Mary Urquhart - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Mary Urquhart

Introduction: NASA’s Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) programs provide an important vehicle f... more Introduction: NASA’s Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) programs provide an important vehicle for bringing the excitement and content of cutting-edge science to teachers as well as the general public. For formal education efforts targeted at K-12 classrooms, workshops are often utilized to leverage NASA’s impact by working with teachers, who then pass their newfound knowledge or materials to their own students. How much of an impact do these workshops make on teachers? Is the transfer to classrooms happening as expected? To investigate these questions I have embedded several teacher workshops into semester or full year long professional development programs for in-service teachers (total of 55 participants). Each workshop has also been given at science teacher conferences in single one-to-three hour sessions (250+ total participants). Topics have included space weather in conjunction with the joint NASA/Air Force Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI), Scale in the Sol...

36Th Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Mar 1, 2005

Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 2003

Gusev Crater was selected as the landing site for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit mission... more Gusev Crater was selected as the landing site for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit mission. Located at the outlet of Ma'adim Vallis and 250 km south of the volcano Apollinaris Patera, Gusev is an outstanding site to achieve the goals of the MER mission. The crater could have collected sediments from a variety of sources during its 3.9 Ga history, including fluvial, lacustrine, volcanic, glacial, impact, regional and local aeolian, and global air falls. It is a unique site to investigate the past history of water on Mars, climate and geological changes, and the potential habitability of the planet, which are central science objectives of the MER mission. Because of its complex history and potential diversity, Gusev will allow the testing of a large spectrum of hypotheses with the complete suite of MER instruments. Evidence consistent with long‐lived lake episodes exist in the landing ellipse area. They might offer a unique opportunity to study, for the first time, Martian ...

Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 2017

Place-based education (PBE) and active learning are effective strategies for geoscience education... more Place-based education (PBE) and active learning are effective strategies for geoscience education. However, traditional PBE via field trips requires significant resources, time, physical abilities, and expertise of teachers. We provide an alternative PBE experience by showing how different kinds of geoscience videos can be spatially organized into one digital interactive virtual environment. Here, we present the Google Earth Geoscience Video Library (GEGVL) which uses Google Earth and location specific videos about Earth events to create a virtual PBE experience. Using Google Earth, GEGVL organizes place-based videos by locations and links pertinent non-place-based videos and allows users to roam the globe in search of geoscientific videos that are pertinent to them or their students. Currently GEGVL contains 150 videos organized into ten different geoscience disciplines: Plate Tectonics, Minerals, Structural Geology, Metamorphism, Magmatism, Hydrology, Environmental Science, Sedime...

AIP Conference Proceedings, 2006

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Teacher Quality Grants, supported through No Child ... more The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Teacher Quality Grants, supported through No Child Left Behind, are intended to ensure that secondary teachers of specific subjects are "highly qualified". Now in their third year, these grants have done much to shape long-term professional development for teachers in the physical sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). The grants have also created a suite of challenges and benefits for the UTD Science Education M.A.T. program. Teacher Quality Grants are based on the No Child Left Behind framework that requires teachers to be "highly qualified" as defined by the state. Recruitment is required to be targeted at teachers who are uncertified or teach one or more classes out of their content area and who work in high needs local school districts. Many of the students brought into our program through these grants have incoming content knowledge in physics similar to that typical of undergraduate non-majors, and a large percentage are uncomfortable with basic mathematics as well. How and what we teach has been dramatically impacted by the Teacher Quality Grants, as have our assessments and evaluations. An ongoing challenge has been to implement a Physics Education Research (PER)-based course design while meeting the specific requirements of the Teacher Quality Grant program. The Teacher Quality Grants have also provided a great deal of opportunity to new and existing teachers in our program. A barrier to our teachers, rising tuition costs, has been removed and as a result a mandate has become a doorway of opportunity for physical science teachers.

Introduction: Very few space science activities appropriate for children in early elementary are ... more Introduction: Very few space science activities appropriate for children in early elementary are available for classroom use. This is especially true of activities that have quality science and math content. However, the dearth of quality activities does not necessarily reflect the demand. Children as young as preschoolers often have a natural interest in space, perhaps second only to their love of dinosaurs. Educators can utilize lessons that tap into the innate passions of their students to teach a wide variety of skills and content across the curriculum. Leveraging off of natural interest is not the only reason to introduce a young child to space science concepts in a formal education setting. Young children are in the process of forming mental models, with or without instruction [1]. Upper elementary students already have astronomy misconceptions similar to those common in adults [2, 3]. Early intervention through the use of well-designed activities may be able to prevent the formation of some inaccurate astronomical mental models in children. In order for any hands-on science activity to be suitable for classroom use, it should be engaging, scientifically accurate, developmentally appropriate, and avoid the accidental introduction of misconceptions. Although space science activities for upper elementary and middle school are widely available, adapting many of these materials for use with young children is nontrivial, and in some cases inappropriate. A need exists for activities that build upon the innate interest young children have in space-related topics in ways that are understandable for the students and integrate into existing curricular requirements. The most easily adaptable activities are those that involve children making their own observations of the sky. Another possibility for the successful adaptation of activities commonly used with older children is the introduction of simple physical models. Scale model solar systems are commonly used in astronomy education with students in upper elementary through undergraduate school. Some of the material used in a typical hands-on scale model solar system activity is difficult for young children to understand. For example, concepts of the absolute sizes and distances of solar system objects are not easily comprehended by many adults, and are almost assuredly far too abstract for young children. On the other hand, other concepts used or introduced in the creation of a scale model solar system are not only appropriate for students in grades K-4, but meet content standards of

Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Mar 1, 2009

Grain size, particle density, thermal conductivity, composition and rock abundance all play an im... more Grain size, particle density, thermal conductivity, composition and rock abundance all play an important role in the thermal behavior of the lunar surface. Direct investigation of the grain size distribution, particle density, and thermal conductivity of the lunar surface layer is not presently possible, with the exception of the samples returned from the Apollo landing sites. An indirect measurement of lunar surface properties may be possible using remote thermal infrared observations. In order to better understand the interplay between grain size, density, rock abundance, and thermal conductivity a diurnal thermal model for the lunar surface and near subsurface with temperature-dependent specific heat and thermal conductivity was developed. Although particle size, bulk density, and thermal conductivity cannot be investigated completely independently, a clear relationship between these parameters, and their effects on lunar surface temperatures is determined. Thermal conductivity is dependent upon the other parameters of grain size, particle density, composition and rock abundance. To separate the effects each of these parameters have on the thermal conductivity, and hence the nighttime temperatures, laboratory data was used for granulated materials under vacuum conditions which varied only one parameter, while holding the others constant[l]. Since an increase in the bulk density of a material increases the thermal inertia of that substance, an increase in density results in an increase in nighttime temperatures. An increase in the average grain size of the regolith was found to correspond t o a decrease in the minimum temperatures predicted by the model. Higher rock percentages of either vesicular basalt or breccia decrease the overall temperature variation of the models and increase the nighttime temperatures. (See figure 1). Since grain size, density, and rock abundance can each be varied within certain ranges to match an observed minimum temperature, some assumptions regarding the thermal properties of the surface must be made if regolith properties are to be determined remotely.

Our home planet, its large natural satellite, and our own star: for NASA's Year of the Solar Syst... more Our home planet, its large natural satellite, and our own star: for NASA's Year of the Solar System [1], these the objects in our planetary system are in many respects the easiest for school children and the general public to study. And yet, understanding the Earth-Moon-Sun system presents challenges for learners of all ages. Lunar phases, for example, are well established to be challenging to adult learners. Children as well as adults (students, teachers, and the public) have common naïve conceptions/misconceptions, including the idea that a new moon is caused by Earth's shadow or that the entire phase cycle can be completed in 24 hours [2,3,4,5]. Research indicates that these incorrect ideas are also resistant to change [2]. Educational outreach and professional development programs at The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) utilize a variety of approaches to assist teachers in developing a level of expertise necessary to guide their own students with this and other topics related to the Earth-Moon-Sun system. We leverage both pre-existing resources and ones created in house, and detail those here. Our general approach is constructivist, and built on learner observations [6]. The mixture of authentic observational science, online data, and modeling strategies recommended varies with the age of the students. Authentic Science: Observations of the Moon in the sky are an excellent form of authentic science, and can be done with nearly any age group, including primary grade students. Two schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area have 2 nd grade students and their teachers observing the Moon for an entire phase cycle. At one of these, Boon Elementary in the suburban Allen Independent School District, 2 nd grade students and their families have for the past several years completed daily lunar observations to support a class lunar observing log. The observing plan and associated classroom activities were created in a partnership between the school faculty and UT Dallas. At Dallas's Burnet Elementary, 2 nd grade students on the predominately economically disadvantaged campus with a high percentage of English Language Learners use inschool observations of the Moon made with their teacher to complete their own class lunar logs, based on what has been done at Boon Elementary. The entire staff of Burnet Elementary is receiving professional development in a partnership between the school and

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2017

In 2015, a century after Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, the Laser In... more In 2015, a century after Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves from binary black holes fully consistent with this theory. Our goal for VIGOR (Virtual-reality Interaction with Gravitational waves to Observe Relativity) is to communicate this revolutionary discovery to the public by visualizing the gravitational waves emitted by binary black holes. VIGOR has been developed using the Unity game engine and VR headsets (Oculus Rift DK2 and Samsung Gear VR). Wearing a VR headset, VIGOR users control an avatar to "fly" around binary black holes, experiment on the black holes by manipulating their total mass, mass ratio, and orbital separation, and witness how gravitational waves emitted by the black holes stretch and squeeze the avatar. We evaluated our prototype of VIGOR with high school students in 2016 and are further improving VIGOR based on our findings.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 2021

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 2020

Sustainability, 2021

A usability study evaluated the ease with which users interacted with an author-designed modeling... more A usability study evaluated the ease with which users interacted with an author-designed modeling and simulation program called STEPP (Scaffolded Training Environment for Physics Programming). STEPP is a series of educational modules for introductory algebra-based physics classes that allow students to model the motion of an object using Finite State Machines (FSMs). STEPP was designed to teach students to decompose physical systems into a few key variables such as time, position, and velocity and then encourages them to use these variables to define states (such as running a marathon) and transitions between these states (such as crossing the finish line). We report the results of a usability study on high school physics teachers that was part of a summer training institute. To examine this, 8 high school physics teachers (6 women, 2 men) were taught how to use our simulation software. Data from qualitative and quantitative measures revealed that our tool generally exceeded teacher...

Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation, 2019

We are a year into the development of a software tool for modeling and simulation (M&S) of 1D and... more We are a year into the development of a software tool for modeling and simulation (M&S) of 1D and 2D kinematics consistent with Newton's laws of motion. Our goal has been to introduce modeling and computational thinking into learning high-school physics.

Agu Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2007

We will report on the activities, challenges, and successes of the ongoing collaboration between ... more We will report on the activities, challenges, and successes of the ongoing collaboration between the William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences (CSS) and the Department of Science/Mathematics Education (SME) at the University of Texas at Dallas. At the core of our partnership is the Education and Public Outreach program for the Coupled Ion / Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument.

Agu Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2010

A highly enantioselective copper-catalyzed propargylic amination starting from benzylic allylic a... more A highly enantioselective copper-catalyzed propargylic amination starting from benzylic allylic amines has been developed with a new chiral N,N,P ligand. A series of N-tethered 1,6-enynes were synthesized in good to excellent yields with excellent enantioselectivities. Utilization of transition metal-catalyzed cycloisomerization of 1,6-enynes provides several enantioselectively enriched chiral five-membered Nheterocycles efficiently. Scheme 1 Enantioselective synthesis of N-tethered 1,6-enynes.