Montana State physics student wins Brooke Owens Fellowship

BOZEMAN - As a first-semester Montana State University freshman majoring in mechanical engineering, Aspen McKee spent many late nights at the computer lab in Cobleigh Hall. On her way out of the building, she often stopped in front of a poster advertising a fellowship that seemed to mesh with her lifelong desire for a career at NASA.

McKee said she never believed she would be a candidate for the highly competitive award, but as she progressed through the engineering curriculum and then decided to change her major to astrophysics, she didn't forget about the poster and its descriptions of the support provided to Brooke Owens fellows as they launch careers in the aerospace industry. Last fall, McKee decided to apply for a 2026 fellowship and recently learned she was one of 26 recipients in the U.S. selected to become "a Brookie."

"I absolutely did not think I had a shot," said McKee, now a junior studying in the Department of Physics in MSU's College of Letters and Science, as well as in the Honors College. "I felt like I was in an applicant pool of very, very big fish."

Coming out of high school, McKee, who is from Polson, aspired to become an aerospace engineer. She chose MSU, in part, because it is home to the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering. As she progressed, she realized she enjoyed her required mathematics and science courses more than she did the engineering classes.

"I love physics - deep space physics, theoretical physics, astrophysics," she said, adding that she still dreams of one day working for NASA.

At MSU, McKee has immersed herself in academic and extracurricular opportunities with that goal in mind. She has completed two internships with the Montana Space Grant Consortium, which works to strengthen education in NASA-related fields and offers students hands-on projects and research opportunities. She also has been active, both as an intern and as a student participant, in MSGC's BOREALIS stratospheric ballooning program.

She recently began doing research with Regents Professor of physics Neil Cornish, director of MSU's eXtreme Gravity Institute, because she is interested in gravitational waves - the ripples in space-time that are created by extreme and dynamic events in the universe, such as the mergers of black holes and collisions of neutron stars. McKee is considering studying gravitational waves in graduate school.

She will spend this summer in Bozeman, working remotely for the Maryland company a.i. solutions, which provides engineering services and products for space mission planning, design and operations. The internship was facilitated by the Brooke Owens Fellowship.

As a new Brookie, McKee also will attend a Brooke Owens summit in July in San Francisco, where she will be initiated into the fellowship she describes as a "lifelong community" for networking and career support. The Brooke Owens Fellowship, a nonprofit, was created to provide programming, mentoring, opportunities and access for talented female and gender minority students previously underrepresented in the aerospace industry.

Angela Des Jardins, director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium and associate research professor of physics, said McKee has worked hard at MSU to identify her interests and then seek opportunities that would help her advance.

"Aspen is a great example of the success that can result from having a passion and being motivated to succeed," Des Jardins said. "She credits Montana Space Grant with helping her achieve her dreams, and we are so proud of all she's accomplished."