To commemorate the total solar eclipse on April 8, Trinity celebrated its second Space Week, beginning April 2 and running until the day of the eclipse. It included several interdisciplinary events: a panel discussion, the Distinguished Scientist Lecture, the Knibbe Ranch Eclipse Viewing Party and an on-campus eclipse watch party.
Space Week began with a panel discussion on April 2 about “San Antonio’s Global Role Harnessing the Promise of Space” between Jim Perschbach, CEO of the Port of San Antonio, and Sam Ximenes, CEO of Astroport Space Technologies. This event was followed by Ellen Stofan’s Distinguished Science Lecture on “Sustaining Earth from Space.” The week concluded with the community trip to Knibbe Ranch to view the total solar eclipse in the band of totality.
Armando Saliba, senior director of research and sponsored programs, was responsible for coordinating the events for this space week and the one in October 2023 for the annular eclipse. Saliba stated the goal of an interdisciplinary approach to the events to correspond with the school’s identity as a liberal arts institution.
“So for last semester’s eclipse, which was supposed to be a test run for this year (the one that just passed) it really was to try to look at space from various perspectives since we’re a liberal arts institution,” Saliba said. “That’s why I broadened it out to space, because the eclipse is kind of a metaphor of space. So what did religion think about it, science say about it? What does business say about it? I mean, we kind of look at it from many, many different aspects.”
Students who did not attend the Knibbe Ranch viewing on April 8 could gather around the Miller Fountain to watch the eclipse as a community with Copcorn and snowcones provided by TUPD. Mia Kholy, senior neuroscience major, attended the on-campus event to watch the eclipse rather than participating in the venture to Knibbe Ranch.
“I thought it was really fun. I liked how everyone got together. It was the most people I’ve ever seen in one area,” Kholy said.
Interdisciplinarity within Space Week was essential to the programming that took place. Professors from various departments — education, physics and astronomy and geoscience — coordinated with the CSI MakerSpace to create and distribute boxed models of the solar system and eclipse to San Antonio schools and libraries. Leslie Bleamaster, member of the Space Week committee, emphasized the importance of interdisciplinarity to the success of the week.
“I think anytime we can find events to rally people around and bring multiple perspectives and multiple disciplines around a central event, we should do it. We should just be constantly seeking opportunities for us to have collective experiences,” Bleamaster said.