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Astronomy 174 -- Major's Seminar - (Spring 2007) -- Syllabus

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• Instructor
  • Michael Skrutskie
    • Office: 262 Astronomy
      Phone: 924 4328
      Email: mfs4n
      Office Hours: T 10:00-12:00 (actually any time you can find me)

• Website: http://www.astro.virginia.edu/class/skrutskie/astr174.
  The class schedule will be posted at this site, and, when available, PDF verisons of the lectures.
  Assignments/labs will similarly be posted if the lecturer has made them available.

• Description: This weekly seminar is designed to introduce entering majors and potential majors to the breadth of research being conducted in the Astronomy department. Each week a different faculty member will speak/entertain. Some weeks may be arranged around field trips to McCormick Observatory, Fan Mountain Observatory, and NRAO Green Bank, WV. A tentative schedule appears below. The course nominally meets 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, but (with advance notice) some of these meetings may be altered to take advantage of opportunities for field trips, lab visits, etc. Given the free-form, ideally interactive nature of this seminar, be prepared for some fraction of the sessions to run over the official 8:00 p.m. quiting time.

• Assignments: Each speaker will prepare a fairly straightfoward problem that reinforces the subject matter. Your best attempt at solving this problem will be due at the following lecture. The assignments will be reviewed, commented upon, and returned to you, but they will not be graded. You will be given credit for making the attempt. You are welcome to seek help on the problems from other students in the class (or, ideally, from the faculty member who assigned the problem), but make an honest attempt to solve the problem on your own.

• Grading: Students will receive a letter grade for the course based entirely on attendance as indicated by the record of acceptable assignements turned in during the semester. Everybody starts with an A and is allowed one unexcused absence without penalty. Thereafter the grade will be adusted with each subsequent unexcused absence to A-, B+, B, C, D, F. Students wishing to have an absence excused should submit a written note by the following lecture.

• Textbook: None