Outreach
I am fortunate to be in a graduate department that highly values and greatly encourages students to be actively involved in public outreach. Besides the fact that it's important to give back to the community by sharing the wonderful things scientists discover about the Universe, it's a lot of fun!
Here is a list of some of the types of public outreach events I have participated in while at NMSU, in no particular order:
- operate telescopes at Tombaugh Observatory for Open House nights
- visit K-12 classrooms and present about a topic or lead activities
- run activities/bring telescopes to local public school science nights
- curriculum development for informal education program
- help organize and run special events, such as the partial solar eclipse and transit of Venus
- wash cars for the first National Planetary Science Car Wash
Before coming to NMSU I volunteered at Mueller Planetarium at the Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, NE. Any kind of planetarium is a unique immersive environment and a versatile interdisciplinary teaching tool. My experience at Mueller included running and assembling both educational astronomy programs and laser entertainment shows for a wide variety of age groups. My dream job would be to work at a planetarium while staying involved in research at some level.