WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Amy Hansan: A Career in Physics -- Resume and Reality

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Amy Hansan ’15 joins WRFH host James Joski to share about her physics career and her presentation on Hillsdale's campus titled “A Career in Physics — Resume and Reality.” She received her bachelor’s from Hillsdale in 2015, majoring in physics and mathematics. She completed her graduate work in optical science and engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology. She went on to work as a research scientist at Lockheed Martin’s ADP “Skunk Works” on infrared stealth technology. Amy now works as a mom to her four children.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm James Jawsky. And with me today is Amy Hanson. All right. So, Amy, you came in last week to give a lecture. Would you want to start talking about just how you got into that lecture, what it was about? Yeah. So my understanding is that the physics department runs a seminar.

I don't know if it's every year or periodically. Once a week, they bring in a speaker. to talk about possible careers in physics. If you get an undergraduate physics degree, there are a very wide variety of directions you could go career-wise with that. So the purpose of the seminar was to help students understand different directions

that they could go with their career after they complete their degree in physics. And it was called resume and reality. So what, that title, when I read it, it's like, okay, so there's kind of, you know, what you're going for on a resume versus what you actually get in the, the real world of careers and lifestyle. What did you touch on in those regards? Because I know you're also a mother of four and that's kind of what you focus on at the current moment. Yeah. No, I've been, I call it retired for five years.

Yeah. So, I would say, particularly. particularly in the science world, it's very easy to have very polished, impressive looking resumes. But as you move through your career, even in physics, science, engineering, stuff like that, there's always people who help you odd opportunities, things that didn't go well. So my objective was to be honest about what my career actually looked like, because there were a number of things that maybe initially would have looked like setbacks that ended up turning into opportunities and the way some opportunities came my way where it was a little bit

odd in some ways. So I first spent five minutes just moving through my resume and trying to make it sound like a resume stereotypical, got it together impressive. And then retold the story from more of the detail by detail, what was I thinking, why did this not work out? Why did I go this way, et cetera? Yeah. So on the description of your lecture, it lists your interest as being optical science, electromagnetics, and radiative transfer. So would you want to explain to the audience what exactly that area of interest looks like,

what it deals with, how you got into it? Yeah. So my graduate work was at the Air Force Institute of Technology, which is somewhat of a unique academic institution. It is in Dayton, Ohio on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. And the majority of people who attend that institution are active military members. I have never been in the military. I was a civilian. But they do a lot of, I was interested in their program because I, didn't, once I finished my undergraduate degree, I knew I didn't really have any interest in pursuing an academic career. So I wanted to do industry. However, I also, you know, through that summer internship, plus some other classes I had taken at Hillsdale, knew I really liked quantum mechanics and everything related to quantum. And those tend to be more physics areas than engineering areas, although there are some areas of engineering that will deal

with that. But yeah, optics, radiative transfer material science, all of those things were areas that I was interested in pursuing a graduate degree. So I went to the Air Force Institute or AFIT. It was a little bit complicated getting in as a civilian. You need some kind of funding vehicle. But there was a professor there who was willing to, you know, basically fund my degree, which was, I'm very grateful for. So what his institute, he kind of ran a center or an institute, and there were a couple of professors who were all working for him. And so they designed optical systems,

and then they did combustion diagnostics. So you can think of combustion diagnostics as you light something on fire and then you try to diagnose the different constituent elements of the flame. Like what is burning? What are the things you are burning? So I ended up doing the combustion diagnostics because why would you, why would you build a camera when you could light things on fire and look at it with the camera? So my master's degree, the data I collected was in conjunction with the Air Force Research Laboratories, which they also have facilities on Wright-Peterson Air Force Base. The graduate school had a special, I call it special, special camera.

I think it was unusual, and yeah, it collected data that people didn't get very often. It was a hyperspectral imager. So the Air Force Research Laboratories were curious if that device could add some information to some tests they were conducting on scramjet engine cavities. So I had the opportunity to take this camera and over through. three days, collect enough data for my master's thesis, somebody else's master's thesis, and a PhD, which was really nice to not be in and out of the lab during my graduate work. So they were doing some testing basically to try to optimize fuel input rates for the scramjet,

and there were some other things going on. But the tests were conducted from between like 8-ish PM and midnight. night because they were pulling too much power from the grid to operate during the day. Oh, man. So we got there later at night, and these tests ran so smoothly. That was also a new experience for me having a lab environment. Technically, you know, it's a lab environment. But the guys running the tests had a lot of experience with all the equipments.

They did this all the time. It was their job. Everything ran like clockwork instead of. you run the thing you run your test often if you know particularly undergraduate physics but my experience in academia in general you're doing things you're doing novel things but sometimes setting up the experiment is a little iffy things will not go well you don't get the data you want things go wrong and there was yeah that wasn't at all how these tests ran so that was a lot of fun to be involved involved in this is radio free hillsdale 101.7 FM

I'm James Jossky, and I'm talking with Amy Hanson. Amy, you went to Hillsdale between 2011 and 2015. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. And to my understanding, you were quite the athlete while you were there. I did do cross country and track and field. And track. I stumbled upon your records, and you had some really good times.

Well, thank you. How did you manage to balance excelling not only in your academics, but also in your athletics as well? So in some ways, I would say they definitely worked together. Being forced to take a break from academics and go exercise was actually, yeah, that was actually really helpful. So often, you know, your day is arranged. You have your classes. Around three, you go to practice. and then you finish practice around dinner time.

And by the time I was done with practice, usually I was actually much more ready to do another round of homework or whatever. So overall, they definitely worked together day to day. I think the most challenging part was the travel. So sometimes depending on if the, and I was a little bit better at track than cross country. So I traveled a little bit more for track. But, you know, if you had a meet,

far away, like in California, leaving, you know, midweek, having to get homework from your classes, rearrange stuff. That could be a little bit challenging, but the professors were always really great and would work with us. And, you know, when you're traveling, you do have some time to try to make up things. So it does work, but you do have to attain to a slightly higher level of time management, I would say to make it all work. Sorry. Do you feel that there were any lessons that you took from athletics that helped

you exceed in physics? Yeah. No, I definitely would. Yeah, some of it is yeah, physics. You know, I also majored to math and I had a couple of professors say, well, you can never cram for a math test.

You can't really cram for a physics test either. It is very much being persistent with the daily grind you have to do the practice problems you have to put in the time day to day and then by the time you get to the test usually studying isn't quite so intensive as it could be for you know maybe a history exam and then running is kind of the same thing you you have to put in the daily grind you can't show up the day of the race without having put in the work and expect it to go well so I'd say there are definitely some parallels there yeah you do i i would never imagine cramming is something associated with a cross-country

me no yeah i did cross-country and track in high school too so i'm just trying to picture what that would even be and it's not looking good no no probably would hurt more too so what did it feel like to go to hillsdale itself back in 2011 2015 the chapel wasn't even up yet was it nope Yeah. No, it was when I went back to give the talk in the physics department, yeah, I hadn't been back in nine years, I think. Oh, man. So, yeah, so there was a, the chapel is, wasn't there. And it's very impressive. I think they had just finished the Cyril Center when I was there. So the construction maybe was starting a little bit, but not much had been completed during my time. So the building projects now, it seems like, they are getting better at building with time. So, you know, you had the library that has a very 70s look. And then you have the newer classroom buildings, Kendall and Lane.

So those were the nice buildings when I was there. But like the chapel and some of the new buildings going up seem like they're even more well thought through and constructed. So that was really fun to see that in an age when it seems like everything is just getting worse. It's like, okay, maybe Hillstale is getting better. This is great. How does it feel to watch all these buildings go up and campus changed so much from the memories that you had being at Hillsdale? When I would hear about the construction, I was not a huge fan because you think, oh, it's changing probably for the worst because that's often how things go nowadays. But walking through and seeing it, I actually, I was okay with it.

It's like, okay, they're doing this well. I can see how it would be. an improvement. And maybe if one of my kids someday go to Hillsdale, it would still, it would still probably have the same atmosphere. And, you know, maybe some things are better. Yeah, it's crazy to be a student watching it all go up too. Yeah, I imagine being a student during the construction is a little bit of a mixed bag.

But my oldest is five. So by the time any of my kids might go to Hillsdale, it would be all done, hopefully. It's like a trauma bonding thing for all of us. When we're all graduate, we're going to be like, yeah, we were the construction students. Yeah. You'll have a special bond. Yeah. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

I'm James Joscke, and I'm talking with Amy Hanson. So, Amy, you went from, well, I don't know. Do you still work at Lockheed and Martin? I do not. You did not. So how did you make that transition from doing all this work in physics and working at Lockheed Martin to now being a full-time mother of four? Yeah. So my oldest son was born during COVID.

So the world was a very interesting place during that year. So the plan we originally had for me transitioning out of working. at Lockheed. So at Lockheed, everything I did was classified behind closed doors. So thinking about your, you know, balancing career motherhood, I would have had to be on the facility to do my work. So even doing part-time work, there's no part-time work from home in the area that I was working. So when my husband and I were talking about how these different things could work, it was pretty obvious that full retirement was probably the way to go. And, you know, I had, I mean, really, I had a great job.

I had multiple people tell me before, you know, I retired with my kids. Like, I think me and my husband were engaged when I started telling people, yeah, I think when I have kids, I'll probably just retire and be done, be done working. And I had so many people tell me, no, I don't think you're going to be able to walk away. And a lot of that, they had reasons for saying that, like, it was very interesting career. I was never bored. There was an obvious purpose to the work. Like some jobs, they're meaningful, but you have to think a little bit what the application was

and how it's positively impacting people's lives. There was less thinking required with the stuff I was doing at Lockheed for how it was meaningful um they they provide excellent compensation for your work um so there are reasons people were saying that but yeah i mean my kids are more important than the career and maybe i would have had some interest in doing a little bit of part-time stuff but in hindsight i think it was really good to at least take a year off with after you have a baby i mean my husband had a good point Because it was COVID, all of our plans, like, financially, it was a little bit interesting. So I was like, I feel like maybe I just need to keep doing it.

And my husband was very helpful. He said, well, let's give it a year. We'll live for a year. Nobody's going to starve to death in a year. And if at that point, if you feel like you need to go back, we'll figure it out. Because it's good to just adjust being a mom first and then stop and think, okay, what do I want? and how did it how did it feel to walk away from all that that you know you did all this studying all this research all these internships did you did you struggle with walking away from the physics or

what did it feel like for you yeah um i did a little bit more than i thought i would um from before i even went to college i knew i would wanted a family and preferably a slightly larger family. So even thinking about going to Hillsdale, I was only good at, you know, STEM. So I thought I had to get an engineering degree. But I also didn't want to spend four years time and money on an education that if I did, you know, get married, start having kids. I wouldn't, I didn't want to feel like that was a total waste of time. So Hillsdale was a really good fit for that. There are other reasons I picked Hillsdale. But they that even with 10 years in hindsight, Hillsdale was a really good decision thinking about that. And then at every point along my career,

I wasn't engaged when I graduated from Hillsdale, had no prospects of a spouse. But I was still making decisions to leave the door open to having a big family of things worked out. So I was always thinking about it. So when it came, like when my first son was born and it came time to think about, okay, what do our lives actually look like career family? I already knew that I wanted to be primarily with my kids and I thought walking away would actually be really easy. It was a little bit harder than I thought it was. There were some opportunities that were coming my way at Lockheed. I'd been there a couple years so they were giving more opportunities. So there would have been more cool things to do for sure. And sometimes I wonder

or what that would have been like. But yeah, I don't have any regrets. I actually had to go back to Lockheed after maternity leave for just a couple weeks. My husband's, he lost his job during COVID. He worked in oil and gas. And right when my maternity leave was up, he finally got his new job. So I went back for a little bit. And I was leaving my baby with my husband, not daycare with strangers or anything like that.

And that was still the worst thing ever. So that was kind of nice to have confirmation. No, I do really want to be home with my baby. And as your kids get older, do you foresee getting back in with Lockheed Martin or pursuing a career again? I think that I will probably find some way to do something in physics or something that, something in the realm where I have training. My days at Lockheed are probably done. It's the type of career that it would fight with your family, not one.

work with your family, if that makes sense. I do know women who have careers that, you know, things can emanate from their family. And the career is, it's easy to see how you can subject the career to the goals of your family, have it be of benefit. The stuff I did at Lockheed, it's less obvious to me how that would, how that would work. They would more be at war with each other. So. What advice would you give to students in Hillsdale now based off your own experience?

yeah um so particularly for the physics students but this probably applies to a variety of majors do what you can to get the experience that's going to um improve your resume over things that you know maybe you'd make more money or maybe are a little easier like yeah i don't know there's money is very useful. and you should make money over the summer. But if you have an opportunity to put something on your resume that's going to open up other opportunities, that's always worth doing.

Like all those summer internships, plus I did take a gap year between Hillsdale and my graduate work. And during that gap year, I was working at a university as an admin and I just walked into a physics lab and said, hey, can I work for you for free? And that was an additional thing to put on my resume. I think the other thing I would say is my professor at Affett as we were driving around talking about because I basically got into Affett because of a phone call.

So me and my professor were talking about things and he said, I know this quote isn't original to him, but he's where I got it. The plan is nothing. The planning is everything. and that quote kind of encapsulates my career and it's good to plan and you ought to plan but be open to the opportunities coming your way that you didn't expect. Like I wouldn't have recognized an opportunity for what it was if I had not planned and knew what I wanted. But if you're so married to your plan, like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this

and my career is going to progress this way. You probably, there's a good chance you may miss out on things. So keeping an eye open for the oddball opportunities is, it's more interesting. For certain. Well, Amy, I want to thank you so much for taking the time for this interview and have a great Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thank you, James. You too. Our guest has been Amy Hanson and I'm James Jawski.

I'm Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm.