Physics and Astronomy Teacher
Friends' Central School/St. Joseph's University
Broomall, Pennsylvania, United States
I have been doing Astronomy education and outreach for 30 years. I started my career in research astrophysics at the University of Hawai’i’s Institutte for Astronomy studying colliding galaxies in clusters, but along the way realized that my passion was really in taking the lofty ideas I was learning and making them accessible to everyone from Girl Scouts to senior citizens. While still doing PhD research with telescopes on Mauna Kea, I accepted a job at Williams College working as Jay Pasachoff’s observatory supervisor (thus giving myself quite possibly the longest commute in history). While there, I helped Jay pack up his two tons of equipment for eclipse expeditions in Chile and India and learned a lot about eclipse outreach. Fueled by this, I ran my own outreach trip to the island of St. Kitts in February 1998, visiting 6 schools with my orange celestron in the days leading up to totality. Since that time, I’ve continued to teach and run public programs in the Philadelphia area, from the University of Pennsylvania to the schools where I now teach–by day, in a high school and at night at St. Joe’s University. Last year, I became one of the NASA partner eclipse ambassadors through the ASP as well as a SEAL Solar Eclipse Expert. In 2022, I published "Look UP Below! An educator's guide to the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse" and took it on a distribution journey in 2023. I am a mom of 3 kids, a Christ Servant Minister with the UMC and an officiant with Journeys of the Heart.
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13C-2 - Speaking and Science and Snacks: Oh My! the FCS Moonshadow Team Expedition
Saturday, August 24, 2024
1:10 PM – 2:00 PM US PDT
