Wood to land in Biosphere UND Space Studies chair taking off for position in Arizona Chuck Wood is returning to Earth. It was built to help scientists understand how Biosphere 1, the Earth, works. Columbia announced last December its plan to expand Biosphere 2 to accommodate 350 students and to expand the size of program offerings at the campus. Wood has been chair of the space studies department since 1990. He's crafted a program that focuses on all implications of mankind's entry into space, from the scientific and technical to the political and legal.
Students learn how to talk to the wide range of people involved in space exploration.
Graduates of the program have been hired by Boeing Aerospace's space station division, Hughes Aircraft, NASA, Spaceweek, U.S. Air Force Space Command and dozens of other private and public organizations. Before joining UND, Wood was chief of NASA's Space Shuttle Earth Observations Office. Before that, he was a space scientist, in NASA's Experimental Planetology Branch. In short, he's spent the past two decades with his gaze turned to the heavens. But he knows this biosphere pretty well, too.