Caltech Welcomes Incoming Students and Scholars

On Monday, September 23, Caltech marked the beginning of the academic year with its annual Convocation ceremony held in Beckman Auditorium. The event brought together faculty, staff, and students to welcome the Institute’s incoming cohort of 221 undergraduate students, 251 graduate students, and 99 postdoctoral scholars.

Welcome Activities

Several days of welcome activities are also helping new students and postdocs integrate into the Caltech community. Beginning on September 18 with international students settling in on campus and followed by undergraduate and graduate move-in days, the welcome schedule will continue after Convocation with orientation sessions and social events designed to foster connections among the student body. The first day of classes is Monday, September 30.

Convocation: Sustainability Through Science, Education, and Innovation

This year’s Convocation ceremony had a special focus on sustainability, celebrating the opening of the Resnick Sustainability Center (RSC) on campus, which serves as a defining component of the Institute’s commitment to sustainability education and research. In addition to several sustainability-oriented research centers and facilities, RSC will host all the first-year undergraduate chemistry laboratory courses as part of a reimagined chemistry curriculum exploring society’s environmental challenges and their possible solutions.

The Convocation ceremony included remarks from Kevin Gilmartin, vice president and Allen V.C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair of student affairs and the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English; Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics; Sophie Elam, undergraduate president of the Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology; and Liam O’Brien, graduate student and co-chair of the Graduate Student Council.

“Shattering boundaries is quintessential Caltech. It makes possible scientific exploits that seem impossible at first,” said President Rosenbaum during the ceremony, highlighting the upcoming Europa Clipper mission scheduled to launch early next month by JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA. “None of this would be possible without our shared sense of wonder about the universe.”

Elam, a fourth-year undergraduate studying environmental science and engineering, encouraged incoming students to recognize and cherish the spark of passion that drove them to Caltech.

“One of the most uniting themes I’ve observed at Caltech is a shared passion and grit,” Elam said. “Where some see challenge, we see opportunity. We come together in collaboration and amass our individual sparks to fuel an inferno—we become an unstoppable force whose commitment to answering questions makes us the best problem solvers in the world.”

Rather than a single keynote speaker at this year’s Convocation, a panel of distinguished faculty members discussed their paths in interdisciplinary sustainability research. Led by Jonas Peters, Bren Professor of Chemistry and director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute, the panel included Mark Simons, the John W. and Herberta M. Miles Professor of Geophysics and director of the Brinson Exploration Hub; Azita Emami, the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering and director of the Center for Sensing to Intelligence; Dianne Newman, the Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology and Merkin Institute Professor; and John Dabiri (PhD ’05), the Centennial Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering.

The faculty panelists discussed their research trajectories, highlighting the ways each member had shifted the focus of their work toward applications in environmental science. For Simons, that meant employing his expertise in geophysics to the study of glaciers and changes in groundwater; for Emami, her innovations in high-rate data communications were applied to make remote sensing systems more accurate; for Newman, the study of microbial processes could be leveraged to explore new approaches for carbon sequestration; for Dabiri, his knowledge of fluid dynamics helped develop wind farms that were better able to harness renewable energy.

The group also expressed advice they would have shared with their younger selves, emphasizing the importance of embracing failures, maintaining a broad intellectual curiosity, and balancing academic focus with personal growth and well-being.

While the community gears up for another year of research and learning, incoming students conveyed their enthusiasm around the beginning of their time at Caltech.

“I’m excited and a little nervous too,” said first-year undergraduate Stephanie Wallen from Miami, Florida, after the Convocation ceremony. “But everyone here is super approachable and, especially because we share a lot of interests, it’s really easy to start conversations with people.”

Wallen moved to campus earlier this summer for the First-Year Success Research Institute orientation and academic support program, and to train with the volleyball team. There, she met fellow volleyball player Noelle Wilkinson, a first-year from Bentonville, Arkansas.

“It was inspiring listening to the faculty talk about their academic journeys,” said Wilkinson after Convocation. “The fact that we are in such close-knit quarters with these brilliant people who are top leaders in their field is amazing. I’m so excited to start taking classes.”

Both also shared their excitement about being part of the historic class of undergraduates, which, for the first time in Caltech’s history, comprises 50 percent women.

“I think there’s a lot of stereotypes about STEM and how male dominated it is, and I kind of feared that, especially in engineering, I’d have to deal with that,” says Wallen, who plans to study mechanical engineering and aerospace. “But it’s really reassuring to know that there is an equal balance of men and women, and I’ll be around other people who understand me better.”

“You can really feel the 50 percent,” Wilkinson says. “I’ve already met so many women in our class that are passionate, intelligent, and driven, which is really inspiring.”