Teaching
Undergraduate
I endorse my Department's and University's commitment to sharing our research discoveries by incorporating them into coursework on basic and advanced topics. In particular, one of the great things about being an astronomer is that our investigations address questions that many people, in all walks of life, are interested in and fascinated by. We try to meet the challenge of satisfying that curiosity in the classroom by including the latest scholarship in astronomy in terms that are meaningful to students just starting out, be they science-bound or headed for other pursuits.
Generally, I teach one of the two large introductory courses in astronomy:
Astro 120 : The Sky and Solar System
Astro 150: Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmology (and see tab above for sample course website)
These are designed with non-science students in mind, but are still "serious" science courses in that we give a comprehensive overview of what we've learned about the formation, structure, and evolution of the Earth, our solar system, stars, other planetary systems, galaxies, and the Universe. As I tell my students (all the time...) astronomy extends us beyond our everyday experiences and intuition, so in these classes one needs to "relax one's brain" and meet the Universe on its own terms.
I helped originate a follow-on to these classes, called Astro 250: Astronomy Bizarre, which follows up on some of the most exotic topics from the above classes - again designed for non-majors who are interested in learning more. In recent years, Dr. Dusan Danilovic taught this course and did a terrific job. The class is currently "on hiatus," but I hope we are able to offer it again soon.
Graduate
My research specialty is stellar astrophysics (with applications from star formation, exoplanetary systems, rotation and activity, through stellar death) so it is not surprising that I'm responsible for teaching Astro 580: Stellar Astrophysics. I really enjoy this class. While it's designed for graduate students, well-prepared and strongly motivated undergraduates have occasionally taken it and done well. Details can be found in the tab at the top of this page, but (shameless plug coming up...) it couldn't hurt to mention that one of the texts we use is one that I coauthored with Carl Hansen and Virginia Trimble - Stellar Interiors: Physical Principles, Structure, and Evolution
In addition, I also teach Astro 405/505: Astrophysical Cosmology - the introductory graduate course for astrophysics grad students, and adventurous graduate and undergraduates from other areas of physics and engineering. This is a beautiful subject to learn and to teach, as it brings together disciplines across all of astronomy and physics, with a dose of mathematics. The subject has changed so much since my student days (what area of astronomy hasn't) and I try to bring this dose of humility and awe into the class as well.