Ed Wassell, '91
Alumni Profile -- (Spring 2000 Newsletter)
“There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of
the moon, and another glory of the stars,” says St. Paul,
“for star differs from star in glory.” (1 Cor. 15:41).
As a former seminarian, Ed Wassell (Class of ‘91) once
meditated on how one star might differ from another in glory.
Now, through an abrupt career turn, he is preparing to explain
scientifically that very difference – working on cameras
to be included on the Hubbell Space Telescope to chart data
on star formation.
Wassell is a research engineer for Raytheon Corporation’s
“Wide-Field Camera Three Project,” at the Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The federal government
has extended the life of the Hubbell Space Telescope, currently
circling the earth in space, by allowing it to be updated
with better technology and instrumentation. The technological
improvement he is working on will allow the Hubbell to acquire
better information on how stars are formed.
“The cameras on the telescope have certain detectors
that pick up light,” Wassell explains. “The light
is then translated into an electronic signal that is processed
digitally so that an image can be reconstructed. The problem
is that the detectors pick up certain background noise and
characteristics that have to be excluded if we want to interpret
the data correctly. What we’re doing is looking at those
detectors and seeing how we might better identify those characteristics
so scientists can focus instead on the relevant data.”
To do this, Wassell works in the laboratory conducting tests
and interpreting data filtered by the detectors.
If such a job is an unlikely place for a former seminarian,
it at least followed naturally upon his education at the College.
After graduation, Wassell spent two years testing his vocation
to the priesthood with one of the newer religious orders,
Opus Angelorum. After discerning his vocation to the lay life,
he began teaching high school at the Legionaries of Christ
seminary schools in New Hampshire and Connecticut.
For two years on the side, he and a fellow teacher (Steve
Cain, who became a tutor at the College in 1998) would travel
100 miles each week to the home of Dr. Duane Berquist, a philosophy
professor at Assumption College whose brother is a College
founder, Marc Berquist. There, he and Cain had private tutoring
in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, a work that Wassell was introduced
to in his senior year at the College.
These further studies in philosophy, plus three years of
teaching high school, inclined him toward graduate school
for teaching at a higher level. But his new bride, Jeanette,
made him think hard about his subsequent employability and
financial security.
Wassell then met Dr. Charles Montrose, Chairman of the Physics
Department at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., who
encouraged him to consider graduate school in physics, and
showed him it would be economically feasible to do so. Wassell
was sufficiently interested in physics. Dr. Berquist had fascinated
him in showing that the positions of early-20th century physicists
like Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Schroedinger and Heisenberg,
could be harmonized with those of Aristotle.
Wassell jumped at the opportunity and in two years completed
his master’s of science degree in physics – all
without having to take the usual regimen of undergrad course
work in engineering. He anticipates getting his doctorate
in 2002.
“When considering an applicant for our graduate physics
program, our main concern is not how much physics the candidate
knows, but rather how much the candidate can learn,”
said Dr. Montrose. “The broad scope of Ed’s classical
education has developed in him the intellectual habit of synthesizing
knowledge gained in localized areas to develop broader principles.
He’s a brilliant young guy who is genuinely interested
in understanding the physical universe – what the world
is made of and how it works. His intellectual habits will
prove (and have proven) invaluable to him as he seeks to understand
the general theories that describe the physical laws of the
universe.”
Wassell came to Thomas Aquinas College after a two-year detour
at Claremont’s Harvey Mudd College left him fretting
over the moral hazards to which he was continually exposed.
One of his public high school chums, Art Hipler (‘89)
from Anchorage, Alaska, had landed at the College and Wassell
decided to join him there, starting over as a freshman. “I
never had realized what my faith was until I came to TAC,”
said Wassell. “It was there that I developed a prayer
life and realized my responsibilities as a Christian.”
Before joining Raytheon, Wassell worked as a laboratory researcher
for Vitreous Laboratories, exploring ways to convert liquid
nuclear waste into hard glass so that it could be buried safely
under the earth without risk of leakage and subsequent radioactive
contamination. The research is being used in connection with
the on-going clean-up of the Hanford Nuclear Power Plant site
along the Columbia River in Washington. “It was a great
experience,” he says. “I learned how to use a scanning
electron microscope and to design my own glass substances.”
“Physics is a logical science. Many people just memorize
the principles of physics, but they don’t attempt to
understand those principles. At TAC, I was taught to think
through an issue and to really try to understand the principles.
In the realm of physics, then, I try to look not simply to
the application of a principle, but to the principle itself.
That, in turn, helps me apply the principle to new applications.”
Wassell’s wife, Jeanette, is a 1991 graduate of Christendom
College. They have one son, James, and are expecting another
child this summer. For the Wassells, this is star formation
of yet another order.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Spring 2000
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