Though it’s taken many forms and breaks over its decade-long run, the community’s local science event, “Science Wednesday,” ended Nov. 30 at Lewis Science Center.

For its last event, the lecture hall was full of students and faculty listening to the three panelists discuss ceramics’ connections to chemistry, archaeology and art.

Associate professor and ceramicist Elizabeth Smith, chemistry professor Patrick Desrochers and associate professor of anthropology Duncan McKinnon helped field questions from students.

Each professor brought objects related to ceramics in their field to show the audience.

Desrochers brought bauxite, Arkansas’ state mineral, as an example of unrefined aluminum oxide, as well as a white aluminum oxide translucent tube used in light bulbs.

Smith, who teaches ceramics at UCA, brought green chromium oxide that she uses to glaze ceramics at UCA’s many kilns, which she also described.

McKinnon brought pottery pieces from the Caddo Indigenous people to show students. He found them at a Red River archaeological site in South Arkansas and said they were 500 to 800 years old.

“To make these pots sturdy, [Caddo people] would put temper,” McKinnon said. “Different tempers provided a thinner body, a stronger body.”

Desrochers said the chemistry behind using shells as temper is related to climate change.

“The chemistry behind what happens to the calcium carbonate, when it’s incorporated into the hot clay body, is all directly related to mineralogy and climate change and storing carbon in rocks,” Desrochers said.

Because pottery can tell researchers about technology, movement and cultural change, McKinnon said ceramics are important to archaeology.

“In large, archaeology is a ceramics discipline, relying on that data set,” McKinnon said.

Smith said it reminded her of a joke she told students loading a kiln.

“I said, ‘are you sure it’s exactly how you want it to be?’ Because it’s going to be around forever.

“You can spend 10 minutes making it better now, or you can leave it as it is for the rest of your life,” Smith said.

Facilitator Ashley Hicks, academic director of the STEM Residential College in Hughes, read audience questions for the panel participants.

She started “Science Wednesday,” originally called “Curious Connections,” in 2012 when she was an undergraduate student at UCA and president of the Society of Physics Students.

The event’s theme, ceramics, is a callback to the event’s first-ever topic.

Hicks brought a large cake for faculty and students to celebrate its anniversary and end.

“Science Wednesday is going on an indefinite hiatus. I don’t know when we’ll be back. I don’t know how we will return,” Hicks said to the audience.

“You can keep an eye peeled on our Facebook page, ‘Science Wednesday, Conway, AR,’ where I will update you as soon as I know.”

Hicks said the event was created out of “a desire for interdisciplinary connection and conversation.”

“Rather than drag it on, we wanted to say, here’s a good clean 10 years, and we will come back hopefully reinvented fall ‘23,” Hicks said.

Senior physics and linguistics major Hypatia Meraviglia said they were sad about the hiatus.

“I loved Science Wednesdays. My pals and I used to go and listen,” Meraviglia said. “UCA is losing something really valuable.”

Still, Meraviglia pointed out the university had other community science events, like public shows at the Dr. Edmond E. Griffin Planetarium.

Meraviglia also said registered student organizations have science events throughout the year, like the Society of Physics Students, Allies in STEM, Green Bear Coalition and the robotics team.