Student Spotlight: Josh Brown, ASE sophomore

Joshua Brown always knew he wanted to study space and has found his home in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Mississippi State.

From Brookhaven, Brown chose to attend Mississippi State University because he wanted to be a part of the Bagley College of Engineering.

“I knew I wanted to do engineering, and Mississippi State is one of the best options for an engineering program,” Brown said. “The engineering department is always growing, and it is full of opportunity.”

As a sophomore, Brown’s time in the Bagley College of Engineering has been highlighted by the extracurricular activities offered to students. Brown explained how his extracurricular clubs and activities engaged him with different learning and research opportunities.

“I'm a member of the Space Cowboys design team, which is the high-powered competitive rocketry team. Within the Space Cowboys, I'm a part of the propulsions sub-team, where we are designing new hybrid motors for the rocket. Last year I did structures, and it taught me about carbon fiber composite manufacturing,” Brown said. “I am also doing undergraduate research through the chemistry department. The research application is hypersonics. We 're synthesizing carbon-carbon composite matrices for hypersonic leading edges with Dr. Smith, a professor of chemistry and Ernesto Borrego, a Ph.D. student.”

On top of his extracurricular activities, Brown also studied internationally with the engineering mechanics program in Italy. Brown said his favorite part of the study abroad was meeting new people.

“I loved meeting people in Italy. I took Italian 1 and 2 here at Mississippi State to prepare for the trip. I was just really excited to practice something new,” Brown said. “There were a bunch of cool moments, but one that sticks out is when we were on the bus ride home to where we were living, and there was a group of people on the bus from Morocco. They had moved from Morocco to Italy, and they didn't speak English but spoke Italian and Arabic. We struck up a conversation and I realized we were both communicating in our second language to each other. It was a surreal moment.”

During his time at Mississippi State, Brown has explored academic opportunities across campus and believes Mississippi State offers its students opportunities to grow academically outside of their major.

“Don't limit yourself. You could keep to the Bagley College of Engineering, or you can look out to other departments or colleges and see if there's something that can benefit you,” Brown said. “It's what you make out of the opportunities Mississippi State has to offer.”