#SoCaltech: Allison Howes

“My hometown of Nye, Montana, is a tight-knit community. It’s really small. There’s one store. I went to elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse, and my graduating high school class had 21 students. What inspired me to go into environmental engineering is that it is also a mining town. There are a lot of environmental engineers that are working with the mine to help protect the community and the environment here. I talked to some of them, and I thought that was cool and something I could do. I always have liked being outside and have a lot of appreciation for the environment. I love nature, and it’s beautiful here.

“When I started researching colleges, Caltech came up as a great engineering school. When I started to look into it, I saw it was a smaller school with a focus on collaboration. That really sounded like something that would fit well with me. The STARS College Network helped me figure out how to get there, how to apply, and it gave me confidence that it was possible to attend a top 20 school even coming from such a tiny place. STARS gave me a mental boost and made me think, ‘Oh, I really should go for this.’”

Allison Howes will be joining Caltech as a first-year undergraduate student this fall, in part because of her participation in the STARS (Small Town and Rural Student) College Network. Caltech was one of the 16 inaugural members of STARS when it launched in 2023. STARS recently doubled its membership to include 32 of the most prominent institutions in the nation, all dedicated to helping students from small-town and rural America attend and graduate from the undergraduate program of their choice.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.