This project will strengthen and extend support of science education by offering a series of Summer Institutes in Astronomy for science teachers at secondary and elementary levels. This Institute will take place at the University of Toledo (UT), and will use facilities of the Ritter Observatory and Ritter Planetarium on the University of Toledo Campus. The workshops/institutes will take place during the summers of 1991, 1992 and 1993, and will last for three weeks (the first workshop is scheduled for July 22- August 9, 1991). Twenty-five teachers will be selected for each workshop. The teachers will be selected on the basis of their backgrounds and recommendations by their department head or principal. These teachers will be "leaders" who will learn from the UT experience and in turn lead astronomy workshops at local and regional levels for other teachers interested in using astronomy in their courses. The University of Toledo workshop programs will be modeled on the very successful Support Program for Instructional Competency in Astronomy (SPICA) conducted by the Center for astrophysics at Harvard University. It is a prime goal of the UT-SPICA program to use materials and instructional techniques developed by the original (Science Teaching through its Astronomical Roots) STAR-SPICA programs and disseminate them to the teaching community. Cost sharing equals 34% of the NSF award.
