Space Center undergraduate students Josiah Walton and Ashley Stewart, along with Space Center graduate student Shelly Bursick, recently attended the American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu.  Julia Kennefick, a member of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Physics also attended.

The students took a tour of the telescopes on Mauna Kea before the conference.  At the conference, Shelly Bursick received an Honorable Mention for best student poster and presentation.  All of the students gave poster presentations, and Dr. Kennefick gave an oral presentation.

The titles of the poster and oral presentations follow:

Selection and Discovery of Quasars at High Redshift Through Infrared and Optical Imaging - (poster) - Shelly Bursick and Julia Kennefick

Infrared Imaging of SDSS Quasars: Implications For the Quasar K-correction - (oral) - Julia Kennefick and Shelly Bursick

Improvement of Moderate Redshift Quasar Surveys Utilizing Infrared and Optical Data - (poster) - Ashley Stewart, Shelly Bursick, Julia Kennefick, E. Glikman and S. Djorgovski

Quasar Variability and Black Hole Mass with the NFO WebScope - (poster) - Josiah Walton, Brian Fleming, Tunji Thomas and Julia Kennefick

Kathy Gietzen, a Space Center graduate student, recently attended a workshop at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.  It was called “Improving the College Introductory Astronomy Survey Course for Non-Science Majors Through Active Learning: A Tier 1 (Introductory) Workshop.”  The goal of the workshop was for participants to become familiar with learner-centered teaching and assessment materials, as well as how to implement them in the college astronomy courses.

Rick Ulrich, the deputy director of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Chemical Engineering, recently appeared on Ozarks at Large, a radio show presented by KUAF, National Public Radio, at the University of Arkansas.  He discussed the Optical Probe for Regolith Analysis (OPRA), an instrument that the Space Center, along with Space Photonics, Inc., will develop with a $403k research contract from NASA’s Planetary Instrument Development Program.

Space Center faculty, graduate students and REU students recently cleaned the room that will house the space flight instruments facility for the Space Center.  The first instruments to be developed in the space flight instrument facility will include the Touch-and-Go Impregnable Pad (TGIP) by Larry Roe, a member of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Optical Probe for Regolith Analysis (OPRA) by Rick Ulrich, deputy director of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Chemical Engineering.

NASA Roses 2007
Solicited research programs (in order of proposal due dates)
 

SPAC undergraduate student James Cope was selected as the Outstanding Senior for the College of Engineering for 2007.

Cope worked as a High School Intern for the Center while he was a senior at Fayetteville High School.  His undergraduate research was conducted under the direction of Larry Roe, a member of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Mechanical Engineering.  The Arkansas Space Grant Consortium supported his U of A education and internship periods at Lockheed Martin with three years of Workforce Development Awards, totalling $19,500.

Seminars will be held at 3:00 pm in the Keck Lab (room 109) of the Old Museum Building.

Week 8 - July 10
Quasars
Shelly Bursick

Week 9 - July 17
Making an effective oral presentation
Claud Lacy

Week 10 - July 27
Final presentations (oral) by REU students
afternoon; Keck Lab; MUSE 109