That initial class was an experiment, but it is now in the school’s official course catalog and represents the university’s first small step in boosting SETI research. The giant leap will be the creation of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center or PSETI Center: a formal academic hub that aims to fund research, host conferences, educate students and raise up the next (and next and next) generations of scientists looking for space aliens.
Now they will be raising their own graduates that can say “I’m not saying it’s aliens but”— you know the rest – and soon there will be qualified graduates that can speak about exoplanets, biological signatures, technical signatures, panspermia, and perhaps well-documented histories about mankind’s relationship with anomalies in the skies.