In 2020, the United States Department of Defense requested $3.2 billion to fund research and development in hypersonic defense programs for the fiscal year of 2021. The demand for funding in hypersonic research directly responds to the increasing gap between hypersonic weapon capabilities between the United States and foreign entities. This gap in hypersonic research stems from a lack of specialized personnel, facilities, and hypersonic academic programs in the United States. I argue that the improvements in U.S. hypersonic programs rely on increasing the availability and implementation of hypersonic academic courses and labs in the collegiate curriculum. My thesis expands on these improvements by correlating the process of researching, designing, and constructing a benchmark blow-down hypersonic wind tunnel to create trained graduate students prepared to work within the hypersonic research field. This hypersonic wind tunnel, which was designed and built by a multidisciplinary team of senior year college students under my leadership, can train students to evaluate and measure changes in pressure, temperature, flow velocity, shock wave angles, boundary layers, and additional properties of hypersonic flow up to Mach 5 as it flows over a solid body. It provides these capabilities using various pressure sensors, pitot tubes, Schlieren imaging, and thermocouples integrated throughout the system's design. The collected experimental data is validated using CFD and other numerical simulation programs. I conclude with a discussion on the potential impact of training and preparing graduate students to answer the national call for hypersonic researchers and facility personnel.