John
R. Percy
and Heather R. Scott
CASCA-Westar
Lectureship (CWL) in New Brunswick 2003
On
with an impressive program of
research on impact craters, planetary geology, and related topics. Then I headed to
On Saturday morning, I gave the Cosmic Evolution presentation to
several dozen students -- and the whole science department -- at
The next CWL will be
Royal Astronomical Society of
The Michael Smith Awards, awarded by NSERC Canada, recognize
outstanding achievements in science education, outreach, and promotion. They are named after the late Michael Smith
-- Canadian Nobel Laureate who gave so much of his time, effort, and resources
to encourage and support public awareness of science. On
Another winner of a 2003 Michael Smith Award was Scott Mair, former director of the "Centre of the
Universe" visitor centre at DAO in
For more information, see:
http://www.nserc.ca/msmith/recipients/2003_e.htm#royal_astronomical
Astronomy Education
and the International Astronomical
The education work of the IAU is carried out primarily through its
Commission 46 (Astronomy Education and Development). The current president of the Commission is
Professor Jay Pasachoff, Williams College, USA. Among other things, Jay has reserved a new
web address for the Commission: http://astronomyeducation.org
The Commission publishes a regular electronic Newsletter; you can find
the current issue at: http://physics.open.ac.uk/IAU46/newsletter59.html
One of this year's exciting projects was a special session at the
2003 IAU General Assembly in
Introducing STAN
On
STAN was developed during 2003 as a result of a consensus feeling
of major S&T awareness organizations that we needed to raise the profile of
the sector, provide a common voice, promote public awareness of the importance
of S&T literacy, and provide a forum for networking. Those
are our goals. After considerable discussion at two large
meetings, we formed a Steering Committee co-chaired by Mars Bloch (Toronto
District School Board, also Past President of the Science Teachers Association
of Ontario) and Bonnie Schmidt (President: Let's Talk Science); I was a member
of that Steering Committee.
We now aim to collect members from among S&T awareness
organizations, professional societies, school boards, post-secondary
institutions, science centres and museums, business
and industry, media, government related groups, and interested
individuals. There is no membership fee
at present; with external funding, we hope to keep any such fee low or
zero. The benefits will be: to raise the
profile of members; to provide a voice before government and industry; to
promote public awareness of our sector; and to provide a forum for
networking. The members will also
maintain a searchable database on the STAN website, which will also be useful
for a variety of purposes.
We now have a list-serv (presently
OSTON.l-subscribe@topica.com, though that may change in the near future) and a
web site which we hope will be permanent:
http://www.scienceandtechnologynetwork.ca
If you are doing any form of science outreach, either individually
or in your institution, and if you wish to join us, please log on to that web
site and do so!
John Percy
CASCA Education Website Continues to Grow
With now over 1400 hits, the CASCA Canadian Astronomy
Education Website continues to grow! Recently added features include a
subscription service to the CASCA Astronomy Education Newsletter (to make its
debut hopefully early in the new year) and a message board for users on the
site to initiate discussions, make comments on specific features on the site
(or on teaching astronomy in general) and swap ideas back and forth. With
additional help from Pierre Chastenay, the French
part of the site is nearing completion, with the goal of having all pages
translated by mid-January.
We have also started an advertising blitz throughout
If you have not yet checked out the site, please do so! You
will be quite pleased with just how much we have put together in a little under
a year’s time. http://www.cascaeducation.ca
Heather Scott