Elliot Rossomme ’17
Messiah College wasn’t the first choice for Elliot Rossomme ’17. Then Massachusetts Institute of Technology put him on the wait list. A teacher at his small Christian high school asked if he’d ever considered attending Messiah. Rossomme regrouped and headed to Grantham.
“We learn to trust God a lot more when things don’t go the way we want them to,” said Rossomme. “God has changed my perspective on what it means to succeed and do well.”
At Messiah, he learned to wrestle with the tension between ambition of self and following the humility of Christ.
“Where do these two things meet? Messiah is a place where I’ve learned to ask questions like that,” he said, “providing you with a network of Christians who have striven to be in the world and not of it in broader society.”
Messiah also provided him with opportunities to spread his wings academically, spiritually and geographically. He spent his junior year studying abroad at Oxford, which further shaped his faith.
“The Christians I met there were confident in their faith,” he said. “It defined them. It didn’t sidebar their lives.”
In the summers, he stayed busy as a researcher at Georgetown University and the University of Georgia. After graduation, he headed across the U.S. for another adventure: graduate school. He’s pursuing a doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley as a chancellor’s fellow.
“I’m going to Berkeley, because there’s a need for the Gospel there while pursing excellence,” he said. “It includes a humility and willingness to serve that’s not glamorous.”