Briana: Before we start, a brief update: our interview with Bethany Eppig was recorded in January 2026. Since then, Bethany's role at NASA has changed as she leverages the experience in fission surface power that she describes in our conversation to contribute to the next generation of nuclear space systems. We'll put details in our show notes for those who would like to learn more.


Hello, and welcome to Gators on Purpose, where we talk with Allegheny College alumni who show us the power of combining what you love with what challenges you. At Allegheny College, being a Gator on purpose means shaping your own extraordinary path, and those unusual combinations lead to extraordinary outcomes -- meaningful careers, and lives built on purpose. I’m Briana Lewis, Associate Professor of French and Faculty Liaison to the Center for Career and Professional Development, and I’m talking today with Bethany Eppig, Allegheny College class of 2011. Bethany is currently Nuclear Launch Authorization Manager at NASA. Bethany, welcome (virtually) back to Allegheny and thank you for joining us for Gators on Purpose.


Bethany: Thank you for having me. I’m really honored and happy to be here today.


Briana: So to start us off, I’d like to ask you to take us back to the very beginning and tell us what brought you to Allegheny.


Bethany: When I was looking at potential colleges for my undergraduate career, Allegheny was recommended for a visit, and I went with a friend, and right when I stepped foot on campus, I fell in love with the old brick buildings shaded by these beautiful tree canopies and the modern technology that was inside the facilities themselves. The tour guide and speakers talked about the senior composition and that sounded very exciting to me. They talked about how it would be very challenging, but it would be an opportunity to learn how to research an item that you are interested in, in a field that you are interested, and then share that information and your findings back out with the world. And I will say that yes, it was challenging. But the fact that Allegheny does challenge students to really take that next step is something that really drew me to the campus and the college.


Briana: Yeah. The senior project is really, I think for a lot of students-- even for students who find it really challen— maybe especially for students who find it really challenging, it’s the part of their Allegheny experience that they often remember decades later. And so you had a major in environmental science and a minor in religious studies. Is that right?


Bethany: That is correct. I have always been interested in science. As a kid I really liked reading through my science textbooks. I remember a specific unit on habitats back in elementary school where I read through all of the different habitat chapters. And in fact I read ahead of the class. And I was all excited, ready to go talk to my teacher about deserts, and I remember her saying, “Hey, that’s okay, I’m glad you’re excited, we’ll talk about that next week.” So I’ve always been drawn to environmental science in that aspect and I also really loved chemistry in high school. So I had a great inorganic chemistry teacher and she taught us the fun of going from the equations on the paper to actually doing that work in the lab. When I came to Allegheny, and I took my first environmental science course, I saw that you can have a field in environmental science that connects to all the other sciences as well. Right, so you could look at infrastructure and engineering. You could look at chemistry such as biofuels. You can do sustainability or you could do policy. And I really liked that I could look at my interest in biology and chemistry and then roll that into environmental science in a way that would hopefully have positive environmental impacts for our world. And my minor in religious studies is something that I’ve just always been so interested in learning about all of the different religions and how those have impacted today’s world and the literary texts versus the interpretations of them. So I’d say that almost follows into the systems engineering and requirements kind of work that I do now, right? Where, here’s what it says, but how are you interpreting it? And then how are you creating the evidence for that requirement? And I think that has a lot to do with the religious texts as well, right? Here’s what’s written and then here’s how people interpret it.


Briana: That’s really interesting, and that’s not a connection that I would have ever made on my own. So still thinking back to your time here on campus, beyond your major and minor, what else were you involved with while you were here on Allegheny’s campus? Were there any experiences that, looking back, were particularly impactful, that-- especially from your point of view now, retrospectively?


Bethany: Yes. When I was attending Allegheny College, I was a founding mother of the Delta Delta Delta sorority at Allegheny, and that was very impactful. It taught me about working towards something that is bigger than yourself. So the Tri Delta organization does a lot of work for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. And that was the first time I had ever been connected to a benefit or an impact that was so much higher than me or so much beyond my day-to-day work. And it felt really good to support that cause and to feel passionate about it, knowing that I was putting good back into the world by supporting the efforts of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I think that is something that has helped connect me today, right? Where the day-to-day that I do at work about requirements and products related to missions still connects to that much bigger picture than myself, such as nuclear launch authorization and enabling space nuclear systems for human exploration to the moon and beyond.


Briana: And so, for folks who aren’t familiar with Greek life, when you say that you were a founding mother of the Tri Delta sorority, can you explain what that means?


Bethany: To be a founding mother of the Tri Delta sorority at Allegheny College means that the corporate office of Tri Delta as well as the Panhellenic group at Allegheny College had decided that they would like to bring that sorority to campus. So instead of doing a standard rush, we were actually interviewed by the Tri Delta office and the members there, versus fellow peers at the college. 


Briana: And so why was it-- because there must have been other Greek organizations on campus, so why were you interested or why were they interested in bringing Tri Delta specifically to campus? 


Bethany: When I started my first year of Allegheny College, I was not particularly interested in Greek life and I did not do the standard rush. I had a lot of friends that were in sororities. I loved what they were doing. I loved going to their fundraising events when possible, but it just didn’t call to me. When Tri Delta came to campus and said they were considering, you know, starting a sorority on campus and here are our values, truth, friendship, and self-sacrifice. I thought that was really great core values. And it connected with me. And then as they talked about their support of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, that’s where I said I really felt that calling and I wanted to do something, support something bigger than myself, and that was it. It just felt so right.


Briana: Yeah. And I understand you also, during your summers, in between your years at Allegheny, had a pretty impactful experience off-campus. 


Bethany: Yes. I was extremely fortunate to be selected for a summer internship at NASA Glenn Research Center between the-- my freshman to sophomore year. I was undeclared going into my freshman year of college and had not yet declared a major. So, I was applying to every and all internships that were out there. I was very fortunate to be selected for an electrical engineering internship. But at that time, I had started to take environmental classes, and I was like, ah, I don’t know if electrical engineering is really the way for me to go. But they hired me as an electrical engineer. I did that for a summer and I learned a lot from it. I think they, you know, they know that you’re also a freshman that you’re not going to come in and know how to just go ahead and wire up a full facility or a full aircraft or whatever. I learned a lot from my mentors. I learned an introduction to electrical engineering and my mentors at NASA Glenn were so wonderful, asking, "Well, what are you interested in long term?" And I told them that I was starting to lean towards environmental science and chemistry and biology. Well, as long as I got all the work that I needed to get done in my electrical engineering internship, they also helped connect me with mentors in fields of biology and environmental science.


Briana: Yeah, that’s fantastic.


Bethany: Yeah, that ended up leading me to an internship the next year in what was known as the Green Lab. And this was a biofuels laboratory, which was the perfect fit for me. This meant we had mini ecosystems that were replicating saltwater shorelines around the globe. We’re in this lab and we would grow saltwater tolerant plants that could be used for biofuel for aviation purposes.


Briana: Oh wow. And so that was what you did the summer after your sophomore and junior years?


Bethany: Correct. I interned in NASA Glenn Research Center's Green Lab actually through my master's degree, and was able to do both my Allegheny senior composition research and my master’s research in the Green Lab.


Briana: Oh wow. So then tell me about your senior project and how that related to the work that you were doing in that internship.


Bethany: I ended up declaring an environmental science major, and my senior composition was about adaptation of algae and plants to saltwater environments in order to be able to be used for biofuels options. So we did not want to compete with freshwater resources. We did not want to compete with food crops and we did not want to compete with land that could be farmed. So I was looking at saltwater tolerant plants and the impacts of the different salinity levels from brackish water to open ocean water and how that would change their lipid content which is what would be used for the biofuels production. I was very fortunate to have both a very supportive mentor at NASA who, when I told him, "Hey, I’ve got this senior composition at Allegheny College, but I really want to do my research here in the summers with you, do the lab work, and then write it up, you know, at school." And he said, "Absolutely. Let’s do that." You know, because that was the whole point of this lab was to gather the data related to this type of biofuels research. And when I talked to my senior composition advisor at Allegheny, they were also so supportive, right? So, we had to have a couple meetings about how would this work, it’s a little different. But I had two absolutely wonderful mentors. I had one on the technical side, for the biofuels, who’d been doing this for a long time, you know. I had my Allegheny advisor, right, on writing the senior composition and writing peer-reviewed documents. 


Briana: You were getting your degree and having this real impact on this area of research.


Bethany: Yeah. The work that I was doing for my senior composition was also inputs to considerations for other Green Lab publications.


Briana: So then after you graduated, what was the next step for you? Was it graduate school you mentioned?


Bethany: The next step for me after my undergraduate was an internship at NASA Ames Research Center in California. I did that for about six months, and I was doing piezoelectric nanowire synthesis down there, which is again more on the electrical engineering side. And I’m glad that I did it. I realized I don’t want to do that for my entire career, though, that I really did enjoy the environmental science and the chemistry work that I had been doing previously. But through all of this, I maintained a great connection with my mentors, and I was talking to my NASA mentor about, “What should I do now? I’ve graduated from Allegheny. I’ve done this internship out at NASA Ames, I’m enjoying it, but I don’t really know if grad school is right for me.” And I’ll say he didn’t really ask if I wanted to go. He just said, "I’m gonna go ahead and write up your recommendation letter for grad school.” He helped make that decision for me. And I was glad to have that support. So, I’ve had amazing mentors throughout both NASA and Allegheny College where nobody has ever stopped me. And in fact, they’re always pushing me, I think, to go further than maybe my current comfort level at the time, but they’ve always shown the belief in me. 


Briana: So you did ultimately go to graduate school at this mentor's encouragement. And what did you do there? What did you study there?


Bethany: I enrolled in an environmental science masters program. Once again it was heavily focused on a chemistry twist. And once again my NASA mentor allowed me to do my research in the Green Lab. So we took it a step further and now I was investigating adapting algaes, freshwater algaes that had a high lipid content, which is what you use for your biofuels, and adapting those slowly to saltwater environments, while trying to maintain that same lipid content so that I would no longer be competing with freshwater resources.


Briana: So that’s good. You have, there’s a real coherence then, already, to your career that you’ve described so far. What came next?


Bethany: When I completed my masters, I was still interested in working at NASA Glenn Research Center. But you can’t be an intern forever.


Briana: That’s true!


Bethany: You somehow have to find a job that lasts longer than a summer or more than a semester. So with the encouragement of my mentors, I continued to apply to all of the options for a full-time position at both NASA Glenn and other centers. I was hired in on the Pathways internship program, which is a civil servant position where they convert you to a full-time employee once you’ve completed your masters. I was selected as a Pathways student in the environmental policy office of NASA Glenn Research Center. That was a little different than what I’d been doing, right? I’ve been very technical, very chemical, very in the lab. And I talked to my mentors about it, and I said, again, “This is a bit out of my comfort zone.” And they said, “Go do it. Go get your foot in the door. Go give it a try.” And I then was working in the environmental policy group at NASA Glenn Research Center where I managed the National Environmental Policy Act for the Center. I managed storm water, illicit discharge detection and elimination, and natural resources, which included management of the endangered and threatened species as well as flood planes and wetlands.


Briana: Yeah. How much of that was -- including, you know, from the policy to the different areas that you’re working with -- how much of that was sort of part of your undergraduate education here?


Bethany: The wide variety of environmental science courses that Allegheny has to offer really did prepare me for the job that I had in environmental engineering in the environmental office at NASA Glenn Research Center. During my undergrad, I took, you know, the introduction to environmental science, but I also took global health and policies. I took one that was related specifically to energy policies that was really a good class. So it really did give you that broader picture of, here’s the life cycle, right? Here’s the sustainability. Here are the policies, right? And here’s then the flow-down of how those policies impact the day-to-day interactions of how work gets done. And that was what my job was in the environmental office is, here’s the federal policy, how does that impact the state policy? And now how are we implementing that state policy at NASA Glenn Research Center?


Briana: And so, how did you get from then that sort of first maybe outside your comfort zone but foot in the door job to where you are now?


Bethany: Yes. From moving from environmental engineering to then we’ll say spaceflight project management and now where I’m at in nuclear flight authorization management has been a really great path in my career at NASA. One of the opportunities NASA provides are called details and it allows you to try a job when there’s a mission need or a center need for someone to take a position, they will post it on a temporary basis and that’s called a detail. So, I was fortunate enough to be selected for a spaceflight project management detail for one year. And I got to start to learn. How does a project get through its entire life cycle from start to finish when it has a spaceflight component to it? I supported some really cool projects like the harmful algal bloom projects, the Mars spring tire projects and then the Glenn extreme environments rig, which is basically a-- can simulate the atmospheres and pressures of Venus in a lab.


Briana: Wow.


Bethany: And I did that for one year and I did really like it a lot. While I was doing this work, I had also heard about these radioisotope power systems groups and they needed people who understood policy that could help support their specific missions. So it seemed like the fates aligned and it was just the perfect combination of everything I’d come to know and love. So it took my environmental policy experience and my environmental science experience and it combined it with my spaceflight project management experience. And my job is now to help missions that have a space nuclear system enabled payload get through the appropriate authorizations and approvals and reviews that are required for the authorization to launch.


Briana: Wow. So it really does-- it really did bring together all of these things that you had done along the way. 


Bethany: Absolutely, yes, all of my interests and different experiences overlaid on top of each other and have got me to a career that just brings everything that I love together.


Briana: Yeah. And so, where do you see this work--which sounds like it may be sort of technical both maybe scientifically technical and then technical from a policy point of view—where do you see this contributing to the larger world? To your community, or to the world more at large?


Bethany: I want to live a life where I am giving something good back to the world, right? To me, I think that’s one of my core values. And it’s one thing to say that, it’s another thing to actually say, "Hey, here’s what I did. Here’s what I’ve accomplished." And helping give that good back to the world or maybe we could say the universe in this case, right? 


Briana: Yeah!


Bethany: So, I’m currently supporting the fission surface power effort. This means that we are finding energy solutions for astronauts as they begin to explore the moon under Artemis and prepare for Mars. They’re going to need a safe, efficient, and reliable energy source to power their equipment and habitats. I am working on a team, an amazing team that is developing a small lightweight fission surface power system that’s going to be able to provide abundant and continuous power regardless of the sunlight or environmental conditions that are on the moon and Mars.


Briana: Wow. That sounds just really cool.


Bethany: It is really cool. I love my job. It’s really cool.


Briana: Yeah. And so what are the, what do you see as the impacts then? Beyond the astronauts who will be using it, what do you see as the impacts or potential impacts of that?


Bethany: Every day that I drive into work, we have this really big amazing sign that is right outside of NASA Glenn Research Center and it says “Research and technology for the benefit of all.” So that is a wonderful reminder to me every day. That the work that I’m doing is beyond the daily meetings. It’s beyond the daily analysis. This is to benefit all. Our space mission technologies often translate to a lot of earth-based applications. So, previous ones have provided benefits to medicine, communication, power generation, and just the data from our space missions help us understand Earth’s history and future. So, an example of how this specific fission surface power effort can benefit terrestrial earth activities is that the reactor that’s being developed for potential support of the Artemis lunar base, when you look at it, what could it do on Earth? This could also be used to power 80 to 100 homes in a neighborhood.


Briana: Wow. And safely presumably, and cleanly.


Bethany: Yeah, every space nuclear system as well as, you know, terrestrial nuclear systems, they undergo a rigorous technical safety review process.


Briana: Yeah. And that’s really exciting. That sounds like that has some really exciting potentials for some pretty intractable problems that we have here on earth. 


Bethany: Yeah, absolutely. 


Briana: And so one final question for you today: what advice do you have for current Allegheny students or future Allegheny students who hope to build successful lives of meaning and purpose?


Bethany: My advice for future and current Allegheny students is to take hold of opportunities when they’re presented. When I was selected for an electrical engineering internship, but I didn’t know if I wanted to be an electrical engineer, I could have turned it down, right? But I did it. And it told me that it wasn’t the right fit for me for a career, but it exposed me to so many potential other options. And it opened the door for what did become the rest of my career. So, I want everyone to apply for opportunities that are of interest to you, but also apply to some that might be a bit outside of your comfort zone. You never know when that will blossom into something else. And if you take the internship and it turns out, like I said, you don’t like it, well, you know, you don’t want to do that for the rest of your life, too. So you still gain valuable information from it. I also want to say don’t give up. You know, I applied for a NASA internship in high school and I was not selected. I could have let that have been the end of all of my NASA applications for the rest of time, but I kept applying and I kept applying to all of them. And you know what? Eventually, I got selected for one. Go ahead and put your name in the hat. Give it a shot. We’re, you know, we’re not expecting you to come in and solve every mission problem the first day of the job. We’re expecting you to come in and learn. And we’re going to learn, too, because a new perspective is being brought to the mission. And I’m also, you know, always happy to talk to any student that thinks they do have an interest at working in NASA and helping them navigate those internship application processes and Pathways applications.


Briana: That’s really helpful. And over here in the Center for Career and Professional Development, we can certainly connect students to alums like you who are always happy to help the next generation of Allegheny students. Well, Bethany Eppig, thank you so much. It has been wonderful to talk to you today. Thank you so much for the conversation.


Bethany: Thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today.


Briana: I’d also like to thank all the members of the Allegheny community who helped make Gators on Purpose possible, including members of our alumni engagement and marketing and communications teams. Our digital humanities librarian, Andrew Miller, provides technical support for our recordings. Our music was composed by Dominic Juliana, Allegheny class of 2026, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Dolan, and was performed by piano instructor Wendy Plyler. Editing and mixing are done by me, your host, Briana Lewis. From campus to career, every Gator has a story that’s uniquely their own. Stories of curiosity and unusual combinations of interests fueled by creativity and a supportive community. These stories remind us that Allegheny College doesn’t just prepare you for a job, it prepares you for a life lived on purpose.