The NOAO Educational Outreach Department is responsible for Information Requests, Scientific Press and Media Relations, and Educational Outreach Programs.
Our NSF-funded Teacher Enhancement Program, The Use of Astronomy in Research Based Science Education (RBSE), is a cornerstone of the department, providing a research experience to middle and high school teachers from around the country and helping them facilitate classroom research projects. Over four weeks this summer, the third annual RBSE workshop will take place in Tucson and on Kitt Peak. Teachers and mentors are being recruited now; see the application form for more information at: http://www.noao.edu/outreach/rbse/.
Two grant proposals were recently submitted to strengthen the RBSE program by NOAO Outreach Astronomer and Kitt Peak Staff Scientist, Travis Rector:
Since 1996, NOAO has been the lead institution for the expansion of the ASP's Project ASTRO into the Tucson area. Our three years of funding wind down this fall, but not before a fourth training workshop takes place in September, bringing the number of teachers and astronomers trained through this expansion to over 150.
We are exploring methods of keeping key elements of Project ASTRO alive in NOAO Educational Outreach, particularly the worthwhile training of area astronomers and teachers interested in partnering for classroom inquiry of astronomy and science. To that end, an education supplement was submitted with a NASA Technology Development proposal (K. Hinkle, PI) for the Evaluation of Coarsely Ruled Gratings. This effort would fund four astronomers and two high school teachers to participate in the next Project ASTRO-Tucson workshop and enhance their classroom teaching of spectroscopy and the nature of light.
Images from the NOAO collection are frequently requested by textbook authors and others for reproduction and publication. Thanks to the efforts of Nigel Sharp, Jeannette Barnes, and Dave Bell, the NOAO Image Gallery is now available on the Web at URL http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery. There you will find images at a variety of resolutions and conditions for their use.
The tenth NOAO press release of 1998, Science Selects NSF-Supported Research on the Accelerating Universe as the Top Advance in Science for 1998, was distributed and made available at http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/. We are increasing efforts to help users of NOAO facilities distribute their science discoveries and images to the media and public. For more information, please see Sidney Wolff's article elsewhere in this Newsletter.
Suzanne Jacoby, NOAO Educational Outreach