Like the early aviation industry, commercial space travel is still extremely exclusive. Erlich’s job is to develop relationships with the astronauts, leading them through the documentation, matching them to a flight and ensuring they’re qualified for training.

From there, Erlich hands them over to the astronaut concierge team. With the space industry expanding, careers including facilities managers, training operations teams and contract writers aren’t limited to governmental space programs anymore.

Hanson’s journey to that powerful moment began years earlier as a middle schooler with a camcorder in hand. In high school, he launched a film club and realized filmmaking could be more than a hobby. That discovery led him to Auburn, where family ties ran deep and where the College of Liberal Arts offered a Film & Media Studies program that could turn his passion into a profession.

“I feel very lucky that I always knew which area I wanted to go into,” Hanson said. “It all lined up, and it’s been off to the races since. There were a couple of great professors in the program who were mentors and got me asking questions about my projects that I hadn’t known to ask before.”

A sound design project revealed how silence and ambient noise could heighten emotion. An independent study with Associate Professor Hollie Lavenstein pushed him beyond easy answers and into deeper meaning. The New Media Club gave him a community of peers who sparked ideas, launched projects and built lasting friendships.

After his time at Auburn, Smith played basketball in Europe for almost 14 years. He played in five countries: Cyprus, Bulgaria, Israel, Italy and France. Smith explains that while widely different, all the experiences were great. He is grateful to have gotten the chance to live outside the United States and indulge himself in different cultures and ethnicities.

While still playing overseas, Smith’s siblings invited him to help them out at a summer program for the Boys and Girls Club.

“One of the better choices I’ve made, getting to help out 30 young men from the environment that I grew up in,” Smith said. “We brought them into my old high school, really just got them away from video games, we did Bible study, ate lunch and gave them the game of basketball.”

They say there’s no secret to a lasting marriage or being effective business partners, but they’ve proven over and over that being good to people is good for more than just business.

Great things are happening at a state-of-the-art recording studio tucked away in a hidden corner of Goodwin Hall on the south side of Auburn University’s campus.

Beautiful music is being made at the Don and Alexandra Clayton “Lucky Man” Studio, a world-class facility in the Department of Music that opened in October 2024. Whether it’s professional music artists from across the country or budding singers and performers from the university, Lucky Man Studio (LMS) has become a haven of creation in its first year.

The Auburn University Speech and Hearing Clinic meets these children where they are – at the campus clinic, in our community or via telehealth, so that every child has access to evidence-based literacy evaluation and treatment.

“At Auburn, we’re in a really privileged position to be able to help so many families,” said Clinical Professor Laura Willis, who coordinates the Speech-Language Pathology Clinic. “We have the facilities through the clinic to directly offer evaluation and treatment, then our research facilities allow us to improve not just what we’re doing, but also better inform the available resources around the state.”

The Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities (CMDCAH) at Auburn University organizes the AHA’s events and membership. CMDCAH Director and AHA Secretary Mark Wilson said Auburn is the heart of a vast network of important work preserving and promoting history.

“Land-grant universities like Auburn fulfill their outreach mission best in collaboration with organizations and networks who share a similar mission,” Wilson said. “The Center creates opportunities for people to reflect on the human experience, and our work with the AHA allows us to do that in a meaningful way in communities around the state.”