During her senior year of high school in Anchorage, Alaska, Millsaps College was not even an option for Clare Howard.
Howard, a senior pursuing a degree in biology with a minor in education, focused on colleges closer to home, but those schools didn’t interest her. When her parents bought a copy of “Colleges That Change Lives,” Millsaps stood out among the 43 other colleges listed.
Howard decided to take the risk and visit the Millsaps campus in Jackson, Mississippi, a city she had only known of through the film “The Help.”
That visit helped her see that Millsaps was the right fit. “I loved the small school environment and community feel,” she recalled.
However, Howard did not have the easiest start, and she questioned her decision to attend Millsaps at the end of her freshman year.
“There was a bit of a culture shock,” Howard said. “I had some of my own preconceived notions, and the differences in speech and culture made it feel like a different country.”
Howard decided to give Millsaps another chance and returned for her sophomore year intent on getting as connected on campus as she could.
Howard was already an athlete on the cross country and track teams at Millsaps, but she decided to immerse herself in campus life activities. From Greek life to tutoring peers through the Writing Center and Center for Academic Success and Excellence (CASE) to writing for The Purple and White, she found ways to make Millsaps her home.
Howard also looked for ways to embrace Jackson and engage in the community surrounding Millsaps. She participated in a Ford Fellowship at the Mississippi Museum of Art and did an internship as a tutor at Murrah High School just a mile from the Millsaps campus. It was during her internship at Murrah that Clare got the idea for her honors thesis, “The Decision-making Process When Choosing Public Versus Private Schools in Jackson, MS.”
“In my hometown, everyone attends and supports their local public school, so I was surprised to hear bad things about Jackson Public Schools,” Howard said. “During my internship, I found the teachers and students at Murrah to be incredible.”
Dr. Stacy DeZutter, associate professor of education at Millsaps, encouraged Howard to pursue the project and acted as an advisor.
“Clare took on a big challenge because when she started the project, she had not had any prior training in the research methods that we use to answer the questions she was interested in,” said DeZutter.
“But Clare never backs away from a challenge! She has allowed her thinking to evolve over the course of the project. The project was driven by Clare’s interest in working for equity in education, and it makes a meaningful contribution to our understanding of how an inequitable system can be both perpetuated and challenged based on the choices parents make for their children.”
Howard also serves in the Jackson community as a tutor for Mission Acceleration, a Mississippi-based nonprofit organization focused on improving reading and academic outcomes in elementary-aged children. She admits that her tutoring experience with the organization has been her favorite part of coming to Millsaps.
“Seeing their progress and watching their reading, social and emotional growth has been amazing,” Howard said. “It really shows how much impact you can have.”
DeZutter admires Howard’s commitment to helping others learn.
“Clare truly represents Millsaps’ ideal of making a difference ‘across the street and around the globe.’ She does so much on our campus and in Jackson, but she has also taught English in Morocco and Peru during the summer.”
Howard plans to continue serving her home in Alaska after she graduates from Millsaps this May. She will be taking a much-deserved break for a year, and after her gap year, she will pursue a graduate degree in public health with a focus on either global health or native health.
“My time at Millsaps has taught me how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable,” she said. “I’m so glad I came here.”