Simon Raab, member of the KITP Director's Council, addresses teachers. Photo by Nell Campbell.
On March 17 the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics hosted its annual conference for secondary school science teachers from throughout the United States. The topic was “Forging the Elements and Probing the Universe With Stars.”
The conference, coordinated by KITP permanent member and astrophysicist Lars Bildsten, tapped the scientific talent on hand for the four-month-long spring program on “Accretion and Explosion: The Astrophysics of Degenerate Stars.”
The morning talks focused on stellar fundamentals: Bildsten described the astrophysics of “The Life of a Star,” and Hendrik Schatz of Michigan State University explained the processes of “Forging the Elements During Stellar Death.” The afternoon sessions looked at how dying stars function as probes for astronomers. Edward van den Heuvel of the University of Amsterdam spoke about the core collapsing supernovae in a talk entitled “Gamma-Ray Bursts: Probes of Star Formation in the Early Universe.” Speaking from experience, Harvard astronomer Robert Kirshner explained “Cosmic Acceleration Revealed by Exploding Stars.” Serving as moderators for the lively question and answer sessions following the talks were Rosanne Di Stefano, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in the morning, and Craig Wheeler, of the University of Texas at Austin, in the afternoon. Before the luncheon break, KITP director David Gross acted as facilitator of a “Town Hall Discussion,” which focused on how to turn more young people on to science. The teachers stressed the conflict inherent in teaching creatively, and teaching to standardized test-taking.
This Teachers Conference featured two novel events, likely to be repeated:
- Video conferencing with the Exploratorium in San Francisco enabled Bay-area secondary teachers to participate without traveling to Santa Barbara.
- The teachers who did make the trip had an opportunity, during the day after the conference, to engage in an extraordinary, new educational venture at the Santa Barbara-based Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (www.lcogt.net). This private observatory is enabling teachers and their students to commandeer a global network of small telescopes it has erected for remote-viewing in classrooms throughout the world.
1: Standing, Edward van den Heuvel (l) and Lars Bildsten; seated, Rosanne Di Stefano (l), Robert Kirshner, and Craig Wheeler.
2: Teachers Jennifer Adams (l), Clayton, Missouri; Gail Van Ekeren, Kiluaea, Hawaii; and Nick Nicastro, Holden, Massachusetts.
3: Secondary school teachers collaborate at KITP. — Photos by Nell Campbell