ASTRONOMY DEPARTMENT

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The U.W. Astronomy Department began in 1965 and has grown to 11 full and part-time faculty occupying 9.5 permanent (tenure or tenure track) positions, nine postdocs, and 23 graduate students in 2006. Like every department at the University of Washington, our goals and responsibilities can be summarized as excellence in education, research, and public service. Our success is measured in many ways.

• Faculty: Astronomy faculty work in just about every area of modern astrophysics, from studies of the nature of the early solar system to charting the large-scale structure and evolution of the Universe. They serve in leadership positions in many national and international projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope, new satellites in NASA's pipeline, huge new telescopes on the ground, and a new Astrobiology program. Research grant funding is approaching $4M. New research grants reached $2M in 2004-5 alone. Faculty recently received the highest career achievement awards from the national professional societies of the U.S. and Germany.
• Research Facilities: We presently have leading roles in two major telescope projects, the 3.5-m general-purpose telescope and the 2.5m Sloan Digital Sky Survey, both in the high mountains of New Mexico, and we are deeply involved in the development of an 8.4-m full-sky survey and monitor "Large Synoptic Survey Telescope" that will probe the depths of the solar system, our Milky Way Galaxy, and the cosmos in order to understand their origins and evolution.
• Undergraduate Education: Our undergraduate program has become one of the largest in the nation with nearly 70 undergraduate majors. Our undergraduates are cross-trained in physics and astronomy so that they enter graduate school or the job market prepared for a broad suite of opportunities. Advanced undergraduates are part of the fabric of our research and teaching enterprises. "Pre-MAP", a program for first-year college students from under-represented groups to astronomy research, is attracting national interest.
• Graduate Education: A national survey of students in graduate astronomy programs rated the U.W. graduate program the best in the U.S. in 2001. A recent survey showed that 85% of our PhD graduates had full-time professional careers in astronomy ten years after receiving their degrees. We consistently rank in the top ten of national graduate programs, which include far larger departments at the University of California, Cal Tech, Arizona, Princeton, and Harvard with huge privately owned telescopes. Our program emphasizes a full set of professional career skills from research to collegiate education and community leadership. It is an immense source of pride.
• Physical Facilities: The Department shares a lovely building with Physics. We have modern teaching labs, research lab space for detectors and the analysis of interplanetary dust particles, a planetarium, a full library, conference rooms, etc.

SUPPORTING THE ASTRONOMY DEPARTMENT The focus and direction of the Department's activities is in an exciting state of change. With your support we grow stronger and move forward into exciting new opportunities over the next decade. The Astronomy Department relies on private gifts as well as research grants to meet our programmatic and strategic objectives. Private gifts are the way in which we remake our programs and provide our students with opportunities that state teaching funds and federal research grants will not support. Our needs for support are organized into various categories shown as violet boxes at the top of this page. Please browse through them in order to get a sense of our activities and overall needs. Although we describe programs of immediate interest to us, some donors will wish to support creative new initiatives not shown here. Please contact us to explore new types of funding opportunities.

QUICK LINKS TO ASTRONOMY GIFT FUNDS   CORE PROGRAMS AND PEOPLE Friends of Astronomy Equipment & Facilities Graduate Activites & Research Undergraduate Research & Opportunities   GOAL-SPECIFIC (TARGETED) FUNDS Jacobsen Graduate Endowment Baer Undergraduate Awards Manastash Observatory Fund Project ASTRO Schools Outreach We urge donors to contact us before making substantial contributions so that we may direct your funds appropriately.