Where Physics Can Take You: Faith Simmons’ SPS Internship Experience
When Faith Simmons changed her major from education to physics at East Tennessee State University, she was excited about her new path, but she was still discovering where she fit in the physics community and what a future in the field could look like for her.
The Society of Physics Students (SPS) helped Faith begin to find those answers.
Through SPS, Faith found a community of peers and mentors who encouraged her to get involved and helped her see herself as a physicist. As her confidence grew, she stepped into leadership, eventually serving on the SPS National Council and Executive Committee.
But SPS also helped Faith discover something equally important: there are many ways to build a life and career in physics.
Faith knew she loved physics, but traditional research was not the only path that interested her. She loved writing and working with people and wanted to explore what she calls the “human side of science.” Coming from a rural community and attending a university where internship options were limited, finding an opportunity that combined those interests was difficult.
“A lot of internships you see in a physics department are for research,” Faith said. Opportunities in writing and communications could be difficult to find, highly competitive, unpaid, or designed for students with communications backgrounds rather than physics backgrounds.
Then, at an SPS Congress in Denver, Faith started talking with SPS council members and staff about the challenge she was facing.
They encouraged her to apply for an SPS internship.
That conversation led Faith to Washington, D.C., as the Physics Today science writing intern, an experience that has given her a firsthand look at possibilities she had once struggled to find.
At Physics Today, Faith has learned how professional science journalism works from the inside. Her days include researching scientific topics, participating in story pitch meetings, writing, and working through rounds of edits with experienced editors and mentors.
One assignment even took her beyond the office. When the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum marked its 50th anniversary and unveiled five new galleries, Faith attended a press event before the galleries opened to the public. She toured the exhibits, spoke with museum curators about the artifacts and renovations, and turned what she learned into a story published by Physics Today.
But ask Faith what has been most rewarding about her internship, and she points to something beyond the stories she has written.
It is the people she has met.
Working in Washington has surrounded Faith with professionals pursuing careers across science. She has been invited to lunches, met people working in different fields, and discovered career paths that combine physics with writing, policy, communications, and leadership.
“I knew that I liked to write and I knew that I like to work with people,” Faith said, “but I didn’t really know what that meant or how that would play out as a career.”
The internship is helping her answer that question.
Faith graduated from ETSU with a bachelor’s degree in physics and is beginning a PhD in physics at The Ohio State University, where she will study physics education research. She is still exploring exactly where her career will take her, but her SPS experiences have helped her recognize how much she enjoys writing, organizing, working with people, and serving in leadership roles.
For Faith, the SPS internship has been more than a summer professional experience. It has shown her that her identity as a physicist does not limit her to one kind of career. Instead, it can be the foundation for many different paths.
That opportunity has been particularly meaningful because of where Faith began.
“This internship program has been so beneficial to me, specifically because I come from a very rural community,” she said. Being able to enter the program as a physicist and work alongside others interested in writing, policy, communications, and other fields opened opportunities she had struggled to find elsewhere.
And Faith is clear about what made that experience possible.
“I would not have been able to do it if not for the generous donations.”
For students like Faith, belonging in physics is about more than finding people who share their interests. It is also about discovering that there is room in physics for their individual talents, ambitions, and ideas.
Through the SPS internship program, Faith found an opportunity that brought together the parts of science she cares about most and a community that helped her imagine where those interests might lead next.
