The AIC plans to fund a new community college course in astronomy.
The vendor room at AIC was always an exciting place where amateur astronomers could ogle the latest in imaging technology. Credit: Michael E Bakich.
Sadly, the Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC) is no more. But thanks to the generosity of its members, the organization’s legacy will carry on.
I spoke to AIC President Ken Crawford about the donation. He said, “As a non-profit CA corporation, we did accumulate a tidy sum of money through the years. We wanted to have the AIC legacy continue on through public outreach for astronomy and astrophotography. The board narrowed down to two universities and Princeton came through with what we thought was the best proposal overall.”
He shared with me the main points in the school’s proposal: “We propose to use funds from AIC to develop and teach a new and accredited introductory freshman-level community college course in astronomy at Mercer County Community College (MCCC) in Trenton, NJ, with the aims of building ties between that community and Princeton Astrophysics and offering educational and research opportunities to a new generation of students interested in exploring the wonders of the universe. While the initial effort is well defined, there is the potential for growth in several directions. Also, if the success of the program attracts further investment, the course could be expanded to be taught at other NJ community college campuses.
“The basic idea of our proposal is to establish an astronomy laboratory course at the JKC, which will be accredited by MCCC and taught to both MCCC students and to Upward Bound students in the senior year of high school. The hope is to teach this course as early as Fall 2024. Much of the budget at the initial stages is for the purchase of laboratory equipment. In subsequent years, it is planned to extend the availability of the course to the main MCCC campus at West Windsor, to provide lab equipment to support the course, to continue to improve the course instructional materials and make them openly available on the internet, to develop further astronomy courses, and to support the involvement of Princeton Astrophysics graduate students in the teaching.”
Crawford said, “Between the AIC Digital Library which includes over 100 presentations recorded over the past 12 years with unlimited complimentary access to the Digital Library at www.advancedimagingconference.com and the Princeton grant, the AIC legacy will continue to support the astronomy and the astroimaging communities.”
