ENHS Nature Trails Apr 99 Article 1

This month's speaker: Robert Scheppler

Nature Trails asked our speaker to provide some background to his talk:

I was interested in nature as a child, but it was the nature of a suburb of Dallas, Texas and had a far more "repetitive aspect" than nature in Western Oregon. So, I read a lot of science fiction and developed an interest in and curiosity about what was going on with all those "stars at night" that were so "big and bright".

This is a pretty common door for professional and amateur astronomers. Clyde Tombaugh (the discoverer of Pluto) who grew up in Kansas told me he had the same experience.

My parents encouraged me to get an education, but never understood why I was so fascinated by science fiction. I distinctly remember my father telling me, "If you read as many law books as you do science fiction books, you'd be a millionaire."

I was an unspectacular public school student who did not sufficiently express my gratitude to all those teachers who were reallly bright, who really cared and who gave me more time and patience than my effort deserved.

I hold B.A. and M.A. degrees from the Department of History of the University of Texas. After some public school teaching in Washington State and Denver Colorado, and a two years teaching assignment at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (with the Peace Corps) I took a teaching position at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. While an Associate Professor at MCC I enrolled as a graduate school at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and was awarded a PhD with an emphasis in Modern European History.

After eleven years (eleven winters) in Rochester, my family and I moved to the Florida Keys. My wife and I purchased and operated a print shop and I taught part time at Florida Keys Community College. I was hired to teach history but talked FKCC into letting me teach an introductory extension astronomy course on the basis of my interest, amateur experience and the fact that I had a telescope and a lot of serious equipment. The course attracted students and I taught it for four years, cribbing out of better and better textbooks each semester.

When we decided to leave the Keys after selling our printing business, I was determined to maintain my involvement in astronomy education. We moved back to Austin, Texas. Contact with the UT Department of Astronomy led to my being hired as Director of Public Information at the University's astronomy research facility, McDonald Observatory, at Mt. Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. The program involved setting up and coordinating day time tours, lectures and solar observations, and night time star parties atop the observatory and at the Visitors' Information Center.

The job provided access to the some of the best observing conditions, research activities, professional astronomers, research equipment and wonderful visitors in the world. I was program director from just before the 1985 arrival of Halley's Comet until 1992. After seven years I took a departmental sabbatical. At the suggestion of the (U of O graduate) wife of the on-site superintendent at Mt. Locke, we decided to visit Brookings. After a year we decided to stay.

In Brookings, we run a small publishing company, do local desktop publishing and printing and I teach history and astronomy courses at the local extension of Southwestern Oregon Community College.

I plan to talk about the planet Pluto as a springboard for some comments on the Solar System and the universe generally. I'm looking forward to being in Eugene on the 16th and sharing some of the excitement of what's going on in astronomy today.

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