Dr. Laura Whitlock, a native of Alabama, received her BS at Southwestern (now Rhodes) College in Memphis in 1981, and her Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 1989. She worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland until coming to SSU in 1999. She enjoys reading, and after getting accustomed to our West Coast climate, she now adds walking to her list of hobbies, enjoying it very much with her Dalmatian, Oppy (named after the famous physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer).

During Dr. Whitlock’s seven plus year stay at NASA, she held many positions. As a data archivist she reformatted data from old x-ray and gamma ray astronomy missions so they could be put online to be accessed by scientists all over the world. Then for four years she concentrated in the area of public education and outreach, where she gained fame for creating two educational websites, Imagine the Universe and StarChild: A Learning Center for Young Astronomers.

She has now teamed up with Dr. Lynn Cominsky to write proposals for space education projects. The focus of their projects is putting the information from some of NASA’s current and future missions into the K-12 classroom to get kids excited while learning math and science. At the same time, they connect and offer information to the general public so that there is public support for the kind of science NASA does. She pointed out how NASA has until recently not been very concerned with public relations--with the exception of the Hubble Space Telescope program, which has a marvelous education and public outreach program that has really captured citizens’ attention. Dr. Whitlock said, “I would bet you would be hard pressed to find a person over the age of 6 who d oesn’t know about the Hubble Space Telescope, who doesn’t think it is a wonderful thing! Fortunately, NASA has learned that it needs to do that with all of the missions, not just Hubble Space Telescope.”

When asked what brings her to SSU, Dr. Whitlock replied, “I have wanted to live in northern California since I first came here on a trip about fifteen years ago. Also, I have known Lynn Cominsky for a long time, and as we were doing similar kind of research in x-ray astronomy, we became friends. When she got into NASA’s science education, as I was already doing that, it all just sort of jelled for me to finally live in a beautiful place and do the work I wanted to do.”

Dr. Whitlock explains she is working with high energy missions Swift and GLAST. She is also working on an educational video game on the web. A high school student will advance through the game--not by blowing anybody up or cutting anybody’s head off--but by learning math and science. The program team includes teachers from the Technology High School at SSU, Analy High in Sebastopol, Alabama, and Maryland. The program targets a broad spectrum of schools, since NASA only funds national programs. Dr. Whitlock’s plans for the future is to stop writing proposals and work more with the programs she won the grants for.

This summer she will organize workshops for teachers in Sonoma County, helping them use technology in teaching high school math and science.

When asked how SSU, and specifically the Department of Physics and Astronomy, fit into the big picture, she said: “It gives me a home for the foreseeable future. They’ve been very welcoming to have me come and join them and do whatever it is I want to do to get science out. I think there is a part of them that realizes if I can get kids more excited about math and science, then the teachers are teaching better math and science in high school, and they wind up getting better physics students in college. I think they see there is a value for them in what I am doing, in addition to getting SSU out there with some pretty high visibility projects that we are doing. One thing you learn when you work for NASA is that you are highly restricted in what you are allowed to do, but now working at SSU all those restrictions are gone for me. Having them offer me a home has really broadened my pool from which I can just let my imagination and creativity run, which really is very nice.”

The Department welcomes Dr. Whitlock, wishing her success in achieving her goals in bringing science and mathematics to more adults and kids.