Our guest speaker is Dr Suzanne Metlay, full-time faculty at Western Governors University, and the title of her presentation is “Beyond NASA: Private, Commercial, and International Spaceflight”
We are nearly 20 years into the 21st century and Colorado is 1st in U.S. private sector aerospace employment, has the 2nd largest aerospace economy in the country, and ranks 3rd for awarded NASA contracts. So let’s put that in context – in the 60 years since Sputnik, how has space industry expanded away from NASA and into the international private sector? Let’s think back, look around, and venture forward into the next decade of spaceflight.
Suzanne Metlay is full-time faculty in Geoscience Teacher Education at Western Governors University, a fully online non-profit university founded in 1997 by 19 governors of western states, including Colorado. Previously, Suzanne taught astronomy and geology at Front Range Community College in Longmont and Fort Collins, was Operations Director for Secure World Foundation in Superior, and served as Education Programs Manager at CU-Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium. Currently, Suzanne is President of the Teacher Education Division of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.
Suzanne has a BA in History and Science from Harvard University and a PhD in Geology and Planetary Science from the University of Pittsburgh. She was awarded the Antarctica Service Medal from the Department of the Navy and National Science Foundation for fieldwork conducted as a participant in the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) in 1991.
Weather permitting after the presentation, visitors will be invited to look through our large telescope at various celestial objects. Public star nights are held the third Friday of each month, except July, when we are closed for annual maintenance.
If you have any questions, please call the observatory information line at 970-613-7793
or check the LTO web site at www.starkids.org
