Dr. Todd Young is the Director for WSC Planetarium which is located beneath Carhart in the basement. The Planetarium was built with the building in 1969 and had a full renovation in 2010.

“I took over from Professor Carl Rump, he ran the Planetarium for many years and I took over in 2009,” Young said.

The Planetarium has a variety of shows which Young has made himself or ones that his colleagues have made. He has special weekends and shows planned for everyone to experience.

“There are a lot of what I call themed weekends,” Young said. “I’ve got plenty of kids weekends, sci-fi nerd weekends, math nerd weekends, and newly biology nerd weekends, a little bit for everyone.”

Anyone can go to the Planetarium and enjoy themselves, even those who do not attend the school can come and appreciate one of the shows. They can even bring the family if they like.

“We are still running it as a donation based Planetarium with suggested donations of $5 for adults and $3 for kids and there is no expectation for Wayne State students to donate,” Young said.

Unfortunately, the Planetarium gets overlooked more often than not, Young does his best to spread the word about it by updating the website that lists all of the shows of the year and by encouraging students to visit a show.

“I think this is one of the most underutilized resources that we have on campus even though we have that big banner right outside the building,” Young said. “If anybody is interested in what goes on in the Planetarium, we have a website and it has all of the information that you’ll need its wsc.edu.planetarium and we just recently posted all of the shows.”

Wayne State students can also book the Planetarium for private shows. If any clubs or floors would like to host events or functions they can get in touch with Dr. Young and he will help figure things out.

“Something Wayne State students might like to know is that the Planetarium has a good sound system we also have an external highdef projector and we can connect it to a DVD player or PlayStation, we’ve had clubs and floors down there watching a movie or playing a game,” Young said. “It is available for students you just have to contact me and we’ll figure something out.”

Young’s hope is that with the upcoming holiday’s and with a large number of freshman this year, word might spread around a bit more and have more people wanting to see the Planetarium.

“I just hope the word spreads and people can come to the Planetarium and then they can spread the word to other people to come to see a show,” Young said. “I get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing other people get enjoyment out of it.”