hide captionStudents from CUNY's AstroCom NYC program meet for a weekly class at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Dennis Robbins, an associate professor of science education at CUNY's Hunter College, teaches Betsy Hernandez (from left), Jaquelin Erazo, Ariel Diaz and Mario Martin.

Students from CUNY's AstroCom NYC program meet for a weekly class at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Dennis Robbins, an associate professor of science education at CUNY's Hunter College, teaches Betsy Hernandez (from left), Jaquelin Erazo, Ariel Diaz and Mario Martin.

Shooting for the stars is expensive.

Advanced sciences like astronomy require years of study and graduate degrees. And the soaring cost of college can be a heavy obstacle for low-income and minority students hoping to break into those fields.

A program at the City University of New York hopes to lift that burden by providing scholarships and one-on-one mentoring to underrepresented students.

AstroCom NYC is designed for CUNY scholars like Ariel Diaz, who first felt the pull of astronomy when he was a Marine stationed in North Carolina. Diaz was miserable at the time; he missed his friends and family back in New York City.

"I would go to the beach with my friend," he says. "We would just go to the beach, have a beer and just look at the stars, and everything was OK."

Diaz finished his service three years ago and came home, enrolling in a CUNY community college. When it was time to take a science class, he thought about that time on the beach.

"I like stars ... let me take an easy course," he remembers thinking. "Let me take an easy astronomy course."

Diaz laughs now, because it wasn't easy. As any Astronomy 101 student can tell you, it's far more physics and math than stargazing. Diaz needed help passing calculus. But he says it was worth it to learn about stars and galaxies.

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Changing The Face Of Astronomy Research