Annabel Peltzer

Annabel Peltzer is from Phoenix, Arizona. She is a senior at Hillsdale College, majoring in physics with plans to continue at Arizona State University for mechanical engineering and planetary science. A lifelong enthusiast of space exploration and science, she has participated in and led NASA-affiliated projects, co-authored a scientific publication on a student-led radio telescope array, and leads a campus model rocketry project. She’s also written for Hillsdale’s Collegian newspaper, volunteers with the U.S. Air Force’s Civil Air Patrol (CAP) program, and is training to become a Mission Aircrew Scanner for CAP’s Emergency Services program. In her free time, she enjoys experimenting with designs on her 3D printer and reading nerdy philosophy essays on various sci-fi and futurism topics.

With her background in the classical liberal arts, Annabel is passionate about connecting physics, civics, space, and her Christian faith to explore how wisdom and ethics can help guide meaningful and long-lasting innovation. Her goal is to bridge the gap between technical problem-solving and the larger questions that make human space exploration worthwhile. She believes that a strong grounding in history, philosophy, and the enduring principles behind America’s founding is essential to that future.

Click Here to read Annabel’s Winning Essay

Our Interview With Annabel

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
Constituting America has long been part of my life since I was young! My family and I first heard about it through our friends the Kolssaks who had previously won with Constituting America. Being homeschooled, my parents instilled in my sisters and me the importance of understanding America’s heritage and founding and having the ability to communicate our values and ideas. Essay contests lent themselves well to learning about and engaging with American history, civics, and current events, and Constituting America was a great resource and outlet for this. In middle school, I loved learning about American history through CA’s 90 Day Study program. I still have a fat binder sitting on my bookshelf of all my guest essayist printouts and annotations! Later, my older sister, Madeline, won with the high school essay and college speech categories. It feels very full circle to become a category winner myself, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute to Constituting America’s organization!

What inspired your work?
The opening story described in my essay submission is actually very true to real life in how the inspiration behind my paper unfolded! During my freshman year of college, I took Dr. Khalil Habib’s Constitution course—a required core class of all students at Hillsdale College. Between Dr. Habib’s lectures, in-class discussions, and the 23-page study guide my friends and I joined forces to devise, I ended up learning a lot about the Constitution! It also introduced me to Aristotelian and Enlightenment political philosophy, as well as how Newtonian physics and planetary motion influenced the Founders’ thinking and approach to the Constitution.
Then, during my sophomore year, I worked on an in-class project programming a model Solar System. I vividly remember sitting at my computer in class when the connection clicked between the checks and balances I’d studied in Constitution and the push-and-pull relationships of planetary orbits I was coding. While writing my essay for Constituting America, I often returned to that Python file. It served as creative and historic inspiration throughout the process while also visualizing how living systems can only survive when the forces of power are properly restrained by each other.

What did you learn about the U.S. Constitution while creating your entry?
It seems like the Constitution’s system of checks and balances is often emphasized for its role in restraining the negative aspects of human nature. And while this is true and important, I realized the flip side of this is how checks and balances also filter for the best and brightest of human ideas and action in our government. By defining boundaries and distributing authority, the Constitution channels human ambition, creativity, and judgment in productive ways. Each branch is strengthened to excel in its role: the executive branch acts decisively; Congress deliberates thoughtfully; and the judiciary applies and safeguards the Constitution. Together, these branches are designed to work symbiotically and defensively for the People.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to spread the word about the Constitution primarily through conversations at my school, church, and within the broader community. Attending a classical liberal arts college has allowed me to build relationships with highly interdisciplinary-minded friends, classmates, professors, and mentors. Our discussions often cross-pollinate ideas from politics, economics, theology, literature, art, science, and mathematics, and they frequently surface themes deeply embedded within the Constitution—such as strength through limitation, natural versus governed law, and emergent order in fields like economics and physics. Constituting America’s essay contest has inspired me to orient conversations that more directly trace patterns and structures like these through a constitutional governance lens. In doing so, I hope to help cultivate a deeper understanding and appreciation for the individual rights and responsibilities the Constitution both presents and protects.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to tour the White House as well as visit Colonial Williamsburg and revolutionary-era sites along the Boston Freedom Trail!

What are your career plans?
Ultimately, I hope to work in the space exploration industry, potentially specializing in autonomous systems to help robotic and/or manned spacecraft and systems navigate space and the terrain of other worlds. I’d also love to work in planetary research to learn more about the geological history and material properties present on bodies like Mars, Enceladus, and Europa. I’m especially drawn to projects that integrate engineering and human-centered design approaches to create environments, habitats, and technologies that will help sustain human life and operations in space.

In addition, I also hope to help work on developing immersive educational platforms which are already under development. Technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Extended Reality (XR) hold great potential to transform otherwise dry textbooks and abstract, intangible concepts into cohesive, beautiful, and intelligently adaptive programs and tutorials for students of all ages, backgrounds, and learning styles.

How do you spend your free time?
I love attending school and community stargazing and observatory events with the Astronomy club, taking road trips with friends and family, and attending rodeo and powwow events across Arizona. I also volunteer as a tutor for grade school students at a local preparatory school and assist as a Senior Member with a nearby Civil Air Patrol squadron.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution will always be relevant because it was founded on timeless truths of human nature and a proper orientation of political power. The political philosophy works of John Locke and Charles Montesquieu laid the moral and ethical foundations of the Constitution. Their writings revealed how human rights and dignity are not created by governments but are endowed by God and inherent to every person. Therefore, the government exists to protect what already belongs to human beings by nature—they do not invent or grant it. For this reason, the Constitution continues to serve as a moral and practical guide for the preservation of freedom to Americans in every generation.

The Constitution’s timeless applicability is especially relevant to my generation—Gen-Z—as I and many others my age have grown up alongside the rise of the Digital Age: the internet, smartphones, social media, and now Artificial Intelligence. While these innovations have transformed and advanced society in many ways, they’ve also ironically brought us back to some of the most ancient and fundamental questions and debates: what defines human flourishing, and how do we build and direct a society toward that end? The same wisdom that shaped the Constitution and is encoded throughout it can help guide my generation to intelligently and responsibly respond to these questions through the things we build with technology and the ways we choose to coexist alongside it.