Sep 16 – 20, 2024
Knoxville Convention Center (KCC)
US/Eastern timezone
GRCon24 will take place in Knoxville, TN from Sept 16-20

Bringing Radio Astronomy to Community Colleges

Sep 17, 2024, 1:45 PM
30m
Ballroom AB (Knoxville Convention Center (KCC))

Ballroom AB

Knoxville Convention Center (KCC)

Talk SETI Main Track

Speakers

Dr Vishal Gajjar (SETI Institute)Dr Simon Steel (SETI Institute)

Description

Almost 40% of students nationally take their introductory astronomy course at a community college. Generally resource challenged but serving a vital educational service to students from non-traditional and minority demographics, community college instructors are constantly looking to keep their courses relevant, exciting and cutting-edge. Radio astronomy has rarely featured significantly in these “Astro-101” classes, both because the concepts are esoteric, and because of the lack of suitable resources, such as data sets, training, and equipment. This is about to change. Thanks to an ARDC grant, the SETI Institute has developed a curriculum designed for introductory astronomy at community college, with a simple to use SDR interface and access to the data and telescopes of the Institute’s Allen Telescope Array in Northern California. This talk will describe the collaboration with NASA’s Community College Network, the development of the curriculum, software interface and the first training workshop training for community college instructors.

Talk Length 30 Minutes

Primary authors

Dr Vishal Gajjar (SETI Institute) Dr Simon Steel (SETI Institute)

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.