The other metaphorical hat I wear is director of CosmoAcademy, which is the online education branch of CosmoQuest. Things have been pretty quiet with CosmoAcademy for a while, but now we’re back with a new website, three new programs, and a whole new set of classes, which we’ll be rolling out over the next few months. To start things off, I’ll be teaching Gravity’s Rainbow: Introduction to Gravitational Waves and LIGO, starting next month. Sign up today, and stay tuned for upcoming class announcements!

So what is CosmoAcademy?

CosmoAcademy consists of three parts:

• CosmoAcademy Classes are for the general public: people who may or may not have formal science background, but how want to learn more about astronomy, planetary science, cosmology, and related topics. These classes usually meet four times for an hour-long discussion about various topics, ranging from introductory material on the Solar System to specialized things you might read in the science news. Here’s a lot more information on our website.
• Seminars for Professionals are designed to help working scientists, researchers, engineers, and others learn how to teach, or hone their skills if they’re already in the classroom. We’re launching this portion of the program soon, so stay tuned!
• Classes for Teachers are a professional development opportunity for primary and secondary classroom teachers, along with anyone else who teaches children in those settings. I’m really excited about this part of our program. We hope to get it going within the next few months, so again: keep an eye out for this.

In the meantime, we are conducting a survey about the future of CosmoAcademy to see what other things you might be interested in learning from us.