The Value of a Plan

Emily Wilson’s career plan was to be a professor at a small, teaching-focused college in Pennsylvania. Right out of graduate school, she got exactly that job: a tenure-track astrophysics professorship at Lycoming College.

“Paths wander,” she says. “But if you have a goal, then planning towards that goal is one of the best ways to achieve it.”

Inspired by her high school physics teacher, Wilson majored in astrophysics at Franklin and Marshall College, a small liberal arts college also in Pennsylvania. She double majored in German. “It was so much fun,” she says. “German kept me sane.” Wilson embraced the liberal arts education, studied abroad, and enjoyed being part of both STEM and non-STEM communities.

Wilson applied to graduate programs knowing she’d need a PhD to become a professor. Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) wasn’t initially on her list, but a friend went there, so she applied and visited.

“It was a technical school, but they had a lot of the same values as my liberal arts school,” she recalls. They wanted their students to be well-rounded and told her she’d even be able to teach a course as the instructor of record while a graduate student. “All of these things were just laser-focusing me to where I wanted to be,” she says. She accepted their offer.

Not everything went exactly as planned. Although she intended to do observational research on binary stars, Wilson ended up doing more theoretical work. But she says that the flexibility opened up a key opportunity for her. Her research advisor, Jason Nordhaus, was a professor at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Because of her interest in language and teaching, Nordhaus invited her to work on a grant project developing sign language for physics concepts. Wilson spent the latter half of grad school doing educational development alongside her astrophysics research.

Physics terms often have nuanced and abstract meanings. For example, Wilson says the team of professors and interpreters she worked with put immense thought into how to sign the concept of speed, which traditionally shares a sign with fast, and differentiate it from velocity. That work required her to reflect on introductory topics in a new way, which has impacted her teaching. When she introduces concepts, Wilson now imagines what it’s like to hear them for the first time. “It really grounds you in remembering that for everybody in the room except for you, this is brand new.”

At Lycoming, Wilson balances teaching and doing research on stellar systems. She has high standards for students but sees teaching as an opportunity to do more than impart knowledge. She fell in love with physics because of her high school physics teacher’s passion for making physics fun and accessible. So now, that’s what she aims to do.

When considering what’s next after graduation, Wilson finds that many undergrads are worried they aren’t good enough to do what they really want to do. “You are good enough. Make a plan, put in the work, and you can at least make steps towards achieving that goal,” she says. “Don’t count yourself out.”