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How Astronomy Passes Down the Torch of Knowledge Through Lectures

Imagine a world that does not havelacks the ability to see beyond its own parameters.

Imagine not knowing that we are just a small speck in this seemingly infinite universe. That’s

where we would be if cosmological ideas had not spread down generations from the ancient

pioneers to people like Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein to modern day scientists. Luckily, we

live in an age where the field of astronomy is breaking more ground than ever before, with

discoveries popping up every time the Earth rotates 360°. This is all thanks to the education that

our researchers receive before fully fledging themselves to the field. Almost all astronomers go

through harsh education programs that combine the disciplines of math and physics to prepare

them to make new exciting discoveries and theories. While these programs are tried and true, it

is crucial to come back and analyze their methods of educating each new batch of astronomers,

including lectures and their associated lecture slides. We can observe an astronomy program and
treat it as a case study to investigate the types of writing practices that are involved in educating
future astronomers.
While UCSB has its own astronomy program,, however it is only for those who want to
Commented [MOU1]: I feel that you need one more
sentence between these two because you’re jumping from
one idea to another too quickly. What if you include
something like this: Future astronomers go through an
intensive educational program that covers multiple subjects
and develop various important skills. While many scholars
have explored the astronomy curriculum, it is important to
investigate writing practices that are involved in educating
future astronomers, as these practices are [add something
here and your thesis will be stronger.]

minor in astronomy and planetary sciences. Since there is no complete astronomy program,

people need to major in physics instead. Nonetheless, according to an email interview conducted

on the 7th of May 2019, UCSB astronomy professor and researcher Andrew Howell boasted,

“We are one of the best in the UC system, and the UC system has some of the best astronomy

programs in the world” (personal communication, May 7, 2019). While Berkeley and Santa Cruz

have more specialized astronomy programs, we have the better physics department and “unique

resources,” such as Las Cumbres Observatory (which Professor Howell is a staff scientist of) and
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the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, allowing for great internship and research

opportunities for physics majors who wishwant to specialize in astronomy or astrophysics.

The introductory astronomy classes offered here at UCSB use the textbook Universe by

William J. Kauffman and UCSB lecturers Roger Freedman and Robert Geller, allowing the a

textbook that was written by two2 UCSB lecturers, so the professors who teach the classes work Commented [MOU2]: Title? Is it for freshman or for upper-
division courses?
quite closely with the authors, sometimes submitting essays and editing for sections they are Commented [MOU3]: Names?

experts in. Overall, according to Howell, the textbook does a great job in providing clear and up-

to-date explanations (personal communication, May 7, 2019). Since the book and lectures are Commented [MOU4]: citation

often closely connected, the lecturers encourage students to read the assigned reading beforehand

to familiarize themselves with the featured topic(s) of that day. However, the book is only one

side of the education story. Commented [MOU5]: Develop this paragraph just a little
bit more. I know that it’s not your main focus but this
paragraph needs a little bit more information.
Lecturers, unlike the textbook?, are living testimonies to the subject. The variability of

each lecture, the professor’s ability to answer questions on the spot, and the occasional comedic Commented [MOU6]: Whose ability?

flair of the teacher is everything a student needs to avoid textbook overload or boredom. Howell

says that each lecture is meant to follow the chapters and sections of the book, which follows the

curriculum set by the course description, though lecturers have a “broad leeway in deciding what

they want to concentrate on within that subject” (personal communication, May 7, 2019). This

makes it difficult to create a consistent outcome for students, but it cannot be avoided since every

professor in any field of study is different. For example, calculus professors differ in which

topics they wish to focus on more, sometimes leaving out other topics altogether. In the

University of Washington’s website, there is a section called “Course and syllabus design” that

describes how to design courses, creating a series of questions that must be answered to

determine what the class will be like. First, professors must take into account the types of
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students, the professor’s expectations of what the students will be able to accomplish, and how to

measure their abilities (washington.edu). This creates a series of possibilities for how a class can

be designed and differ. We can explore the differences by comparing two of my professors, who

fortunately take on astronomically varying teaching styles.

Robert Antonucci and Andrew Howell taught my Astronomy 1 and Astronomy 2 classes,

respectively, and my experience can give insight on how their philosophies influence their

students. Robert Antonucci is an a prime example of an old-school teacher, teaching my class

very loosely and each day coming in wearing beach sandals and a half-unbuttoned beach shirt.

He did not use lecture slides but instead used ancient technology, such as overhead and manual

slide projectors. He would project documents that read “Ch. __ Key Concepts,” stressing that if

we were to understand anything at all, it would be these concepts. Each topic had a subtopic with

a short explanation and implications. The Key Concepts would also act as an agenda for the

day’s lecture, but Professor Antonucci would just loosely ramble about each point, throwing in

seemingly irrelevant information. This had one of two effects for the learner. One would be

positive for the student who read the book and knew the information like the back of their hand.

The lectures acted as if it were merely supplementary content, not unlike the bonus features in

DVD movies. The other effect is disastrously negative. For those students who do not read or

have bad good note-taking skills or do not read the chapter, the lectures are far too unstructured

to be clear enough to be beneficial. Sometimes Professor Antonucci’s rants might not make Commented [MOU7]: It’s not an academic word.

sense, at first, in the context of the chapter, and the student would need to be able to think very Commented [MOU8]: Be kind.  Lecturing is hard 

critically and outside the box to accommodate his unorthodox style of teaching.

However, occasionally Professor Antonucci would include a lot of information in Commented [MOU9]: Is this a new thought? It seems like
this part belongs to the next paragraph.
paragraph style for the chapters that were incredibly unintuitive by nature. His summaries were Formatted: Indent: First line: 0.5"
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very easy to understand since they were in plain English, but in turn sacrificed much of the

exposure of the field’s lexis.

Professor Antonucci would include straightforward and novice-friendly sentences, like in his

Chapter III Key Concepts: “A lunar eclipse must occur when the Moon is in the Full position,

and anyone on the night side of earth can see it” (Antonucci). It takes some thinking to fully Commented [MOU10]: It’s quite uncommon to begin your
paragraph with evidence. Let’s think what topic sentence
we can include before this piece of evidence. Perhaps, the
grasp this image, but it is highly doable. The syntax is very clear, and there are very minimal last sentence of the previous paragraph should be moved?

descriptors – in fact, the only adjective is “lunar” in “lunar eclipse,” and there are no adverbs.

For a key concept like this, the professor might take a minute or two to demonstrate the

principles with his demo equipment, which basically generally consisted of a flashlight and a

globe. If the topic needed some extra explanation, the key concept might look something like this

(also from the Chapter III Key Concepts):

“In a LUNAR eclipse, the moon goes dark. For a total lunar eclipse, the Moon first enters

the penumbra, but the dramatic part is when it enters the umbra and we have a total lunar

eclipse. Although the Moon gets no direct sunlight in this region, it does show up as a

gorgeous coppery red object because a bit of light is refracted (bent) around Earth's

atmosphere and hits the Moon” (Antonucci).

These key concepts usually took a longer time to explain verbally, so he would draw on

the overhead projector to provide a concrete visual as he rambled on continued explaining.

Again, these concepts are easy to understand because the language Antonucci used is on par

withcomparable to a 5th grade reading level, the vocabulary level of a 5th grader and with each

sentence is being easily understandable and straight-forward,. (Though,although he does include

impressive imagery to add color to this bland content.) There are a few words that the student
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needs to be familiar with – such as “penumbra” – but such terms were covered in previous

chapters.

On the complete opposite end of the teaching spectrum is Professor Andrew Howell, my

Astronomy 2 professor. Andrew Howell is a younger professor, deeply involved in many of the

recent discoveries and research. His research papers are on an entirely different level compared

to his lecture slides, and rightly so due to the difference in audience and education level.

Nonetheless, Professor Howell’s professionalism leaks out in his speech during lecture. Most

people can understand him easily, but the level of sophistication is a level or three above that of

Professor Antonucci. Additionally, Professor Howell uses more efficient technology such as

PowerPoint slides to show vibrant pictures of galaxies, nebulae, and supernovae, as well as

graphs and gifs.

Unlike Professor Antonucci, who would ramble on virtually endlesslyspew out

information that seemed to be unscripted, Professor Howell reads completely off his lecture

slides; his reasoning being is that reading straight off the slides makes note-taking easier since Commented [MOU11]: Is it a good strategy? I thought that
students found it boring 
there is no variation between the verbal and written aspects of lecture. This is an interesting

teaching choice because while it seems like a good idea on paper, in practice the lecture might

seem monotonous and cause disinterest in the field since all he presented was the facts.

However, in the interview that I conducted, I asked him if he worries if there is a disinterest in

the field and if that may impact the number of future astronomers. Howell argues argued that the

“issues [aren’t] in having enough people recruited – far more people want to do astronomy than

there are jobs for them” (personal communication, May 7, 2019). This is somewhat reassuring Commented [MOU12]: I’m not sure that this evidence
supports your point about his lecture style.
because no matter the level of dullness, there will never be a shortage of astronomers. However,

there is a feeling of falling behind for those who study at schools that don’t offer an astronomy
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major program, like UCSB. Fortunately, Howell says that “many students have graduated from

here to go on to careers in astronomy,” even if it isn’t “the real focus of this class” (personal

communication, May 7, 2019). This predisposed goal may be essential in setting the expectations

of the class and reasoning behind their teaching methods. For example, since the real goal of the

class is to expose students to science and not to explicitly teach explicitly them how to be

astronomers, generalization might be necessary to ensure consistencythe best choice.

In Professor Howell’s fourth lecture, titled Large Scale Structure, one slide is titled “The

Evolution of the Morphology-Density Relation.” Now, it is almost impossible that an uneducated

person can intuitively guess the meaning of this topic, so one-by-one Professor Howell reads the

bullet points off the screen:

• “The fraction of elliptical and lenticular galaxies in dense regions is much lower at high

redshift, back in time

• “This suggests that galaxies are transformed from spirals to elliptical/ lenticulars [in]

relatively recent time” (Howell, slide 18).

This jargon is slowly introduced to the astronomy student throughout the program, so we

they can put together the sentence piece by piece. The first bullet point talks about “elliptical and

lenticular galaxies,” which were covered in an earlier early lecture. “Redshift” is a concept that

was briefly mentioned in Astronomy 1 and is now being covered in greater detail in this lecture.

If we combine these learned concepts with intuition, then this achieves Howell’s interpretation of

the goal of the course which is to “make [students] literate about understanding the universe”

(personal communication, May 7, 2019). I believe that this is an important first step in educating

aspiring astronomers. Through writing, educators expose learners to two different things: the
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basic principles of the field and the expected language that one must at least be familiar with to

have a chance at having a career in astronomy.

In an even denser lecture, Lecture 9: Geometry of the Universe, Howell introduces

equations to connect to abstract ideas:

“The expansion rate, i.e. the ratio between velocity and distance (the generalization of the

Hubble constant) can change with time.

“Friedman’s Equation connects the Hubble parameter with the mass geometry of the

Universe:

“H2=H02 [Ωrad,0(1+z)4 + Ωm,0(1+z)3 + Ωk(1+z)2 + ΩΛ]” (Howell, slide 18).

These are some heavy ideas. You would have to make out 50% or more of the

terminology to make some sense of what this lecture slide is trying to say. Luckily, the asides

that further describe a few of the terms do tend to help: in this case, he relates the ratio between

velocity and distance to the Hubble constant. Nevertheless, this is where the curriculum pushes

most students to their current academic limit. Professor Howell explained that it was normal to

be confused and that we should not be afraid to ask questions because even most professional

astronomers aren’t even that familiar with concepts of this caliber, which made me question the

whole purpose of this class. If students were expected to learn this and then be tested on these

concepts in an introductory class, then how are professionals still unfamiliar with them? Perhaps

we are only meant to be exposed to them the biggest topics at a surface level since most

astronomers are expected to specialize in one or two aspects of the entire subject, like how both

of my professors pride themselves in dedicating their work to their own single niche area of

astronomy.
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This leads to another question: what counts as basic knowledge for astronomers and

where do we draw the line for areas of specialization? It can be safe to assume that Astro 1 and 2

are both introductory classes, since Howell even said that these classes aren’t meant for the

astronomy major. But if the class covers areas that working scientists are unsure of – with

language choices that are no walk in the park – then what can be inferred? Maybe UCSB’s

curriculum and teaching mindset need to be changed to be more consistent with its goals and

expectations. Nonetheless, if we can take UCSB’s incomplete astronomy program to be a basis Commented [MOU13]: I think that you should revise this
piece and send it to the Daily Nexus because you’re asking a
good question.
for astronomy programs around the world, it can be safe to saywe can infer that there are enough

interested people and astronomy programs to progress the field.

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Works Cited:

Howell, Andy. Email interview. 7 May 2019

Antonucci, Robert. “The Sky (Ch 2-3).” Astronomy 1. 9 Jan. 2019, Santa Barbara, Broida

Lecture Hall.

Howell, Andy. “Lecture 4 - Large Scale Structures.” Astro 2: History of the Universe. 10 Apr.

2019, Santa Barbara, Broida Lecture Hall.

Howell, Andy. “Lecture 9 - Geometry of the Universe.” Astro 2: History of the Universe. 6 May

2019, Santa Barbara, Broida Lecture Hall.