Undergraduate Research

Most of my teaching lately has been guiding teams of our advanced undergraduates through our observing class. Apart from spending a four day weekend at the shower-less MRO, I was responsible for teaching them to be responsible for the telescope and observatory, helping them with the wonderful software we choose to use for data reduction, and guiding their work. The last two years I also guided the science the class worked on. We teamed up with another graduate student who has produced lots of candidate RR Lyrae stars using POSS and SDSS observations. The first year we tested his method, and this year we're following up the stars that he thinks may be overdensities in the Milky Way's halo. The first year we did this the students really took off and were able to present a poster at the AAS.

This fall I'm helping guide a project for Pre-MAP, a program for underrepresented students interested in Astronomy at the UW. I hope someone picks our project!

Graduate Fellow in K-12 Education

For two years I was a fellow in the NSF GK-12 program -- in my case I helped teach kindergartners and first graders math at Leschi Elementary. I recommend it to anyone; working with young kids can be fabulously rewarding, and teaching at that level rewires your expectation of what happens in a classroom. I seriously forgot that you could lecture.

Introductory Astronomy Classes

I've also done a lot of work as a teaching assistant in introductory astronomy classes, and it looks like I get at least one more chance before I'm done! I'm TA'ing our 102 class this fall.

The 2006 observing class presenting their poster at the AAS in Seattle!