The entire Project ASTRO program is under the
direction of the Project ASTRO national staff at
the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP)
office in San Francisco. National staff provide
start-up funding and a variety of other support
to Project ASTRO sites, such as materials for
participants, assistance conducting the training
workshops, a national newsletter, and annual
meetings of site leaders.
The pilot phase of Project ASTRO took place
between 1993 and 1995 with a $650,000 National
Science Foundation grant. Sixty schools in
Northern and Southern California participated.
Forty-six astronomers and 65 teachrs were
involved--37 from elementary schools, 25 from
middle schools, and 3 from high schools.
Evaluation of the pilot {See Detail: Impact of
Project Astro} encouraged ASP and Project ASTRO
to expand the project. ASTRO applied for and
received a 3-year, $1.3-million grant for
national expansion from the NSF.
Currently, there are six Project ASTRO
expansion sites, with about 200 astronomers and
275 teachers participating. The sites and their
institutions are
- in Chicago, at the Adler
Planetarium
- in Tucson, at the National
Optical Astronomy Observatories
- in Seattle, at the Department of
Astronomy, University of Washington
- in rural New Mexico, at the Space
Center in Alamagordo
- in Connecticut, at the Astronomy
Department, Wesleyan University, in
Middletown and the Project
to Improve Mastery of Mathematics and
Sciences (PIMMS), a teacher professional
development program at Wesleyan.
- in San Francisco, at the Astronomical
Society of the Pacific
These sites select and match teachers and
amateur or professional astronomers, train the
partners intensively, and support
teacher-astronomer teams as they independently
carry out activities during the school year. Expansion Sites
There are also several independent ASTRO-like
sites, the number of which is expected to
increase with growing awareness of ASTRO and its
materials. Independent
ASTRO-like Projects
