Astronomer Wayne Schlingmann shares his journey to finding his sense of purpose and belonging with the students who lit his way through the stars.
Wayne Schlingman is the director of the Arne Slettebak Planetarium at The Ohio State University. Wayne holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Arizona. At Ohio State, he works with faculty and students in to fully utilize the exciting technology and storytelling opportunities available in the full-dome theater. When he is not in the planetarium, you will find him working with students coaching them in research and helping them to navigate life. Each summer you will find him on top of Mount Lemmon in Arizona at Astronomy Camp, rekindling the connection to the stars and inspiring a new generation of astronomers.
Story Transcript
It's early January of 2020. It's dark. It's cold. The semester is already busy and I'm ready to go home for the day. I receive a text from Nikki, my best presenter. “I cannot do the show this evening. Can you cover?”
It's 30 minutes before an evening planetarium show and this was very out of character. I made it work while she went to the emergency room. The next day, she told me the doctors wanted to run additional tests, but she was feeling better.
A few days later, she was headed back into the hospital. It was leukemia. This was a gut punch as I had grown close to Nikki and her friends over the past years through our student orgs and our major program. Nikki and her team ran the Astronomical Society, and I was able to get to know them all very well through weekly meetings and our many events. Nikki was the glue that held this group together.
She was admitted to the James Cancer Hospital at The Ohio State University, and we were able to visit her early on and had many hours of conversations bathed in the afternoon sunlight. We talked about the new planetarium system and how shows were going. We talked about our plans to finish courses and graduate in May. We also spent a lot of time talking about video games and developing a hospital‑wide network to play Animal Crossing. But I will never forget the one afternoon when she reminded me about our first trip to Green Bank.
It was early on a Saturday morning in February of 2017. Nikki was sitting with her friends in the middle of a charter bus filled with astronomy majors, and we were on our way to Green Bank, West Virginia, the first of the now yearly pilgrimages into the National Radio Quiet Zone.
Things on the bus started to quiet down until we crossed the Ohio River in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where the whole bus began belting, “Country roads take me home to the place I belong, West Virginia, Mountain Mama. Take me home, country roads.”
A few hours later, we arrived at a place where cell phones don't work and the buildings dating back to the mid‑1950s house some of the world's most sensitive electronics. At Green Bank, the whole point is to hear the secret whispers from the universe. It's like stepping back in time to a magical place where the connection between the Earth and the universe is strong.
As a radio astronomer, I helped Nikki and her friends work with an old pen‑and‑ink chart recorder wired into a room of analog electronics from yesteryear. They were measuring the hydrogen gas in our galaxy as it passed overhead. There was plenty of downtime while the groups observed in the underground bunker, so others would head outside to explore the countryside or play games in the bunkhouse.
Without digital stimulation, students chose to interact with each other instead of sitting idling on their phones. They explore things like they had never seen them before. I caught students taking pictures of dirt like they didn't know it had existed before that day. It was healing to see this world unlocked.
Back home, I was struggling to figure out where I fit into the astronomy program. I felt on board. I didn't feel like my talents were being used. I didn't feel like my department was the home I wanted it to be. I was struggling to find my place. My life was becoming unglued as I wasn't dealing with any of this in healthy ways, and I was about to spiral out of control.
However, I felt like I belonged at Green Bank with my flock of students. That night, we had a 20‑person group playing Cards Against Humanity in the hallway of the bunkhouse. We wrote new rules and it became a running riot of hilarity, laughter, and bad jokes. This was the moment that I began my bond with the students who would eventually graduate in 2020, and the moment that Nikki knew she could trust me to guide her through college.
After that trip, Nikki wanted to get involved with the planetarium. Giving shows to the public is a combination of knowledge about space and skill at storytelling. Both are challenges to a younger student. The best way to train is just to shadow and figure out your own story.
Nikki and I gave a lot of shows together. She was shy and quiet at first, but broke out of her shell as she learned how our old system worked. I pushed her to step out of her comfort zone, and she rapidly became one of my best presenters. Nikki's skill at storytelling became clear to me when she visited the Kitt Peak National Observatory and took incredible photos and wrote a blog detailing her experience while observing, not just what she did.
I leaned on Nikki for her expertise and reliability. She helped us choose our new planetarium system. She made it possible to make a rapid transition to a new digital universe and spearheaded writing all of the code necessary for the shows we still give today.
Back in the hospital, we reminisced about past years and talked about the future. But I was surprised when she said, “You're the uncle that we all need.” This was how she described our relationship and how many students saw me. I was someone they could trust and come to with their problems. It was a heavy responsibility to hold someone's trust in such a way. I'm not the casual advisor where topics stick around school. They trust me to help them find their way in life.
I had just undergone a huge transformation from being lost myself a few years ago, finding that it's my work with students that grounds me, and here they are bringing me into their found family.
With the pandemic raging, visitors were restricted after the first few months. I remember getting a call from Nikki's best friend one day. When I heard the shattered voice on the other end, I knew what had happened.
I had been very hopeful of a recovery and was not mentally ready to admit there was any possibility of a negative outcome. I was crushed. And when I received the news, I didn't know how to process it.
Students pass through our lives, but there are some who have lasting impacts. Nikki left an indelible mark on me. She was so brave and alive that she didn't let on to all the struggles she was going through in the last days.
In the weeks following, there were a lot of outdoor meetings in the grass just to be together with the friends she left behind. She was still the glue holding us together. And she helped me see my role in the lives of my students.
This was the first moment where I can specifically point to the importance of the quality time that I spend with students. Nikki taught me that the time I spent was more than a fleeting moment in her life. It meant more than I could have possibly imagined.
The pandemic changed my job since I was not giving in‑person planetarium shows. I took on other responsibilities that included mentoring and managing the undergraduate program in astronomy. This opened the door to getting to know all of our students better.
The world shutting down and our new normal was actually one of the best things that could have happened to me. Suddenly, my skills became important to everyone. I had the crucial ability to reach students who were missing and engage with them authentically like family. I was checking in with students who were flagged as struggling and reaching out to them. But what I had not yet realized was how many of my best students were white‑knuckling life, and on paper doing fine, but personally falling apart.
I realized this when I met Logan to see how classes were going after we had exchanged our graded papers. I asked, “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” he said.
“No, really. How are you actually feeling right now?” And that opened up the floodgates for these tightly bottled emotions to come pouring out. We ended up talking for over an hour, sitting on the bench in the cold with snow on the ground. I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember it made me realize how hard this was on others.
This experience and these experiences together have heavily influenced how I want to give back to my students. The time I spend with my students is the single most valuable gift that I can provide. The experience of intentionally being human with another human makes us all better and it helps us all succeed and discover who we are.
Fast forward to today. I have helped countless students find their way on the earth and among the stars. I have learned how to change struts on a Prius in a parking lot. Unsuccessfully, I might add. The shop had to use a plasma torch to cut them off. But I've also helped alumni plan moves across the country and traverse new career paths.
Now, I am the glue that holds people together. I allow myself to be one person that can impact an entire college career for the better. I am the person who is willing to show my students they can be a scientist and a human being at the same time, that they don't have to give up who they are in order to pursue high‑octane careers.
I am changing my field by developing the next generation of astronomers who remember to be human first and pay it forward by being good to others. I am proud of the impact I have on so many people professionally and personally. Those country roads did in fact take me to a place where I belonged.