Kansas University senior Judy Yu has always been a stargazer.

“When I was a little kid, I lived in a rural area with my grandparents,” said Yu, who is originally from Taiwan. “The only thing we could do at night was to sit out there and stare at the sky.”

Fascinated with all things cosmic, Yu gravitated toward astronomy when she came to KU. Now she’s president of the Astronomy Associates of Lawrence, a club composed of students, professors and Lawrence residents interested in learning “how the heavens go,” as the 16th century astronomer Galileo once put it.

Astronomy Associates is one of more than 400 organizations registered with KU’s Student Organizations and Leadership Development Center.

Once or twice a month, astronomy club members hold open houses when they gather atop the sky boxes at Memorial Stadium and survey the celestial landscape.

“The stars and the planets change every season, so the objects we look for also change with each season,” Yu said.

Astronomy Associates and most other student groups at KU are open to anyone who shares the organization’s interest. With 15 different designations to choose from  including academic, campus political, religious and special interest  there’s something for just about everyone.

“KU can feel like a big place,” said Danny Kaiser, director of Organizations and Leadership Development Center. “Getting involved in something just helps break it up into more manageable chunks.”

Club information

Doing so is easy, he said. The center’s Web site lists all organizations registered with the office, and many of the groups have their own Web sites with more detailed information. Interested students also can visit the center’s office on level four of the Kansas Union, where a list of organization officer names and contact information is available. Periodic information festivals on campus give students an opportunity to visit with various groups, sign up and find out when meetings are held.

For those who can’t find a niche that suits their personality, it’s fairly simple to create a new club. All it takes is at least two people and a faculty adviser to register with the office, Kaiser said.

Of course, people with similar interests can get together without picking a name and registering with a campus office, but with registration comes benefits.

Registered clubs can use university facilities for meetings and events; petition Student Senate for funding, depending on their classification; qualify for student organization advertising rates in the campus newspaper; obtain a Web site and an e-mail address on the university system; and receive consultation from center staff when planning an event.

‘Complete life’

It’s possible to be involved in so many extracurricular activities that stress begins to take a toll. Student activist Karen Keith, a senior sociology major from Tulsa, Okla., created a club that caters to the student who seems to be involved in everything: the Activist Craft Circle.

“We really have too many meetings already. We’re really overbooked,” she said. “Crafts are just a way of de-stressing. It’s also a good way for us to share the different skills we have.”

Keith  whose list of campus involvements include Amnesty International, Delta Force, Students for a Free Tibet, Student Senate, Center for Community Outreach, and the list goes on  likes to knit. Other group members do embroidery, needlepoint, art and design class projects, drawing homework, crocheting  “basically things with string have been the big thing,” Keith said.

During the spring semester, the craft circle met twice a month in the evening for two hours at a time.

Kaiser said getting involved in one or more campus organizations could enhance a student’s college experience.

“Students aren’t just little academic machines. We need to tend to their complete life,” he said. “We believe in helping them find constructive things to do. If students develop connections to the university that are separate than their class ones, they’ll tend to do better in class, tend to come back for their sophomore year … and persist on to graduation at a higher rate than those who don’t.

“And when it’s all said and done, they will say they had a much more satisfying college experience.”