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Two students in Â鶹¾«Æ·’s Department of Physics, Anna Kareva and Cale Lewis, joined the department’s Assistant Professor Scott Miller at the recent semi-annual American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Washington, DC on January 5-9, 2014. At this nationally prominent four-day meeting, astronomers and students from every specialty field within the discipline provide presentations on their work. 

As astronomy education is a growing field, Dr. Miller notes, invited talks and poster sessions relating to the field are included among the AAS meeting’s presentations. Dr. Miller chose students studying important aspects of a summer workshop that he and Dr. C. Renée James, another member of the department faculty, gave for area educators. Cale Lewis focused on teachers’ gains in knowledge from taking the workshop and analyzed the relative effectiveness of different methods of presenting the workshop’s contents. Anna Kareva studied the participating teachers’ attitudes toward astronomy as a result of the workshop, including three dimensions of attitude: cognitive competence, the value of astronomy, and the difficulty of the subject.

Anna Kareva visits with other attendees at AAS meeting in Washington, DC

Cale Lewis with his poster at the AAC meeting