Overheard: Cosmos in the Classroom 2007

Overheard from workshop coordinators, presenters, and participants at the Astronomy Society of the Pacific Cosmos in the Classroom National Symposium on Teaching Astronomy for Non-Science Majors, August 3-5, 2007, Pomona College, Claremont, CA.

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"We just discovered a third [large Kuiper Belt Object], but I'm not supposed to tell you that."

--Dr. Michael Brown, California Institute of Technology, co-discoverer (along with Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, and David Rabinowitz of Yale University) of the new dwarf planet Eris, during his plenary talk "How I Demoted Pluto and Why It Had It Coming."

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"Telling is not teaching, and the plural of anecdote is not data."

--Dr. Edward E. Prather, University of Arizona, title of his plenary talk, reflecting on the current state of education reform and the research that must go into supporting future changes to teaching introductory astronomy. (Dr. Pamela Gay, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, discusses Prather's talk on her blog, starstryder.com.)

"My solar system has only four planets."

--Dr. Douglas Duncan, University of Colorado-Boulder, on concentrating on geolgical/atmospheric differences between the three terrestrial planets Venus, Earth, and Mars, and on the jovian planet exemplar Jupiter in his introductory astronomy course.

"d(student)/dt = 20 x d(faculty)/dt; they get younger every year."

--Dr. Christopher Impey, University of Arizona, in his plenary talk "Teaching Astronomy with Electrons and Waves," comparing the rapid changes occuring to the societal mores, communication modes, and pop culture of the student body, relative to the glacial changes in attitudes and expectations of faculty.