One of the greatest challenges facing this nation concerns how we are going to do a better job of preparing, inspiring, exciting, encouraging, and nurturing our next generation of the STEM workforce (NASA, 2006). At the core of this challenge we must acknowledge that far too often middle and high school teachers leave college unprepared to teach their students the required space science topics (Bailey & Slater, 2005; McDermott & Reddish, 1999; Dussault, 2005). As a result, future STEM students fail to learn even the most essential concepts at a level their future college instructors expect. In addition, most all college faculty, and their teaching assistants receive absolutely no formal training in sound pedagogical teaching methods and end up predominantly lecturing to our future middle and high school teachers and to our STEM undergraduate and graduate students. Most regrettably, this lack of pedagogically sound teaching discourages and unexcites bright students (especially those from underserved and underrepresented groups) from pursuing STEM careers (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997; Tobias, 1990). CAE is devoted to breaking this cycle, predominately through our workshops.

Our Tier I (introductory) 2- and 3-day Teaching Excellence Workshops center on participants learning how to create productive learner-centered teaching environments for college-level introductory astronomy (Astro 101) by reviewing research on the nature of teaching and learning; setting course goals and objectives; and using interactive lectures, peer instruction, engaging demonstrations, collaborative groups, lecture-tutorials, ranking tasks, and online homework systems. Our Tier I Teaching Excellence Workshops culminate with participants learning how to put these teaching strategies together into effective learning sequences for the learner-centered classroom. Our Tier II (advanced) Teaching Excellence Workshops center on helping past workshop participants with their obstacles to implementing a learner-centered Astro 101 course. Specifically, workshop participants will work to understand how students learn while engaged in learner-centered activities and what the role of the instructor is in the learner-centered class. We also offer 1-day Regional Teaching Exchanges which bring past workshop participants, as well as those local to a particular region who were not able to participate in a past workshop, the opportunity to network with their local community of instructions. These Regional Exchanges center on building local communities of practice to continue professional development beyond the scope of our workshops. CAE also periodically offers workshops designed specifically for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-docs; and we occasionally offer workshops with specific content threads such as astrobiology and planetary sciences.

Workshops Topics Focus On: Developing Goals for Astro 101 Research on how people learn Interactive lectures Peer instruction Collaborative group learning Tutorial approaches Implementing authentic assessment strategies Creating effective learning sequences Effective implementation of learner-centered instruction