New Campaign Honors Former Physics Chairs Mayfield, Sears and Wood-Boercker
August 25, 2011
Clarksville, TN – A little more than 50 years ago, professor Melburn Mayfield founded the physics department at Austin Peay State University. Only a handful of students at first made their way into these classrooms on campus, but with the help of two distinguished professors – physics chairs Sara Wood-Boercker and Dr. Robert Sears – Mayfield’s small labor of love grew into the largest undergraduate physics department in Tennessee.
Last Saturday, friends and alumni gathered at the APSU Morgan University Center to celebrate Mayfield’s 90th birthday and to unveil a new campaign – The Mayfield, Wood-Boercker, Sears Endowment – that will allow the physics department to prosper for years to come. The endowment, funded by private donations, will provide scholarships for deserving, hardworking physics students.
State Rep. Joe Pitts honors former APSU Physics Department Chair Mel Mayfield with a proclamation recognizing Mayfield’s 90th birthday. (Photo by Nikki Loos Peterson/APSU)
New Observatory Opens at APSU Farm
August 24, 2011
Clarksville, TN – Shortly before sunset last Friday evening, a large crowd of stargazers gathered at the Austin Peay State University Environmental Education Center off Pickens Road, hoping to get a good look at the moon or possibly Mars.
The center, also known as the APSU Farm, sits only a few miles from Governor’s Square Mall and is somewhat affected by that area’s light pollution, but as of Friday, it has become the one of the best spots in Clarksville for astronomers to congregate.
That’s because, next to the barns and hay bales, APSU has opened a new observatory with a retractable dome and a 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope, featuring the same optical design as NASA’s Hubble Telescope.
New APSU Observatory offically opens.
