Join Us

Looking to Join CSI? You're in the right place!


The Columbia Space Initiative (CSI) consists of 13 “missions”, which are projects dedicated to exploring various topics related to space science, engineering, outreach, and policy. CSI has no applications and is open to all current Columbia/Barnard students. Students can join one or multiple missions, and we recommend that prospective members explore several at the start of the year! For more info on these missions, check out each mission's page, or read their blubs all together on the homepage.

As a club, we hold weekly general body meetings on Fridays at 4pm. Gbody meetings are held in Mudd, the Engineering building on the corner of 120th St. and Amsterdam Ave, in room 833. Many of CSI missions meet directly afterwards, although there are a few exceptions. Please check the Slack mission channels for meeting times or ask mission leads if you are unsure!

How to Join

  1. Welcome to the 2024–2025 CSI year! Everyone should attend our annual Liftoff Meeting on September 13th at 4pm in Lerner Cinema to get all the information you need about CSI and individual missions. If you miss Liftoff due to schedule conflicts or religious observances, don’t worry! A link to the recording will be posted in Slack over the weekend.
  2. Find us on Slack and sign up with your school email. We use Slack for internal communications, announcements, memes, file storage, and more. You can download Slack as an app or open it up in your browser (though we recommend using the app).
    • Please add a contact photo if you’re comfortable doing so, as this helps all of us get to know each other.
    • Join a few channels! Interested in particular missions? Click “add channel”, and search the mission name. Feel free to poke around!
    • Direct message Co-Presidents Will Specht or Kate Lampo at any time with questions. We try to reserve #general for announcements and club-wide notifications.

    Join our Slack

  3. If you haven’t already, subscribe to our newsletter by filling out the form at the bottom of this page. Official club-wide announcements are organized and sent out each week by our secretary Chloe Jones, so don’t let her hard work go to waste! This is a nice tl;dr of all our Slack announcements.