Dowd Brings Passion for Science Communication to UTA Planetarium
Growing up, McKenna Dowd loved looking at the stars and always wanted to learn more about them.
It seems entirely fitting then that she is now working at the UTA Planetarium, where she’s able to share her love of astronomy with others every day.
Dowd recently joined the Planetarium staff as programs coordinator, and her job allows her to interact with the thousands of schoolkids who visit the Planetarium each year on field trips or with their parents and families.
“We have a lot to offer here at the Planetarium,” Dowd said. “During the shows we do, it’s so great to see how engaged the kids are. They’re so excited and have so many questions about things they’ve learned that they didn’t know when they first walked in here. They talk about how they want to come back and how much fun they’re having. That’s exactly what we’re here for — for them to learn and have fun.”
Dowd can identify with that enthusiasm. As a kid living near Cleveland, Ohio, she would take her telescope into the backyard at night and look at the stars or set up her camera and tripod and take photos of the moon. In the summers she and her dad would drive out to nearby Cuyahoga Valley National Park and watch the Perseid meteor shower.
“It was really cool seeing all those shooting stars!” she said. “Astronomy is something my dad and I always bonded over.”
When she was in high school, Dowd toured NASA’s Plum Brook Station, now called the Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility, in nearby Sandusky, Ohio. It houses the largest, most powerful space simulation and spacecraft test facilities in the world. She also visited the observatory at the John Glenn Astronomy Park south of Columbus, Ohio. She was intrigued by everything related to space and the stars.
“I always enjoyed physics in high school,” she said. “It always seemed like a big puzzle to me, like here’s all the pieces of the puzzle and you’ve got to put it all together, using the laws of physics.”
Dowd knew she wanted to study astronomy or astrophysics in college and chose the University of Toledo, home to the Ritter Planetarium and Brooks Observatory.
“My freshman year they did a meet the faculty event at the planetarium, and it was my first time to be in a planetarium,” Dowd said. “I thought it was so cool. My first semester I went to the director of the planetarium and asked if I could work there. He took a chance on me and gave me a job.
At the Ritter Planetarium, Dowd learned all about programming and presenting shows, and got to help plan the 2019 Great Lakes Planetarium Association Conference, which was held in Toledo. Her favorite part of the job was seeing the wide-eyed wonder on kids’ faces during school field trips to the planetarium.
“Kids would come up and tell me things they learned or things they knew about astronomy,” she said. “One kid, he must have been about 4 or 5, he comes up to me and starts telling me everything he knows about black holes, and then he starts going into the theory of white holes. I’m thinking, this kid’s really young, but he’s here to learn and he’s interested. It’s so important to me for the younger generation to be interested in astronomy. If I can help this kid be interested in the field and become involved in it down the road, that’s really neat.”
When it came time to select a topic to focus on for her undergraduate research, Dowd selected galaxies and galaxy evolution. Dowd received her B.S. in Physics with a concentration in Astrophysics from the University of Toledo in May and joined the UTA Planetarium in June.
Levent Gurdemir, UTA Planetarium director, said Dowd hit the ground running and is impressed with her energy level and her ability to connect with schoolkids and the general public.
“McKenna is very personable and engaging and loves sharing her enthusiasm for astronomy with visitors to the Planetarium,” Gurdemir said. “She has extensive knowledge of the digital technology that we use, and her previous experience at the Ritter Planetarium and Brooks Observatory make her a great fit here at the UTA Planetarium. We’re very happy to have her aboard.”
Dowd says she is excited about the prospect of using the on-campus Park Central Garage Observatory and portable telescopes to do public outreach including things like watch parties.
“There are so many interesting things to see in the night sky,” she said. “For example, Albireo in the constellation Cygnus the Swan looks like a binary star system, but when you look at it through a telescope you can see there are actually two stars that are light years away from each other, and that one appears more red and one is more blue.”
She is thrilled to be at UTA and to have the opportunity to help showcase everything the UTA Planetarium has to offer.
“This is the coolest planetarium I’ve seen,” Dowd said. “We can seat 150 people in super comfortable reclining seats; we have a gorgeous screen; the facility is beautiful inside and out. I feel like you can’t beat this view. I’ve always enjoyed the communications side of science and working here allows me to be very involved in that. Every time I walk in here, I think, ‘I can’t believe this is where I work.’ I do that every day.”
The UTA Planetarium, which features a 60-foot dome projection surface, fully digital projection system, and advanced software, features public shows weekly and hosts tens of thousands of K-12 schoolkids during field trips each year. The Planetarium is also available for private parties and Dinner Under the Stars. For more information about everything the UTA Planetarium has to offer, visit https://www.uta.edu/planetarium.
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