Try @ TXST

Giselle Kowalski:
Hi, everybody. My name is Giselle Kowalski, and I'm the digital content producer here at Texas State University. You're listening to Try at Texas State, and welcome to a very special episode.
Over the past year, we've explored some of the most exciting, unique, and unexpected experiences here at Texas State. From groundbreaking research to adventurous student activities, we've gone over it all. So in this episode, we're taking a trip down memory lane by highlighting some of our favorite moments. Whether you're into space exploration, bees, Dungeons and Dragons, rock climbing, we have it all here. And if any of these snippets sound interesting to you, be sure to listen to the full-length episodes on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Let's dive in.
First on our list is the Texas State Space Labs, where students are building and launching satellites into orbit. We spoke with one of the lab's founders and how this innovative program got started.

Giselle Kowalski:
OK, let's go into the space labs. So who founded the Space Labs and what even is that to someone who has never heard of it before?

Evan Jellison:
Space Lab is a research organization here at Texas State open to any student, no matter your major, your grade level, doesn't matter, who are interested in doing what we call space technology and science research. So we develop spacecraft that Texas State will be launching into space. We're actually working on our very first satellite called Bobcat Orbiter, and it's going to hopefully launch by the end of next year. We also develop different kind of modules that go into satellites, and also, like Matthew said earlier, ground infrastructure as well. The kind of origin of it is funny. As an undergrad, I wanted to do undergrad research, and like I said earlier, I wanted to do something space related. So there were only two major professors in the physics department doing anything related to space. So I went to one of them and I asked, "Hey, I want to do a project. Is there anything you can let me do?" The first thing he said was, "I want to build a satellite."
And I had no idea how to do that. I was kind of shocked and it kind of led us down this rabbit hole of next thing I know, I'm going to conferences or putting together student organizations and stuff like that. And now here we are with the research lab.

Giselle Kowalski:
It's fantastic.

Evan Jellison:
Quite the journey. Yeah.

Giselle Kowalski:
Next we're going rock climbing. The rock climbing scene at Texas State is different. With multiple types of climbing, including one of the tallest indoor climbing walls in Texas, there's a challenge for everyone, whether you're a beginner or an experienced climber. For people who have never even stepped foot in a gym, what is it like? Because the Rec Center has two different types of climbing and people might not understand what that is, so can you walk me through that?

Hayden Mitchell:
So the Rec Center actually has three different types of climbing.

Giselle Kowalski:
Oh, really?

Hayden Mitchell:
Yeah. So there's the bouldering wall, and that's the shorter type of climbing. It's going to only go to 15 or 20 feet, and then there's those really thick pads on the ground. Whenever you're doing that, there's no harness, there's no rope. All it is yourself in your shoes, and then you chalk up before you get on. Whenever you get to the top, you can drop from the very top and land on the ground. The Rec also has top rope and the walls there are one of the tallest in Texas, I think they're 52 feet or something at the highest point, and that's the one where the rope goes all the way up to the top and all the way back down. You tie into the end and someone has taken the slack as you keep climbing. Whenever you get to the top of that, they just pull the slack out of the rope and then lower you all the way down.
And then there's another type of climbing, which is a little bit more advanced, not as advertised there, but it's called lead climbing. If you've been to the Rec, which I know you have, or listeners if y'all have, and you've noticed those little hanging kind of chain looking things from the wall, that's for lead climbing. With that, the rope all starts on the ground. You tie yourself into it, and as you climb, you clip the rope into those until you get to the very top where you can be lowered all the way back down and then pull the rope through all the chains back at the end.

Giselle Kowalski:
We all hear people saying to save the bees, but what does that even mean? In this next clip, we spoke to an expert about the differences between honeybees and native pollinators and why they're so important to us as humans and in Texas.
So I'm going to ask you, why are bees important? Because we hear a lot of people in the media talking about bees, but a lot of us don't know why we need them.

Christopher Miranda:
You hear the save the bees movement, but it's not exactly the bees that you're thinking about. OK. So when you think about bees, what's the first bee that comes to mind?

Giselle Kowalski:
Like a honeybee.

Christopher Miranda:
So honeybees are the most successful bee species in the world. They're originally from Europe and now they're basically everywhere else. The bees that we're talking about when it comes to saving the bees movement is more native pollinators, like native bee species. There's leaf cutter bees. There's these little burrowing bees and stuff. Those are the bees that we're mainly targeting trying to promote saving. Of course, the honeybee is the poster childs because everyone just knows what a honeybee is. When it comes to saving the bees, it's those bees because we use pesticides, we no longer promote like wild flower spaces. We lose our meadows that support a lot of that wildlife. Those are the bees that we're actually talking about when it comes to the saving the bees movement. But the honeybee is our poster child.

Giselle Kowalski:
Dungeons and Dragons may seem like just a game, but it's all about storytelling. I got to talk to the president of the Dungeons and Dragons Club to learn more about how the game is built, where players take their stories and what makes it so complicated. She explains to me the magic of storytelling, dice rolls, and what it's like to be a dungeon master.
If you could describe Dungeons and Dragons, because I know it's kind of complicated. To somebody who's never heard of it before, how would you describe it?

Allison Drinnon:
Yeah. Dungeons and Dragons at its core is collaborative storytelling. Yes, there's dice and yes, there's a little bit of math involved, but at its core you are playing a character and you're acting as them throughout a story, and you're working with your fellow players to solve a problem or defeat a bad guy, and different things like that. And the dice that you use determine your success rate.

Giselle Kowalski:
And so these characters, are you coming up with them? Are they predetermined? How does that go?

Allison Drinnon:
So for the most part, you will come up with your own character, and so you'll play as this character during a campaign. What a campaign is, is a series of sessions. Sessions is when all of you players and the game runner or the dungeon master sit down and play for a few hours. Typically, this can be about three hours long, and so these sessions will run continuously and you'll tell a story over time.

Giselle Kowalski:
Whoa. So are you a dungeon master?

Allison Drinnon:
I am a dungeon master. So I started being a dungeon master this past year, and I actually recently completed my first campaign, which is very exciting. So it ran for about a year and a half, actually. So these campaigns can run very long. They can be shorter. We sometimes have dungeon masters in our club run campaigns for only a semester, but typically they can run pretty long.

Giselle Kowalski:
I had the honor of attending the Sacred Springs Powwow here in San Marcos, which was a beautiful celebration of Indigenous culture right here in Central Texas. We're going to revisit the conversation I had with Aaron Pyle about the Sacred Springs Powwow and his journey to reconnecting with his native heritage. And so for those that are not in part of the Native American culture nor the Indigenous culture, what is your relation to that in terms of San Marcos? Is there a tribe that you are a part of? Just please educate me.

Aaron Pyle:
Absolutely. So I am a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. I grew up in Southeastern Oklahoma there on the tribe's reservation land, but as a teenager, my family moved here to Central Texas and I felt myself disconnected from that part of my identity. A group and a place where native culture is just interwoven with everyday life. My family was very involved with the tribe when I was a kid, but then all of a sudden we moved to Central Texas and was disconnected from that part of my identity and my community.
But it was while I was an undergrad at Texas State University, one day I was at roaming across campus going up the steps of Alkek, and I began to hear some drums that sounded very familiar. And lo and behold, I managed to stumble across the campus powwow that day. And I spent the afternoon talking with vendors, dancers. I met elders who would go on to be some of my mentors through Four Winds Intertribal Society and Indigenous Cultures Institute. That day kind of changed my life. It connected me with the local intertribal community. It put me on a path to pursue my Ph.D., examining Indigenous experience in education settings. And for a Choctaw very far from Choctaw country, that little campus powwow did a lot for me.

Giselle Kowalski:
If you've ever been on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library here at Texas State, you know that that's where The Wittliff Collection lies. I got to talk with the director of The Wittliff Collections, which is a treasure trove of Texas culture and history. I got to learn about fascinating origins and missions and even go deeper into my favorite story, Lonesome Dove.
So I wanted to dive right in about who is Bill Wittliff, because I know that some of our Texas State students and even maybe staff and faculty are unaware of who he might be. So what was he like and what even prompted him to make this museum at Texas State?

David Coleman:
Yeah, it's a great story. Bill was from small town Texas, grew up really falling in love with storytelling and people who would tell stories. He was very, very bright guy. He was not good in school, but he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams and in all sorts of ways. He ended up attending five institutions of higher learning for college, including a summer session here at Texas State or Southwest Texas State.
After he graduated from another university, he founded a press basically publishing books of Texas writers, and he did the design, his wife Sally, who's still with us, was the businesswoman and he was the editor, designer award-winning books for Texas book collectors basically. And through that passion, developed a lot of friendships, developed a lot of relationships, and eventually 20 years later wanted to set up an archive, a collection that would preserve and inspire young Texans really to create. He always said that if he had known how hard it was to write and that successfully creative people and writers, how much work it took that he would've not gotten so discouraged early on. That it was something you realize only much later that it takes a whole lot of work to do. So he established the Southwestern Writers Collection as it was called at the beginning to inspire young people who, as he liked to say, who had the itch to create, but not yet the courage. The Wittliff Collections is a great legacy for that.

Giselle Kowalski:
A fan favorite from last season was our rugby episode. Rugby is not just a sport, it's a huge community. I chatted with the team president about the game's intensity and the bonds it creates. So let's get into the game of rugby. So say I've never watched a rugby game before and I have no idea what I'm looking at. How would you describe the game and the rules to me?

Kyle Campbell:
So the way I describe the game is it's more soccer based. We always say people, it's like soccer and football combined.

Giselle Kowalski:
So how many players are on a rugby team?

Kyle Campbell:
Oh, yeah. So there's 15 people on the field each time for each team. So your number is kind of what you are, like your position on the field. So your number translates with position. So usually your bigger guys are numbers one through eight, and then nine through 15 are smaller guys. They call them forwards are the first eight, and then backs are the last seven.
So that's how we do it. And then the coolest part about rugby I'd say is, I don't know if you remember from the video, whatever, the lineouts, and then we did the scrums on that machine, like a knock-on. So a knock-on is if someone drops the ball and then you want to give possession of the other team, you can't just restart it. So the way they do it is a scrum. There's eight people that combine and fight over possession of the ball kind of in a little circle per se, and then lineouts are if the ball is kicked out of bounds. So it's the same thing in soccer as a throw-in, but instead in rugby you kind of lift the guy. In soccer, you can just throw it wherever. That's the only difference there really.

Giselle Kowalski:
Last but not least, we got our hands dirty with the geology club, learning about everything from rock formations to cave explorations and lunar mapping. Check this out.
So let's start from the beginning. So tell me a little bit about the Geology Club. What is it? What do you guys do, what did your meetings look like, that kind of thing, and how did you find out about it?

Alan Martinez:
Yeah, so the Geology Club is just a student-led organization. We focus on advancing the geosciences here at Texas State. Our meetings are filled with guest speakers. We also do fun things. We've done a geode scavenger hunt around the Evans Liberal Arts Building, and we've also done a rock smashing thing where we just smashed this huge boulder basically to get some smaller bits for rock tumbling.
Other than guest speakers, we also have a show and tell and trade meeting every semester where people are welcome to just bring their collections and show them off to other people, and it's a pretty fun time. So I actually found the Geology Club because I got interested in it through the astronomy club. We had gotten a guest speaker that worked with the Geology Club, Dr. Rene DeHon, and he focused on lunar mapping and he did a lot of the work for NASA on that. So he talked about it and after that I just went online. I started following a lot of people who were geologists and I got really interested in it. Once I attended my first meeting and went through it a little bit, I said, yeah, I would love to study this more.

Giselle Kowalski:
And that's a wrap on the 2024 season of Try at Texas State. Stay tuned for the next Try at Texas State season. And remember, all those snippets you heard have full length episodes if you want to listen to them on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We'll see y'all later, Bobcats.