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G. Brissenden, E. Brogt (CAPER Team, Univ. of Arizona), W. M. Greene (Navigator, JPL), M. Thaller (Spitzer, Cal Tech)
The NASA Center for Astronomy Education (CAE) is devoted to the professional development of introductory astronomy instructors, with the primary goal of building a ``community of practice." Prior to building a community of practice, however, one must try to understand the landscape in which the community is being built. To help accomplish this, CAE set out to answer the following questions: (1) Which U. S. community colleges teach astronomy? (2) What do they call it? (3) Who is doing the teaching?
Initial results identified over 1000 U. S. public, 2-year, accredited, degree granting institutions. Of these, over 700 offer courses in astronomy. These courses are taught under the headings of astronomy, physics, geology, Earth science, and natural science (to name a few), by more than 1300 instructors.
With these data, CAE has created a web-delivered, searchable, Interactive Map of 2-Year Colleges that provides institutional information (including course catalogue numbers and minority designation) for all U. S. public, 2-year, accredited, degree granting institutions offering courses in astronomy.
The NASA Center for Astronomy Education is supported by the JPL Navigator Public Engagement Program (and its planet-finding missions, including SIM PlanetQuest, the Terrestrial Planet Finder, the Keck Interferometer, and the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer) and by the Spitzer Space Telescope E/PO Program.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://astronomy101.jpl.nasa.gov/map. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: gbrissenden@as.arizona.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.