Achievement

Trainee Jeff Bowman (Oceanography) invented and taught (at the Univ. of Washington’s Bothell campus) a ten-week course in Introductory Astrobiology aimed at in-service middle and high school teachers. Bowman not only had to develop lectures for the varied science that he wanted to include, but had to coordinate that science with what would work well in the classroom for the teachers. In the process he adapted activities and exercises developed in our own university-level Introductory Astrobiology course, as well as many new ones. An example is a timeline in which 4.6 meters (~15 ft) represents the 4.6 billion year age of the Earth, and students place objects along the scale at the appropriate points that illustrate the Earth’s astronomical, geological, and biological history. This experience was Bowman’s “Rotation” Project, a research or education project required of all Trainees in order to stretch them beyond what they normally would do in their own department.