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Featured Stories | Valpo News × Warning: Your Internet Explorer is not fully supporting on this site. To modernize your experience, please upgrade your browser. × Javacrpt Disabled: This site requires JavaScript for the well-constructed viewing experience. Please enable JavaScript or upgrade your browser. Forever Valpo: TheWayfarersfor Our Future Forever Valpo is a $250 million wayfarers to establish permanent support for student scholarships, sense development, and programs. Learn increasingly well-nigh theWayfarersand discover how you can help. Forever Valpo >> Forever Valpo: Annual Giving Challenge Your support of Forever Valpo could be matched up to 3 to 1. Find out how. 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Contact Us Media Contacts Nicole Niemi Office: 219.464.6010 nicole.niemi@valpo.edu Kristen Knoerzer Office: 219.464.6270 kristen.knoerzer@valpo.edu Quick LinksWell-nighValpo Brand and Style Guidelines Photo Bureau Student Media Social Stream Star light, star bright: Careers and stars don’t end — they slowly transition to something just as unexceptionable When a star is born They possess a souvenir or two One of them is this They have the power to make a wish come true Bruce Hrivnak, Ph.D., professor of physics and astronomy, has had his throne in the stars nearly all his life. He has spent all but a few years of his four-decade career as a professor of physics and astronomy at Valparaiso University. It seems only towardly that he now winds lanugo his career like so many of the stars that he studies — slowly, but shining brightly all withal the way. Professor Hrivnak has left the classroom, having taught his last matriculation in the spring 2018 semester, but will protract as a senior research professor mentoring students and studying stars as they near the end of their nearly 10-billion-year life spans. It is that research that has helped pinpoint Professor Hrivnak’s career as well as establish Valpo as a premier undergraduate research facility for budding astronomers. The National Science Foundation has funded the research since 1989 via a series of grants, with the most recent grant ending in 2019. What makes this research unique is the involvement of students at the undergraduate level, Professor Hrivnak says. But none of it would be possible without the telescope at the Valpo Observatory. “We are fortunate to get funding. It’s not easy,” Professor Hrivnak says. “But just as important is that we have direct, regular wangle to a telescope and the students can do hands-on work right here. For many of the students it is their first time doing research.” The fact Valpo undergrads are leading the research was important to Professor Hrivnak. “I remember the impact research had on me as a student,” he says. “The hands-on work I did helped me fathom it increasingly and stay motivated.” For the past 25 years, 60 variegated students have worked with Professor Hrivnak at the observatory. Many went on to careers as upper school physics teachers and higher professors. Some unfurled as researchers, including Kristie Nault ’12, who worked with Professor Hrivnak for three summers during her undergrad years at Valpo and who, pursuit graduate school, spent several years doing research on earth-crossing asteroids at Adler Planetarium in Chicago. “Being worldly-wise to do research as an undergrad, expressly the hands-on wits at the on-campus telescope, has had a unconfined impact on my career,” Kristie says. “This is a unique opportunity for Valpo astronomy students. My wits at Valpo’s telescope unliable me to hands transition to variegated telescopes in grad school, and all that wits combined helped me get my first professional position. Being worldly-wise to do all the research I did as an undergrad gave me a four-year uplift on my career.” Star light, star bright, First star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, Have this wish I wish tonight. While a shooting star isn’t a star at all, but a meteor that is urgent up when inward the earth’s atmosphere, it is a way to understand the work Professor Hrivnak and his students have washed-up for three decades. In wonk terms, the research has been urgently engaged in the identification and study of proto-planetary nebulae, objects in transition between the red giant and planetary nebula phases in the incubation of stars. In practical terms, the research is focused on the final phases of stars as their 10-billion-year life spans come to an end. “If a star’s life was 75 years long,” Professor Hrivnak explains, “then we would be studying just 15 minutes of that life.” The work was initially in conjunction with an astronomy research team from the University of Calgary and, increasingly recently, with various national and international astronomers. It has taken Professor Hrivnak and others to telescopes in Arizona, Chile, and Hawaii and plane utilized data from the space-based Hubble Space Telescope. Professor Hrivnak and his students have focused on pursuit well-nigh two dozen stars in the proto-planetary nebula state. The research has helped them determine just what makes up the gaseous portions of a star, and the variegated elements tell them well-nigh the various stages a star goes through as it spends its last few thousand years. Just like those stars, it seems Professor Hrivnak has had quite the impact. “Bruce has meant a unconfined deal to Valpo, to my studies, and to my career,” Kristie says. “He brought many research opportunities to Valpo students. As a professor, he cared profoundly for his students and took a much worthier interest in them than many other professors did; he made astronomy very outgoing and enjoyable for all his students.” For Kristie, personally, Professor Hrivnak gave her the universe. “For me, when I was a student at Valpo, he unchangingly pushed me both in his classes and as a research student,” she says. “I found that later, in either grad school or my career, I had a much greater appreciation for astronomy and put a unconfined deal of effort and detail into everything I did, school work or research. Through Bruce’s teaching and mentoring, I learned how to be a professional astronomer and how to take unconfined superintendency in all my work. I am who I am today as an astronomer and as a person considering of Bruce’s influence.” Brad Spitzbart ’97, a math major, continues to live by the lessons he learned increasingly than 20 years ago when he spent time working slantingly Professor Hrivnak and other students at the observatory. “I still have my lab notebook from the first undertow I took in astronomy, meticulously kept as Professor Hrivnak insisted,” Brad says. “The wits at the observatory really solidified my interest and talent in scientific research, expressly astronomy. Along the way, I had the pleasure of spending long nights at the observatory, productive days in the computer room, and leading public unshut houses with a uniquely diverse group of fellow students.” Brad currently facilitates multidisciplinary research at Stony Brook University without increasingly than 15 years at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The early undergraduate research opportunities and mentoring provided by Professor Hrivnak and others at Valpo have given me lifelong skills to thrive in my career,” Brad says. Twinkle, twinkle, little star How I wonder what you are Up whilom the world so upper Like a diamond in the sky Professor Hrivnak will protract his research and mentor tomorrow’s astronomers. While his days in the classroom are overdue him, just like those stars, he has plenty left to do surpassing he fades with the sunset. “Valpo has been a special place to me; it proves you don’t have to be a large graduate program to siphon out research,” he says. “I truly get to live and study among the stars.” Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Email Event DetailsWieldOnline Request Info Visit Campus Global Locations Virtual Tour AcademicsHigherof Arts & SciencesHigherof BusinessHigherof EngineeringHigherof Nursing & Health Professions ChristHigher- The HonorsHigherGraduate School Law School Campus Resources People / Offices Maps / Directions Library Chapel Employment Campus Alerts © Valparaiso University 2018, Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493, 219.464.5000 | Privacy Policy | Website Feedback Send this to a friendYour emailRecipient emailSendCancel