Those Jumbos who loved Concepts of the Cosmos and are looking to continue their study of astronomy should make "space" on their schedules for additional courses to be offered by a newly expanded Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Officially, the astronomy program is a part of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Though the only undergraduate major currently available for someone looking to explore the skies is astrophysics, this is likely to soon change.
For most of the past 36 years, Kenneth Lang has been the only professor teaching astronomy full-time. He began teaching at Tufts in 1974 as an assistant professor, for which he earned an annual salary of only $12,000.
Since then, both his role in the department and, presumably, his salary have grown. He has written many textbooks on introductory astronomy, which he incorporates into his courses.
"All of my courses deal with books that I've written and I think that helps with two things: one is the popularity, the other is the enthusiasm you can convey to students in a rapidly changing field like astronomy -- keeping them informed of what's happening right now," Lang said.
Last September, Danilo Marchesini joined Lang as an assistant professor in the astronomy department. He specializes in studies on galaxy formation and evolution, and has worked on telescopic arrays in locations ranging from Chile to the Canary Islands. He also has worked on the Hubble space telescope.
Marchesini won't be the newest member of the faculty for very long. The department is entering the final stages of a hiring search for a new professor of astronomy. In an effort to distinguish itself from the more theoretical cosmology group within the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the program is particularly interested in hiring an observational astronomer. Both the astronomy program and the Tufts Institute of Cosmology have high hopes for the incoming professor.
"We have a group of theoretical, not observational cosmologists; their hope is that this person will complement their work," Lang said.
Currently, Emily Dare is the only graduate student of astronomy at Tufts. She is in her second year of work on her Ph.D.
"I would like that to change because I would love for there to be a group working here. Hopefully in the next few years there will be at least one other student working here," Dare said.
One reason for the dearth of graduate students may be the difficulty of observing stars locally. For example, the closest telescope array that Marchesini can use for his work is located in Arizona.
"To do what I do, which is the study of high red shift galaxies, you really need big telescopes, and the closest one is in Tucson," Marchesini said.
Though the distance can be inconvenient, die-hard astronomers do not mind trekking to remote outposts.
"I entered astronomy because I love going to the telescopes and observing -- I try to do it at least once or twice a year for three or four nights," Marchesini said
Over the years, Lang's astronomy courses have been popular among students.
"In my introductory Astronomy 10 course, Wanderers in Space, there have been between 250 and 400 students every year for about 30 years. For my higher level course in Stellar Astrophysics, and Astronomy 22, the enrollments are always about 50 students each year," Lang said.
Within the astronomy department, large classes and a small faculty mean that it can be hard for professors to get to know individual students. The classes offered by the astronomy program are limited in number and tend to be taken by non-science majors wanting to fulfill a requirement or engineers taking an elective course.
The courses are primarily designed for students who are interested in, but do not want to major in, astronomy. Dare believes that this may act as a dissuading factor to those who plan to seriously study the science.
"The way that they're structured is not really meant for an astronomy major, someone who really loves it and wants it to be their career path, basically. I really want them to have undergraduates going into astronomy and astrophysics," Dare said.
The desire for more researchers is echoed by other professors in the small department. "What I would really like is to have more undergraduates in astronomy, and more undergraduates researching astronomy. Before it was harder, obviously, but now the tools are there and the opportunities, even more so," Marchesini said.
While the research opportunities for aspiring astronomers at Tufts have been limited in recent years, the department has historically encouraged undergraduate research. In the past, students have both conducted and published their own research.
"The paper that has been most responded to of any of my astrophysical journal papers was done with the help of three Tufts undergraduates called 'The Composite Hubble Diagram,'" Lang said.
Published in 1975, the article is notable for its popularity and its then-novel inclusion of undergraduate researchers.
"It is in vogue now for students to do scientific research, but that was 35 years ago when it was not as common," Lang said.
