Ambassadors

Amy Barraclough, Director of the Edelman Planetarium at Rowan University, has loved informal education ever since she started working at the Allen F. Blocher Planetarium as a student presenter. It was there she realized she could make a career teaching the wonders of the night sky. After graduating with a BS in Physics, she became the Program Coordinator at the Planetarium at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) where she learned how to create original planetarium shows, began training the next crop of planetarium educators and completed her digital photography certificate. In 2014, she was awarded an Honorable Mention by the Arlington Museum of Art for her submission in the Image as Art photography competition. Amy was honored with the Digistar Users Group’s Jim Hashimoto Memorial Award in 2014 for her contributions to the planetarium field. She was also awarded an Outstanding Maverick Award from UTA in 2015 and Rowan’s PROFessional of the Month in September 2017. To stay informed and inspired she is an active member in the National Informal Science Education Network, Digistar Users Group, and the Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society. Since Amy became Director, the Edelman Planetarium has seen tremendous growth, with double its annual attendance and an increased public show schedule. A local magazine company, SJ Magazine, named Edelman Planetarium “Best Way to See the Stars” in 2017 and “Best Family Fun” in 2018. She hopes that her skills as an informal educator, mentor and photographer will make her an asset to the ACEAP team!

Jessica Ennis is a physics professor at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She obtained undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Maryland, and an M.S. in Astrophysics from the University of Minnesota. Her thesis research was on the Kepler and Cassiopeia A young supernova remnants, specifically using multi-wavelength observations from space-based telescopes. She has been teaching at Augsburg for ten years, and has recently expanded the popular astronomy for non-majors course to a study abroad/study away paradigm that includes engagement with native culture and celestial navigation. Recently, Jessica lead a two-week study away short-term program on Hawai’i Island. Students met scientists and toured facilities on Maunakea and Maunaloa while learning about native Hawaiian culture and navigation. Jessica is passionate about bringing learning outside of the classroom and creating culturally competent non-scientists who understand and appreciate the discipline of astronomy in its real world context.

In the past, Jessica has also lead Universe in the Park though the University of Minnesota and taught astronomy to Girl Scouts at the Bell Museum of Natural History. When not in the classroom teaching physics, astronomy, mathematics, or meteorology, she has be spotted on the roofs of Augsburg University searching for micrometeorites. She is married with two young children and lives in Oakdale, Minnesota.

Billy is a product of rural poverty in Tennessee. Growing up on a farm far from any lights, he had wonderful views of the night sky. He attended a small school that encouraged students to continue life on the farm. He was disciplined in the 5th grade for telling his class that he would work at NASA which shaped his adult life. He taught computer science in higher education and then worked at NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center. He taught his first outreach course to teachers in 1986. After returning to Tennessee, he taught future science teachers and made it his mission to provide STEM programs at schools across the state. He bought his first portable planetarium nine years ago. Taking early retirement in 2015, he started a foundation that allows him to visit over 100 rural schools each school year at no cost. Since his first planetarium program, 58,300 students and teachers have been part of his work. He was selected as TN Science Teacher of the Year; he was chosen as Motlow College Teacher of the Year a record seven times. He was selected as the Nation’s STEM Advocate by the Battelle Corporation and was recently honored by the Governor of Tennessee for his outreach. He has never forgotten the feeling as a young student that no one cared about his school or worst, how his teachers had no expectations of his peers. He has found that nothing inspires like the night sky. For fun, he spends evenings in his observatory in a field behind his home and is a motivational speaker to teacher groups across the nation.

Mike Lucibella is a science journalist and editor of The Antarctic Sun, the official newspaper of the U.S. Antarctic Program. As the staff journalist, photographer and podcast producer for the program, he reports directly from the frozen continent on the wide range of research that’s carried out at the bottom of the planet, including astronomy and astrophysics.

Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, windiest and emptiest continent on the planet; the perfect conditions to peer deep into the heavens. Astronomers use the continent as a platform to house some of the world’s top telescopes, retrieve meteorites and launch cutting-edge instruments into the stratosphere, all of which Mike has reported on.

Passionate about science communication, he is always looking for ways to bring the excitement of Antarctic research to diverse new audiences. He’s brought the excitement of science to school classrooms, comic conventions, nerd nights, science cafes and has even been known to perform science standup comedy.

His newest project, an effort called “Science Takes You Places,” brings together stories of researchers and science support staff in exotic locations to highlight how a STEM career can be the ticket to traveling the world and understanding the universe.

Before joining the USAP, Mike worked as the staff science writer for the American Physical Society, the largest physics society in the United States. He produced their newsletter, APS News, and worked with their outreach department to promote science and physics to the general public.

Laura Sparks is an astronomy instructor and department chair at Santa Rosa Junior College in Sonoma County, California. Laura holds a B.S. in physics from Arizona State University and an M.S. in physics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She became an astronomy convert during her time as a UMass grad student while working on the VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) project. She was hooked after spending a week climbing around on a giant telescope frame installing cabling. Since then, she has developed a passion for astronomy outreach, giving public talks at local astronomical society meetings and area libraries, supporting the Santa Rosa Junior College Planetarium, coordinating astronomy viewing nights, and even spending a summer with the National Park Service doing public astronomy at Bryce Canyon National Park.

In her teaching, Laura focuses on using astronomy as a vehicle for students to engage in authentic science experiences. She leads a unique observational astronomy class in which hundreds of students each year trek out to a dark sky location to learn astrophotography and visual observing techniques. This coming year she will be spending her sabbatical developing a free, open-source astronomy lab manual, and she is very excited to be able to incorporate cutting-edge science from the observatories in Chile into her work. Laura became an evangelist for radio astronomy after journeying to the Green Bank Telescope site and the Very Large Array, and she is absolutely thrilled to complete a 10-year-long goal of visiting the amazing Chile observatories.