The Space Race, Redux: NMC Students Look To The Stars For Next International Affairs Forum Event

The first space race effectively ended in 1969 when the United States put the first man on the moon. The second space race is happening right now, with implications for everything from communications to pharmaceuticals. Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) and its International Affairs Forum (IAF) will put that topic under the microscope this coming week – just the second event in the organization's 32-year history to be spearheaded entirely by NMC students.

According to IAF Executive Director Alex Tank, the event series has long had a student leadership team. Those students promote forthcoming programs, volunteer at IAF events, liaise with visiting speakers, and more.

Last April, though, for the first time ever, IAF let its student leadership team take the lead on organizing an event. The resulting program – titled “Echoes of Change: The Legacy of Student Activism” – was driven by student planning and student-led interviews, and “highlighted the impact of youth activism and cross-cultural perspectives in shaping civic life and social change.”

Tank was so impressed with the outcome that he knew student-led programming had to become an annual part of IAF programming. Fast-forward to now and the student leadership team is putting the finishing touches on “The New Space Race: How Data, Resources, and Power Are Shaping Our Future,” scheduled for 7pm this Thursday, March 19. The event will explore how governments and private corporations are jockeying “for technological advantage, data control, and access to resources” in space; how the rapid growth of space infrastructure is outpacing both “legal and international frameworks” to regulate it; and what the consequences could be “for citizens, the environment, and the balance of global power.”

“We really do hand over the steering wheel for this one,” Tank says of the event. “Me and my colleagues are just there as faculty advisors. It’s a phenomenal experiential learning opportunity for the students.”

Much of IAF’s student leadership team is new this year and will be taking on hosting duties for the first time, including team co-chairs Harrison Willow and Zinnia Burks. Willow is a music major who moved to Traverse City last year, and only discovered IAF in the fall. Burks graduated from NMC’s licensed practical nurse program in December, but circled back to the college this semester to take a few more classes and get involved with IAF.

Willow and Burks, along with the other 11 members of the student leadership team (pictured), started off with a list of “between 30 and 50 topics” for the event, but the idea of doing something space-centric immediately appealed to the group.

“A lot of the pre-existing interest in IAF, at least on campus, is coming from students who are in the humanities or the international topic sphere,” Burks says. “This event is unique for IAF, because it poses an opportunity for students who are more interested in technology, or science, or engineering to get involved, which is a significant portion of NMC’s student body. It really feels like an opportunity to reach a new audience.”

Aimee Hubble, who will serve as the in-person speaker and interview subject for Thursday’s event, goes one step further. In her eyes, the modern space race is the rare topic with implications for all.

“It’s not just that we have more and more things in space every day; it’s that more of our everyday lives are touched by space than ever before,” says Hubble, who holds a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan and serves as senior project engineer at the Aerospace Corporation, a federally-funded R&D facility in Virginia. “I would not be able to call you right now, with our two cell phones connected to each other, if it was not for space assets and satellites. And next week, I’m going to plug my hotel address into my phone’s GPS, and it’s going to get me to Traverse City.”

It’s not just satellite technology that matters. According to Hubble, some of the most revolutionary work happening in space right now diverges wildly from how most people perceive the industry.

“For example, there’s actually really exciting work going on with manufacturing in space,” Hubble tells The Ticker. “You can make better semiconductors if you manufacture them in the microgravity of space and then bring them back down. You can make different kinds of pharmaceuticals in space than you can down here. So, there's a lot of exciting stuff that is in works now and will be affecting our lives in the decades to come.”

For Willow, those unexpected angles of the new space race are what made it the perfect event for IAF’s student leadership team to tackle.

“When we were selecting our topic, we had it narrowed down to three options, with the other two being global health and regime change,” Willow notes. “Those two topics are familiar and pretty widely understood, but the future of space technology and the international cooperation involved in it – as well as the private financial interests at work and all the legislation that is involved – these are things that most people don’t know much about, ourselves included. When we chose this topic, [Tank] encouraged us to get really well-versed in this cutting-edge area, and it ended up being so fun and fascinating to tap into the ecosystem of space policy and technology professionals.”