During this period of rapid change for USU, please know that the strong foundation of our institution provides a springboard for success in our long-time endeavors and our future innovations. Our strength is in our people — the students, faculty, and staff who make our institution special through their talent, persistence, and creativity. I have great confidence that we will thrive moving into the future in ways that are impactful throughout our state and beyond. 

As a first-generation college graduate, I am keenly aware of the impact a high-quality education can have on one’s life. I look forward to advancing our university’s strategic institutional priorities as we continue to expand pathways to student access, excellence, and long-term success.

Without question, one of those pathways is through Utah State’s designation as a space-grant and land-grant university. As you will learn in this issue, our students have long impacted space research, and the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) has grown from its roots within the College of Engineering to its own Innovation Campus.

Our Get Away Special Student Satellite Team became the first team comprised solely of undergraduate students to build a CubeSat — a class of nanosatellites. That CubeSat, called GASPACS, was delivered to the International Space Station in 2021 and launched from there in 2022 where it successfully completed its mission.

SDL — which played an important role in the OSIRIS-REx mission to collect samples from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu — continues to be a pioneer in its field. The lab was recently awarded a contract from the Air Force Research laboratory valued up to $1 billion and is working with NASA to detect near-Earth objects.

As you may have heard, federal research funding for programs like these currently faces significant hurdles. While the need for scientific advancement remains critical, budgetary constraints, shifting political priorities, and increasing competition for limited resources are impacting grant availability. It is imperative that we advocate for sustained and robust federal investment in research to ensure continued progress and innovation — just like those USU has pioneered in the past and will continue to advance.

I hope you will enjoy the articles in this issue of Utah State Magazine. They offer just a few examples of the incredible research being done by our talented faculty, students, and staff. I am deeply honored to serve as a steward for our university at such a critical time and will work hard to maintain our momentum and advance our impact as we move into the future.

Sincerely,

Al Smith
Interim President,
Utah State University