Shane Lowe came to Mizzou from Kearney, Missouri, to become an engineer, and he leaves to begin a career in education in North Carolina.

Lowe “fell in love” with the Honors College on his tour, and he had planned on using his math and science skills to be an engineer like his father.

“Engineering was hard, and I was good at it, but I began to question if it was something I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. Some friends recommended that, since I wanted to try teaching, to take some education courses and see if I liked it,” Lowe said.

Lowe says the care of the education instructors really made a difference for him. “These folks genuinely cared about who you were as a student and you interacted with their class.”

Lowe obtained his minor in engineering. Once he committed to education, he took an opportunity to visit the schools in the very remote Fort Peck Native American reservation in eastern Montana, where the nearest city with a population over 10,000 is four and a half hours away.

“It was really cool to see the unique aspects of a school that remote and primarily populated by students of indigenous heritage,” Lowe said. “I’ve been other places with poverty before, but it is devastating to talk with children who believe their future is limited.”

Lowe talked with a school district from Concord, North Carolina, during the Mizzou Ed career fair. They offered him a job teaching physics at a STEM focused high school that is integrated with a community college and provides greater access to higher education.