As part of my ongoing series of discussions at the Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bangalore, I visited Bangalore to meet with my long-time collaborator on the Future of Liberal Arts in India, Dr. Lakshmi Saripalli, and to discuss our many projects together – both in astronomy and in liberal arts education. The visit to Bangalore was from September 15-18, and included a chance to discuss science education with Lakshmi, and with some of the visitors at the RRI. My timing was interesting as it coincided with visits from the Raman Research Institute Academic Committee, and as a result I had a chance to talk with many of the leading science educators during breakfast at RRI. These included a panel looking into the graduate fellowships at RRI which included Gauta Menon from the Madras Institute of Mathematical Sciences , who is a leader in India in science education (http://www.imsc.res.in/~menon/). Prof. Menon was very interested in talking about the new Yale-NUS College, and we discussed the new Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) institutions within India and some of the initiatives he is doing in physics education. Gauta told me about some online videos he has been making to promote simple laboratory experiments in physics, and we were both excited about the rise of IISER institutions in India and new institutions like Yale-NUS to help promote new forms of education that are tied to more authentic assessments that enable students to gain experience, fieldwork, hands-0n research, and other non-lecture based learning in their education. We also discussed the rise of “bio-inspired engineering” and how it promises to revolutionize biology. His own research is on creating new mechanical devices that are inspired by biological mechanisms on the molecular level. In the process of our discussion he connected me with Sunil Mukhi, the head of physics at the IISER in Pune (where I was visiting a few days later!). We agreed that I should come to visit Chennai on my next trip to India and we can talk more about these topics.

The discussion about bio-inspired engineering carried over into deeper discussions about environmental education and the need for India to develop new awareness about the environment as it continues to develop and grow its economy. Lakshmi is active with a number of foundations in Bangalore working on developing this kind of awareness. During the visit we visited two sites – the Indian Institute of Human Settlements  (IIHS) – where a meeting of local environmental activists and thinkers were discussing “Trashonomics” with an enthusiastic audience. The group included several who have been increasing the awareness of the need for recycling within India, writing children’s books on the topics, developing a movement for composting food waste, and in general promoting a more sustainable form of economic growth for India.  IIHS itself serves a very important role in studying human settlements in India and blending ground-based socioeconomics research with additional “big-data analytics” from satellites and demographic databases.

Lakshmi and I also visited the campus of Bhoomi College (http://www.bhoomicollege.org/), a new university on the edge of Bangalore that also runs the Prakriya Green Wisdom school for children. The Bhoomi College has one year postgraduate diploma programs in Holistic Education and Science and Management for Sustainable Living. Many of the students in the program are recent college graduates or technology employees who want to help reform some of the environmental and educational policies within India. The Bhoomi College and its school are creating a learning community where environmental responsibility and simple living are at the core. Their motto is adopted from Mahatma Gandhi – “Live simply so that others can simply live” and they have created a beautiful and sustainable campus that includes farms, passively cooled buildings made from very low-cost materials such as sand-bags, low-cost concrete, recycled construction materials, and in many cases include open windows for air circulation and natural earth floors. The Bhoomi group also sponsors a wide variety of thought-provoking events, linking to long traditions within India, discussing the cultures of tribal people in India, and develop new forms of gardening, diet and architecture. Their magazine (http://bhoomimagazine.org/) covers a lot of these topics in great detail.

While at Bhoomi College we had a chance to meet with Seetha Ananthasivan, the founder trustee of K.N.A.Foundation and Bhoomi College. She has been working in the fields of ecology and Ecological Education and is the editor of the Bhoomi magazine and the Founder of Aastha Foundation (aasthafoundation.org) and Prakriya Green Wisdom School (prakriyaschool.org). Seetha showed us the campus and explained how it was built, and how the simple and environmental living is imparted to students at the school. We also discussed the impacts of globalization on people in India and the larger region, and how many of us who benefit from globalization are unaware of the environmental impacts we are having.  The discussion was very thought provoking, and Lakshmi and I returned to RRI very impressed and hopeful about the new wave of interest in environmental education in India.

During August 22-24 I hosted Harvard University professor Eric Mazur at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. His visit was sponsored by the Yale-NUS Center for Teaching and Learning, and Eric delivered two wonderful talks on Teaching and Learning to our community, which included a wide range of Yale-NUS Faculty and nearly 100 professors and academic leaders from across Singapore. His talks are now online at our Yale-NUS College CTL web site, and included a talk on August 22 entitled “Confessions of a Former Lecturer” and a talk on August 23 entitled “Flat Space, Deep Learning.”

Eric Mazur is an amazing person and very nice fellow – who somehow manages to perform at the highest level in three separate fields – physics research, educational research and entrepreneurship. His C.V. in any one field would be at the top percent or so in the world – but he somehow manages to do all three!  He has over 300 publications, including a recent cover on Nature Photonics about his zero refractive index material that enables the phase velocity of light to approach infinity!  He has at least 36 patents and 4 books, and is a member of countless honorary societies and the incoming President of the Optical Society of America. His primary focus for our visit to Singapore however was his educational work – which includes his pioneering contributions on peer learning (resulting in the book “Peer Instruction – A User’s Manual), and his educational research on how to increase student engagement by interactive work within classes. He also discussed during his visit his Physics course, AP 50, which combines team-based and project-based learning to create a course where students are able to learn physics through intrinsic motivation and curiosity – instead of exams and problem sets.

The first talk, “Confessions of a Former Lecturer,” was a chance to review some of the data and experience in how education over the past 1000 years has evolved from a professor in the front of the classroom speaking to, well, just that – a professor talking in front of a classroom!  Despite the fact that information technology has lept forward to provide immediate online content delivery of everything – most instructors are still lecturing!  Eric pointed out that this information gathering function of class was obsolete and that those who continued to persist with this form of education might soon see themselves out of a job.

This led to a deeper discussion of what exactly constituted education. Eric posited that it was the combination of the social experience within a group and the ability to construct knowledge based on answers to questions worked out individually, then in groups. He demonstrated a wonderful technique that requires absolutely no technology. This involved looking at the concept of thermal expansion and deciding whether a plate with a hole in it would expand such that the hole got bigger, smaller or stayed the same size. Ordinarily people would not care much, but since he worked with the group with his techniques – we all were dying to know the answer!

The technique he used was to have us all think first; then to provide individual answers first with fingers indicating the answer on our chest. This emphasis on requiring us to THINK – something not always asked of students – was a welcome contrast from lecturing where very little thought is needed. The technique then has us each discuss our answer with neighbors who did not get the same answer, then we would re-answer with our fingers – a very low-tech technique indeed, but one that got everyone deeply emotionally vested in the answer!  Eric explained that this technique works very well, and requires only about 30% of the people in the audience to get the right answer in the first round to be effective. The trick is to have questions that are difficult enough that the discussion is necessary and changes minds. If 80% get it right first then the exercise won’t work – nor will it if only 10% get the answer right.

The second talk was about “Flat Space, Deep Learning” – and explored Eric’s development of a course known as AP50. It was his antidote to lecturing, and embodies multiple educational philosophies, and higher-order learning goals. Eric developed this course during a year-long sabbatical in which he reinvisioned how he approached teaching, and he is a big advocate of this kind of sabbatical, which is now being fostered by his new “think tank” at Harvard where visiting scholars can design new courses, and reinvent how they teach.

You can see a nice article on this class at the Harvard web site (https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2013/09/in-ap-50-students-own-their-education). The goal of having students “own their education” and move through intrinsic motivation is apparent in the enthusiasm and enrolment growth in the course. The team-based aspect of the course encourages a “social responsibility for the learning.” The projects were designed to be difficult enough so that you needed your team to accomplish them! Eric described these goals and how they informed the course design through the “backward course design” method. He also encouraged us to look at the materials for the course which are online at the site – http://bit.ly/ap50visitor.

One key element in the course was his “21st century classroom” – which interestingly includes very little fancy electronics. Instead this classroom, which was wrested out of half of the floor of a library reading area, includes a large number of rolling tables and chairs to create 8-10 groupings surrounded by rolling white boards. The room has been designed so that “everything is on wheels” – and requires students to work together, and instructors to circulate to provide ideas and to help the groups accomplish their goals.

Within the teams are a diverse group of students, who are NOT chosen by the instructor, and who are mixed about in six separate projects during the year. Each project takes about a month, and includes a Drag Race, a Rube Goldberg project, A Symphosium (where students build and test musical instruments for Venezuala’s Il Sistema), and for E&M projects, Eco-tricity, a Crack-a-Thon, and an InSPECT fair. Each of the projects includes the same set of steps – which teaches the students about working in groups and cooperating as one of the primary goals. A project will have 1). a team contract – “who does what? how to resolve difficulties” and then this leads to 2). A proposal – which is read by the instructor team to temper expectations. Once the project is proposed it is executed and presented at 3). A fair – which is a public exposition of the work that heightens the social experience and makes the project fun and visible on campus. After the fair the students will provide 4). A Report – which is revised from its first draft and 5). a team, peer and self assessment.

The class time is partitioned into interactive peer learning, estimation activities, experimental design, problem set and reflective problems, and other activities designed to build expertise and scaffold the projects. Overall 2/3 of the project is scaffolded, and the final 1/3 of the month is unguided, allowing the students and the instructor staff to interact. One unique feature of the course is the homework which includes problems that are answered in several parts: first a “getting started” section that gives and overview of how the student first thinks about how to proceed, then a “plan” section that outlines how this solution would be derived, and then an “execution” section where the plan is implemented, and an “evaluate” section which estimates the accuracy of the answer. The nice part of all of this is that students are able to find their own solutions, and gain an awareness of the process by which they work – producing “meta-cognition” so necessary for learning. The other benefit is that students are fully owning the products of the work – and this greatly improves their engagement and self-efficacy.  The course was amazingly interesting – and inspiring – and I am hopeful that we can implement a project-based course of this type at Yale-NUS in the near future!

I have been enjoying several talks with a remarkable educator, Roberto di Napoli, who is the NUS Educator in Residence for 2016. Roberto is a Principal Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy (HEA). Ever since I learned about the HEA I have been intrigued by this institution, and Roberto gave a good accounting of the HEA and the current trends in British higher education for our group of professors in the Teaching Academy. We met with Roberto at the NUS CDTL on August 15, and he reviewed the history of higher education reform in the UK, which enabled the creation of the HEA. One of the first steps was the Dearing Report in 1997, which was entitled Higher Education in the learning society. This report gave an overview of the context of higher education in England, as well as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and discussed student needs, learning, qualifications, information technology, management and funding of higher education.

The report also highlighted the need for centers of Learning and Teaching, and soon a body known as the ILTHE was formed to help supervise the expansion of such centres within the UK. The Institution for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE) helped develop some policies for connecting universities within the UK with better practices in assessment and teaching, as well as to provide a needed link between higher education and government policy makers. The ILTHE was soon transformed into the Higher Education Academy, which serves an advisory role to both universities and government in developing frameworks for excellence in teaching and best practices in assessment. The HEA is now self-funded by its initiatives to certify and train educators in the UK and beyond, and it offers levels of certification that range from Fellow to National Fellow, to the highest level of Principal Fellow. Each certification requires additional levels of impact across an institution and the nation. Individuals seeking to become Principal Fellows have to demonstrate an extremely high level of educational accomplishment and leadership across the UK or internationally. The mission of the current HEA includes accreditation, scholarship, individual advice, and as an agent to bring together disciplines across the academy to improve learning and teaching.

Unlike the US system of higher education, where a professor proceeds more or less on their own, the UK system is designed to provide structure and transferability in teaching skill to enable institutions to be assured of standards across the UK in their instructors. In the US, informal mentoring and faculty development programs in individual institutions provide a comparable role for training faculty in teaching – and lead to varying results – some excellent and some not!

Roberto gave a wonderful talk to the NUS community on Thursday, August 18, entitled Ethical Interprofessionalism. At the talk, he highlighted some needed transformations within higher education that relate to the very core of why we do academic work. Roberto’s talk was a much-needed step back from the “instrumental reason” that guides so much of our academic work, and which provides a conceptual framework for reform on a very fundamental nature. Roberto breaks down a cycle in which academic work can be studied, leading to a better understanding of academic practice, which in turn creates a set of academic identities. These identities if enabled to interact in an ethical way provide what Roberto calls “ethical interprofessionalism.” The goal is to build institutions that are less about maximizing research or providing excellence in teaching (our current framework) but instead that create a liminal space in which the three classical parts of our practice – techne (how we do things), praxis (why we do things), and eudomonia (how our work contributes to the greater good) can all synergistically build on each other.

Hearing Roberto’s talk was inspiring as it boldly questions so much of the practice of our current academic institutions and seeks a higher meaning – the eudomonia – of our work. In this new conceptualization of a university, an individual would be promoted less for the traditional performance indicators, and more on the basis of a profile in which a faculty member would be judged based on how they contribute to the institution and to society at large. This holistic approach could provide a much-needed reform of higher education that would lessen the antagonism that has grown between government and the academy – and also help free up academics to pursue more meaningful work in their lives as professors. I am hopeful that such a vision can be enacted – and very appreciative of Roberto for bringing this talk to our group in Singapore!

For convenience – I also attach a set of references that Roberto passed out during his talk.

References from Roberto di Napoli’s NUS talk – diNapoli.references.ethical.professionalism

We have launched a new semester of Yale-NUS College’s Core Curriculum Science course, Foundations of Science! This is the third offering of Foundations of Science, which has evolved from a two semester course taken by just non-science majors, into a more intense one-semester immersion into science taken by all of the Yale-NUS sophomore students. The changes in the course this year include a new alignment of the ten disciplinary units along the lines of “modes of inquiry.”  All of our Yale-NUS College students will take two short courses in disciplines, known as “disciplinary case studies.”  Our teaching team of 10 faculty are offering an exciting lineup of courses that include a unit on exoplanets (using a remote telescope in Chile), biogeography (using camera traps and tracking animals in Singapore), ornithology (with frequent field trips to wild spots across Singapore), molecules of life (using a brand-new NMR machine to measure reaction rates), water (with a lab that includes student-build water purification), networks (with simulations of complex networks in a variety of contexts), and electronics (where students build and program small computers known as Arduinos.  These disparate units are all unified by providing the same modes of inquiry. Half of the units are designed to provide experience with Observation and Geospatial Mapping, while the other half include training in Experimentation and Mathematical Modelling.  The goal of the course is to provide all the students one unit which teaches them how to conduct field observations and mapping, and to design a research project in observational science, and a second course in laboratory science where students can perform exacting measurements, and use mathematical modelling to verify their experimental results.  The course also opens up with a reading and discussion of the book Ignorance: How it Drives Science by Stuart Firestein. The goal of this “framing” reading is to emphasize to the students that authentic science is about developing questions and encountering the boundary between known and unknown – the liminal space in which a scientist is able to fully engage both their creativity and deep disciplinary knowledge. Our goal is to have our Yale-NUS College students experience this more authentic type of science – and so far the course is starting off well!

You can read more about this exciting new format for Foundations of Science at our course web site – http://fos1aug2016.courses.yale-nus.edu.sg/ . Below is a short excerpt from the web site.

Foundations of Science at Yale-NUS College – Fall Semester 2016

Students will select two disciplinary mini-courses that are designed to provide a “deep dive” into science with an authentic learning environment that empowers students to observe, map, experiment, and model nature using the latest scientific techniques. Each mini-course, lasting for 6 weeks, will follow a common schedule, assessment scheme and grading methodology. The students will be able to choose among our group of 10 mini-course offerings, and they will complete one mini-course in each of the two modes of inquiry. In each mini-course they will learn the experimental techniques and disciplinary background for a particular subject, but will share a common experience of developing through their own work a first-hand knowledge of the methods of inquiry used in science, and as described in our initial Yale-NUS Course Scientific Inquiry. By the end of the course students will be able to have advanced understanding of two scientific disciplines and experience with a set of four modes of inquiry common in science.  The experience of Foundations of Science will prepare students to engage substantively on the profound scientific and technical challenges facing our planet, whether or not they major in scientific disciplines.

FOS Facilitator and Email:  Bryan Penprase,   bryan.penprase@yale-nus.edu.sg

Class Location and Time: M/Th – 1:00-2:30 or 2:30-4:00; (10 sections)

Learning Goals

• Disciplinary Knowledge: demonstrate a systematic or coherent understanding of an academic field of study
• Critical Thinking: apply analytic thought to a body of knowledge; evaluate arguments; identify relevant assumptions or implications; formulate coherent arguments
• Communication Skills: express ideas clearly in writing; speak articulately; communicate with others using media as appropriate; work effectively with others
• Scientific and Quantitative Reasoning: demonstrate the ability to understand cause and effect relationships; define problems; use symbolic thought; apply scientific principles; solve problems with no single correct answer, apply mathematical models to data, and use statistical analysis to provide hypothesis testing with quantitative data.
• Self-Directed Learning: work independently; identify appropriate resources; take initiative; manage a project through to completion
• Information Literacy: access, evaluate, and use a variety of relevant information sources
• Engagement in the Process of Discovery: students will demonstrate the ability to work productively in a laboratory setting, studio, library, or field environment, and to produce excellent laboratory reports and field reports.
  

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Disciplinary Mini-Courses and Modes of Inquiry

Within Foundations of Science, students will choose two disciplinary mini-courses, one from each of our two groups (Group A and Group B) which sample different modes of inquiry. The titles and subjects of these mini-courses are described below. Additional mini-courses will be added closer to the beginning of the semester.

Group A – Modes of Inquiry: Observation and Geospatial Mapping. In this group of mini-courses students will observe nature carefully – either with field biology or astronomy, and conduct their own mapping exercise using GIS or astronomical coordinates.

Section 1:  Finding a Habitable Planet  – 1:00-2:20PM – Classroom 17

Instructor: Bryan Penprase

Section 2: Island Biogeography – 2:30-3:50PM – Classroom 17

Instructor: Jennifer Sheridan

Sections 3 and 4 : Field Ornithology – 1:00-2:20PM and 2:30-4:00 – Classroom 18

Instructor: Vinod Saranathan

Section 5:  Plant functional traits

Instructor: Michiel van Breugel – 2:30-3:50 – Classroom 20

Group B – Modes of Inquiry: Experimentation and Mathematical Modeling. In this group of mini-courses students will conduct their own laboratory experiments and model theoretical quantities mathematically, comparing data with theory.

Sections 6 and 7: Molecular Perspectives 

Instructor: Stanislav Presolski – 1:00-2:20 and 2:30-3:50 – Classroom 19

Section 8: Hardware and Software Programming for Interactive Systems Instructor: Simon Perrault  – 1:00-2:20PM – Classroom 20

Section 9:  Water and Its Interaction with The Environment

Instructor: Kiat Hwa Chan – 1:00-2:20PM – Classroom 21

Section 10: Networks

Instructor:

Maurice Cheung  – 2:30-3:50PM – Classroom 21

Pedagogy

The Foundations of Science will employ a number of research-validated pedagogies, including active learning, experiential learning, project-based learning, and case studies. The course will devote considerable time toward enabling students to conduct their own observations, experiments, models and maps, to enable deeper and more meaningful learning. 

While in California I had a chance to visit a new educational “startup” within Silicon Valley, Singularity University (http://singularityu.org/). The University arises from the inspiration of two of the founders, Ray Kurzweil (who wrote a book on the “Singularity“), and Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur, founder of the “X prize” and an MD and PhD who has written several books on exponential technologies (most recently the book Abundance: The Future is Better than you Think  – https://www.amazon.com/Peter-H.-Diamandis/e/B006392BR2 ). Since our book club in SoCal had read the Singularity book a long time ago, and my wife Bidushi was a big fan of Diamandis and his work, I wandered down to their campus while staying in Mountain View for other meetings. The campus is situated in the midst of somewhat dilapidated NASA buildings, which gives it an odd mix of being both futuristic and retro. However the optimism and energy of Singularity university is anything but retro – but instead is full tilt for the future. This refreshing futurism is built into the programs at Singularity which are designed for entrepreneurs who would like to impact the lives of a billion people. The entire concept of Singularity, and the name, arises from the assumption that exponential technologies – like computers – will improve steadily at an accelerating rate, creating entirely new industries and capacities for civilization improve every aspect of our lives. New nanomaterials, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, gene therapies, faster computers, and other technologies will all converge at a pace that most people have trouble visualizing (so the theory goes), and so it requires an entirely different type of thinking known as “exponential thinking” or an “abundance mindset.”

   To dramatise the idea of exponential thinking, the old quote by Wayne Gretsky- “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been” – can be modified by imagining a puck that is not gliding smoothly along the ice in a linear way, but that has been equipped with a small rocket motor that causes it to race ahead at an ever-increasing velocity. This is the kind of change the thinkers at Singularity are trying to visualize and plan for, and the campus is something of a think tank for future-oriented inventors and entrepreneurs. 

The campus inhabits a central part of the mall which includes stately Navy buildings facing a central grassy area with cannons and other military monuments. Within the mall is the Carnegie Mellon University center, and a few unused buildings. The entire complex at Ames has something of the feeling of a ghost town, but upon entering the Singularity building that impression is immediately replaced with energy – young people talking on earbuds to unseen collaborators, small groups of students huddled together, and colorful banners and signs everywhere from some of the frequent corporate events and short classes in the campus.

I managed to arrange a meeting with Nicholas Haan, director of the Global Solutions Program. The Global Solutions program (http://singularityu.org/gsp16/) is a 10-week immersion into a curriculum that includes Global Grand Challenges, Site Visits, and workshops, followed by team projects, and a chance to launch those projects with new companies. The students are selected from around the world, and for 2016 these lucky individuals were in residence together from June 18-August 20 to discuss their solutions to the world problems to expand their solution from “positively impacting millions of lives locally and globally” to billions of people. A set of Global Grand Challenges have been identified in areas that include water, space, security, prosperity, global health, energy, environment, food, learning, disaster resilience and governance. The 80 students come from competitions known as “Global Impact Competitions” that are staged in over a dozen countries around the world, and once the arrive their stay is fully covered by a variety of corporate sponsors, with Google providing the largest fraction of support.

My conversation with Nicholas was fascinating, and I really enjoyed meeting him and some of the students at the program. One of the students was from Singapore, and I am interested in helping him launch a new Global Impact Competition here in Singapore. The ideas of the GSP resonated strongly with me, and our recent Yale-NUS Foundations of Science course featured two “Grand Challenge” exercises whereby our science students proposed solutions to problems related to the Anthropocene epoch (global warming and climate change) and in teams of four presented either “disruptive technologies” to help mitigate these problems, or detailed research projects to study and help understand some of the changes wrought by human civilization. I was really excited by the prospect of a 10-week, or even longer curriculum focused on such important projects, and am looking forward to further meetings with Singularity University in my upcoming sabbatical. Next summer I am looking forward to visiting the Global Solutions Program students and learning more – and hopefully bringing some of this futuristic thinking to our undergraduate curriculum at Yale-NUS College!

During July 28 and 29, our GROWTH collaboration hosted the first of its education workshop. This meeting featured attendance by over 30 professors, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, representing 18 different institutions and five countries. During the meeting we presented innovative courses in astronomy at our campuses, which includes the US institutions of Pomona College, Williams College, Caltech,  U. Maryland, U. Wisconsin Milwaukee, San Diego State University, Cal State San Bernardino, and from our international partners, Stockholm University (Sweden), Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan), IUCAA (India), Yale-NUS College (Singapore), and the University of Western Ontario (Canada).

Our Education Workshop also developed two of our main curriculum tracks. This includes a global observational astronomy course which I am leading and working to link together our students and institutions in a global educational collaborative community. In this new course, teams of students will be linked together to collaborate on their observations of supernovae, asteroids, and other time-variable objects, and the instructors can co-develop educational resources such as tutorials on observational astronomy, guides to accessing datasets and performing advanced “big data” analyses, and guest lectures on advanced topics in astrophysics. I am also eager to develop remotely operated telescopes, such as the new LCRO, as a jointly operated facility that undergraduates around the world can use in their research, even performing many of the same activities as in research telescopes. The hope is that this facility will feature a proposal mechanism, fielded by advanced students, a set of tutorials on usage and data analysis, and even an on-line journal for students to publish some of their findings and ideas.

The non-majors course curriculum will also be expanded, and this effort will be centered at the University of Maryland where Stuart Vogel and Melissa Hayes Gehrke are leading classes observing asteroids, and developing curriculum that makes use of the ZTF variable star database, and other exciting new discoveries. This non-majors class has a great potential to widen participation in science among diverse groups of students, including many under-represented minority students and first-generation students. The University of Maryland joins three of the Cal State campuses (SDSU, Cal State San Bernardino, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) and U. Wisconsin Milwaukee, as well as our larger group of scientific collaborators.  Our education team includes members at several large universities that have substantial populations of students that could be recruited to be part of the next generation of astrophysicists.

The meeting included a full  day of talks sharing curriculum, and innovative observing exercises among our team. We also enjoyed a great workshop on active learning techniques by Melissa Hayes Gehrke on the second day, and a very productive discussion about next steps linking our campuses together in the coming academic year.

Talks at our Caltech GROWTH Education Workshop – July 28-29, 2016. This program is also online at http://growth.caltech.edu/conferences/workshop-program2016.pdf.

Below are some of the attendees of our GROWTH science meeting and workshop who will be collaborating with us in our educational initiatives. This group includes over 30 GROWTH scientists, representing 18 different institutions and coming from five countries.

On July 25 and 26, our team of scientists in the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH) collaboration met at Caltech for two days of intense discussions about the science and collaborations possible from this interesting international astrophysics group. The effort is funded by a $4.5-million grant from the NSF PIRE Program to Mansi Kasliwal, and additional funding has been obtained by many of the international partners which come from Japan, Taiwan, India, Israel, Germany, Sweden and the UK. The GROWTH web site (http://growth.caltech.edu/) describes the collaboration and many of the science goals, as well as the partnership. My role is to lead the educational efforts of GROWTH, which consists of linked undergraduate courses that make use of GROWTH discoveries in the classroom, and shared resources developed by our global team of educators.

The science meeting featured talks by the entire set of GROWTH institutions, along with many of our young postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and undergraduates who are funded by the GROWTH effort. The science questions are nicely summarized on the GROWTH web site at http://growth.caltech.edu/science-questions.html – and they include studies of endpoints of stars – Supernovae, explosive GRB’s, merging of neutron stars, and element synthesis. These events are also thought to produce gravitational waves, and their is an exciting synergy between GROWTH and the newly operable LIGO system, which is discovering several sources a year that include merging black holes and neutron stars. It is hoped that our GROWTH global telescope network can enhance our capacity to discover and monitor these LIGO discovered events, and our team includes experts in not only optical astronomy but radio, X-ray and gamma ray astrophysics. A listing of the talks is below – and some highlights for me are summarized as well in the following section.

One highlight for me was the great discussion about LIGO gravitational wave sources and their “electromagnetic counterparts” by Brad Cenko of GSFC. The interesting arcs on the sky have been computed by Brad and Mansi and allow optical telescopes to scan for light from these fascinating gravitational wave sources. Martin Elvis or Harvard University gave a very interesting talk about asteroids and how they have the potential to “save astronomy” through their potential for commercial mining and space exploration missions that can land and explore asteroids. GROWTH has a unique capability for helping determine orbits to newly discovered Near Earth Asteroids which can support future NASA missions.  This is one project that our Yale-NUS and Pomona students may be involved in during the coming years. An interesting network of telescopes in Japan was discussed by Nobu Kawai from Tokyo Institute of Technology, including optical telescopes in Japan, South Africa, and Chile, and a high-energy telescope on the International Space Station. The newly developed Himalayan telescopes in India were described by G.C. Anupama from IUCAA, and a new 0.7-meter telescope has been constructed at their high altitude site at 15,000 feet for work with our GROWTH collaboration. The potential to link closely with India is very exciting, and I have begun this process with a good collaboration with Varun Bhalero who is working with me and my student Gabi Mehta (Pomona) to study x-ray binary systems using AstroSAT, the Swift Satellite and the Yale SMARTS telescopes in Chile.

The GROWTH work also includes researchers working with new telescopes at La Palma such as the Liverpool telescopes, and the Nordic Optical telecsope (discussed by Semeli Papadogiannakis from the Oskar Klein Institute in Sweden), as well as non-optical devices such as the IceCube antarctic array of particle detectors, and the Milagro Radio telescope (discussed by David Kaplan from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee). The meeting was very exciting and I look forward to future collaborations with this very friendly and dynamic group of astrophysicists!

Below is a montage of some of the telescopes that are part of this impressive global array of telescopes, from the GROWTH web site!

Schedule of GROWTH science meeting – July 25-26, 2016

As part of my summer research program, I have begun a collaboration with Varun Bhalero of IUCAA, the premier astrophysics organization in India, to combine the telescopes available to me from Yale-NUS with new observations from India’s first space telescope known as AstroSAT. AstroSat features a powerful suite of instruments and can image the sky in x-rays and ultraviolet light. My work, conducted using telescopes in Chile, combines the observations of high-energy photons emerging from galaxies, neutron stars, and black holes, with ground-based observations in the optical and infrared. Our GROWTH international summer research fellow, Gabi Mehta (Pomona, ’18) is helping develop these new observing programs with me, along with Silvia Lara (Yale-NUS, ’18). For our first projects we hope to monitor some compact x-ray emitting sources such as Cygnus X-1 with both ground and space-based observations. Hopefully this research will enable more detailed models of the environments surrounding black holes, neutron stars, and erupting “active” galaxies, and also provide new information useful for studying the physics of merging black holes and neutron stars.  Below are some links to information on AstroSAT and some pictures of our remotely operated 1.3-meter telescope in Chile and the smaller 0.3-meter LCRO telescope. For this project (and some educational work) I am also acquiring blocks of telescope time using the PROMPT telescopes in Chile, and additional telescopes in Australia. This network is named Skynet – and is run by Dan Reichert at University of North Carolina. I am looking forward to harnessing some of these small telescopes for research and bringing our students into new astronomy work that forwards the research of AstroSAT!

This summer has been the summer of remote telescopes!  This summer we have begun some tests using the fantastic Las Campanas Remote Observatory (LCRO), developed by Mike Long, Dave Jurasevich, and his friends at Carnegie Observatories at the best observing site at Earth, Las Campanas, Chile. It is hard to imagine the clarity and depth of the Chilean skies – which at Las Campanas offer the best views of space from the ground. The conditions are usually dry and clear and the “seeing” – defined as the sharpness with which you can focus star images – is unmatched by any other site. The LCRO is a 0.3-meter telescope on this site, and can be controlled and operated anywhere on earth using the software known as ACP. This telescope is equipped with a fantastic suite of filters and a great CCD camera. Its tracking abilities enable it to capture images of very faint objects – galaxies, nebulae and distant star clusters – through long exposures with its electronic camera. This summer I began using the telescope, in consultation with Mike, and in collaboration with my students Gabi Mehta (Pomona) and Silvia Lara (Yale-NUS College). The students were able to get some beautiful images of the galaxy M83 and the Lagoon Nebula (below), and also to test some new research programs which include monitoring of variable stars within large star clusters, deep imaging of SDSS galaxies with radio observations, and exoplanet transits. The first datasets are being analyzed and we look forward to regularly using this fantastic telescope with our undergraduates in the course projects and research!

Links of interest for LCRO information:

• http://lascampanasremote.org/ – main LCRO page for outside viewers
• http://lcobot.duckdns.org – more detailed page with technical information for potential observers
• http://starimager.com/Secondary%20Pages/Observing%20Sites%20Pages/Las%20Campanas.html – Dave Jurasevech’s page on LCRO with nice photos of the site and installation.

Below are some images of remotely operable telescopes – as part of emergent GROWTH educational initiative at Caltech. Note the beautiful images of M83 and the Lagoon nebula – taken by our student Gabi Mehta, GROWTH undergraduate fellow, and Pomona College junior physics major.

One of the highlights of the summer was our magical visit to Palomar Observatory – the world’s largest telescope from 1951 until 1988, and George Ellery Hale’s last masterpiece in steel and glass. The 200″ telescope is a monument to the inspiration and power of science, and is something of a cathedral of astronomy. We had the rare privilege of a night at the 200″ hosted by Dr. Thomas Kupfer, a member of our Caltech ZTF and GROWTH research team. The students were at the base of the giant telescope – looming five stories above us – as we opened the slit for the night’s observing. Students were able to help Thomas observe his white dwarf stars, which are in interesting eruptive binary systems, and to discuss with each other how their summer research projects were progressing. The students even sang a wonderful a capella concert in the dark at the base of the telescope, and wandered around the catwalk in the pristine and velvet black sky of a moonless night at Palomar. The skies, telescope, science and people were fantastic – making this one of the best visits I have ever had to Palomar! Thanks to Thomas and the students for making this such a great trip!