for -- and attaining -- the big stuff. At BU, Gruber won a Dean Elsbeth Melville Scholarship, was president and coach of the gymnastics club, and participated in a mentoring program that encourages high school girls to become interested in math and science. This September, Gruber heads to England on a Rhodes Scholarship to begin three years of doctoral study in engineering science at the University of Oxford. She was one of 32 students nationally (of 1,000 candidates) who received the honor, which is based on scholarship, achievement in sports, community service, and leadership and character.

Physics and Pom-Poms

Her accomplishments are all the more impressive considering her background. Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, in a neighborhood where most people didn't go on to college after high school, Gruber was bussed to a downtown school that offered more rigorous

academics. During those years, it was difficult for her to find acceptance in any group. "A lot of people that I would have hung out with because I was in honors classes wouldn't accept me because of the whole money thing, and people in my neighborhood wouldn't accept me because I was successful. I was captain of the cheerleading squad, I was living in a trailer park, and I was in AP physics. You should have seen the look on my physics teacher's face when I walked in the first day in my cheerleading skirt," she laughs.

But Gruber ignored the stereotypes and excelled in a wide variety of activities and disciplines. Her involvement in high school athletics -- cheerleading, track, gymnastics, and dance -- increased her self-confidence. She remembers, for example, having difficulty clearing the hurdles in track (she's short for a hurdler, tall for a gymnast). "I fell a lot, but I kept getting up. The women's track coach was also the men's football coach, and he used to joke that I could take a fall better than a lot of his guys." The lesson: "You learn how to take a hit and you get some self-esteem every time you do well or every time you get back up after doing poorly." Since high school her interest in sports has broadened to include rock climbing and skydiving. "I tend to like high-risk things. I've always been a kamikaze," she says.

T-Minus 10

This fearlessness helps explain her desire to become an astronaut. When Gruber took a year off from BU to participate in a cooperative education program at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, her ambition became even more intense, as she helped develop

maneuver-confirmation software that is expected to be used on every space shuttle flight. The program gave Gruber a new appreciation for her BU education. "A lot of the kids from the technical institutes might have a hard time figuring things out on their own," she says. "Here they teach us how to think. My engineering education has been solid." She is especially grateful for the encouragement of her

aeromechanical engineering professors, stressing that they "really care about the students."

After obtaining her doctorate, Gruber, nicknamed "Buzz" by her friends, hopes to return to Houston to work as a flight dynamics officer -- a job she describes excitedly as "the real-time, hard-core, something-goes-wrong-you-have-to-fix-it deal." The officers, she explains, know where the shuttle is at all times. "They model the shuttle trajectory and watch it, and if something new happens they figure out where they're going to be next." Then she plans to apply to the astronaut corps, though she stresses that it is common to have to apply several times before getting in. With the goal of traveling to Mars, she predicts that once she is accepted, "I'll probably keep on flying until they kick me out!"