Dr. Mike Ruiz will teach an astronomy workshop August 4-8

UNC Asheville will offer a hybrid classroom and online education course for local teachers. The two-credit hour course, "Stars, Constellations and Deep Sky Objects," follows the K-8 North Carolina Standard Course of Study but exposes participants to unique interdisciplinary ways to teach astronomy, making the workshop appropriate for high school teachers as well.

The course takes place Monday-Friday, Aug. 4-8. The cost is $172.12. Upon completion, teachers will receive a $300 stipend.

The course will combine face-to-face instruction with interactive online components to cover celestial coordinates, the major constellations and the properties of stars. Images from the Hubble Space Telescope will be used to explore deep-sky objects including black holes, pulsars, nebulae, galaxies and galactic clusters. Teachers will be expected to be actively engaged in face-to-face instruction, online laboratory demonstrations and provide feedback to the instructor. They will also be required to maintain a log of activities and complete tasks individually.

The course will be taught by UNC Asheville physics Professor Michael J. Ruiz. Since joining UNC Asheville faculty in 1978, Ruiz has received numerous awards including the 1995 UNC Asheville Distinguished Teaching Award, the 1997 UNC Asheville Distinguished Teacher Award in the Natural Sciences and the 2004 UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. Ruiz often draws praise for his innovative teaching methods and ability to convey physics to non-science majors. He has also developed interactive online textbooks for his classes, called e-texts, which were featured on CNN's Next@CNN.

For more information or to register, visit www.unca.edu/distedu/extension_courses.html or call UNC Asheville's Extension and Distance Education Office 828/232-5122.