The Student Astronomical Society is a new and relatively small organization at MU, but this group of amateur astronomers is making plans for growth.
Amber Sheppard joined SAS her freshman year, and she’s served as president of the organization for a year. As president, Sheppard is in charge of planning events and working with the Central Missouri Astronomical Association, as well as faculty and staff.
SAS meets every second and fourth Wednesday of each month for an evening usually involving guest speakers and star gazing in the Laws Observatory. Along with these meetings, the organization also teams up with CMAA and participates in events such as visiting Rock Bridge Planetarium or observing astronomical events at the Wildhaven Observatory.
“I definitely enjoy having access to the observatory on campus,” SAS member David Litherland said. “Normally someone of my amateur astronomer status wouldn’t have access to such high powered telescopes and that is a tremendous opportunity. It allows us to see some things that we would normally never be able to see.”
Like Sheppard, Litherland has been involved in the astronomy club since his freshman year. He is now the pubic relations officer of SAS, where he attempts to draw more attention to the society in order to gather more members and more interest in the group’s activities and events.
“Our foremost goal is definitely to try and make our association more active, (and) do more events with more people,” Litherland said.
SAS is comprised of a variety of MU students ranging from physics majors to theater majors, but Sheppard said it is still a small organization. She said there are only about 20 to 25 members in SAS.
“One of our main challenges that we’re trying to overcome is, again, we’re kind of a small organization,” Litherland said. “So if all of us graduate without finding any more people with the same passion for astronomy that we have to fill the ranks, the organization will dwindle out.”
Sheppard said any MU student is able to join the club.
“With the Student Astronomical Society you can be any major and join,” she said. “Just come to meetings; there’s no obligation at all.”
Sheppard said the primary goal of SAS for the upcoming school year is to gain more members, as well as more funds to put toward the group’s events.
“We definitely want to get more members and do more fundraising events,” Sheppard said. “We have lots of other kinds of events that we just don’t have money to do. So fundraising is number one and so is getting new members….”
Sheppard said SAS has lots of different ideas for fundraising. These ideas include a video game tournament with Mario Kart and Mario Party, along with bake sales.
SAS’s main focus is on expanding the minds and imagination of its members by making them more aware of the phenomenon and possibilities space provides, Litherland said.
“I feel that it’s important to try to learn at least something about anything,” Litherland said. “I do definitely feel that learning about astronomy, and science in general, definitely makes a person more knowledgeable. And what could be better than a more knowledgeable population?”
