by Valerie Rojas
Staff Writer
Sitting in her office in the corner of Mainiero Hall, Sarah Johnson, associate professor of Physics at the University of La Verne, is surrounded by pictures of breathtaking celestial bodies.
On Dec. 8-12, Johnson, chairwoman of the University physics program, will present the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco with a paper she co-authored titled “SPECTRA Teachers’ Workshops: A Collaboration Between a NASA Laboratory and a Small University.”
The paper is an overview of the Space Telescope Educational Collaboration introducing Teachers to Research in Astronomy, or SPECTRA program, a workshop offered last summer to teachers interested in improving their science curricula.
After receiving a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institution, the same group of scientists responsible for the Hubble Telescope, Johnson, along with ULV Physics professor David Chappell and Raghvendra Sahai, a scientist from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory held the SPECTRA workshops on the ULV campus.
The trio also co-authored the paper for December’s conference.
Johnson, Chappell and Sahai, decided to use the grant money, which was intended for education and public outreach, to assist and inspire teachers in hopes of having an impact on students.
“We could reach a small number of teachers,” Johnson said about the workshops. “But each one of them could go out and multiply.”
Eleven teachers from both the high school and college communities attended these workshops, which lasted eight hours a day for one week.
Three scientists from JPL gave lectures to the teachers at the daily meetings, instructing them in the latest telescopic advances and findings in the world of astronomy and Hubble Space Telescope research.
The teachers were given the opportunity to look at cosmic images and then conduct further analysis with ULV telescopes.
They were also were taken on a tour of JPL.
Teachers were encouraged to incorporate what they learned into future projects for their students.
“The teachers liked them so much,” Johnson said. “We would like to see other places do similar workshops.”
Johnson is hoping that the upcoming presentation will give SPECTRA enough publicity to inspire other teachers from surrounding communities to offer similar opportunities in the classes they teach.
“I just bought my plane ticket,” she announced with a smile.
Presenting the paper will give Johnson an opportunity to present a summary of the workshop experience to geologist and physicist colleagues and develop improvements for next time.
This upcoming summer, Johnson and her colleagues hope to have enough teachers involved to fill two workshops with teachers on the ULV campus.
Aside from offering workshops designed specifically for teachers, Johnson hopes to one day establish a series of workshops for junior high school girls, a group that often detests science.
“It would be nice to get them at that age before they get turned off from science, and get them excited,” Johnson said.
Johnson also hopes to reach minorities through these workshops and encourage their interest in science and an education in science.
“There are very few minorities in physics and very few women,” Johnson said. “California is a great place to reach girls with diverse backgrounds.”
December’s presentation and the future workshops planned will be the perfect vehicle for Johnson and her colleagues to reach out to teachers and their students, inspiring them to explore the world of science.
