Saint Mary's University

First Report of the New Department of Astronomy and Physics

The last report from Saint Mary's University appeared in the Winter Solstice issue of Cassiopeia for 1987. Needless to say, there have been quite a few changes since that report. The most significant occurred on April 1st, 1993 (appropriately enough) when the Department of Astronomy, with its three faculty, one research associate, and one technician, merged with the Department of Physics, with its five faculty, one technician, and secretary shared with Astronomy. The new Department of Astronomy and Physics came into being at that instant, following a year of uncertainty arising from a faculty opening in Physics that was never filled. The solution imposed by David Richardson, our new Dean of Science, was the merger of the two separate Departments with a renewed mandate to promote undergraduate education in physics and astrophysics, as well as graduate education in astronomy. There appears to be very strong support for the merger from within the University, and the results on our programs have been rather dramatic. This report attempts to summarize some of the events of the last eight years, with particular emphasis on the exciting events of the last year that have so emphatically altered the conditions here at Saint Mary's.

Faculty and Staff

There were only a few staff changes at Saint Mary's prior to 1993. Mario Pedreros was a research associate in the Department of Astronomy from 1986-90, and left for the University of Toronto when support funds disappeared. He is currently teaching high school students in North York. Our long-time Astronomy technician, Randall Brooks, left for a position at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa in the Spring of 1991, and was replaced by Laurie Reed, a graduate of our Astronomy M.Sc. program and the wife of Cameron Reed of the Physics Department. Cameron, after serving as chairperson of the Department of Physics for a short period, left with Laurie for Alma College in the summer of 1992. From all accounts, they are now happily settled in central Michigan, with Cameron teaching physics and astronomy at Alma, where he is also in charge of the planetarium, and Laurie working as a part-time physics lab technician and astronomy instructor at nearby Saginaw Valley State College. Our new Astronomy technician since 1992 has been David Lane, an active amateur astronomer who is presently serving as the President of the Halifax Centre of the RASC. Tatsuhiko Hasegawa was a CITA National Fellow here during 1988-90, and returned at the end of 1992 from two years spent at Duke and Ohio State Universities to work as a research associate for George Mitchell. Since November 1989 the Department has also included Doug Forbes (Sir Wilfred Grenfell College) as an adjunct member.

Most of the staff changes at Saint Mary's occurred during the past year. The retirement of Franz Tomscha of the Physics Department in 1990 resulted in the hiring of Robert Corns on a limited- term appointment. However, this faculty position, which was preserved from extinction thanks to the efforts of Cameron Reed and the faculty union, was not formally filled until the summer of 1993, along with two more vacated by Cameron and Keith Fillmore (who resigned), with the hiring of Canadians David Guenther, Malcolm Butler, and David Clarke as Assistant Professors. The recent retirement of Dangety Murty has resulted in a further faculty position becoming available in our Department, and we are delighted to announce that it was filled by the appointment of Michael West, our newest faculty member. The "old gang" consists of Bill Lonc (from the Physics Department), George Mitchell, David Turner, and Gary Welch, with Richard Ives continuing as the Physics technician. The position of Department Secretary has changed hands many times in recent years; our current Secretary is Elfrie Waters.

George Mitchell was the chairperson of the Department of Astronomy from 1985-1989, and was succeeded by David Turner from 1989 to 1993 (save for his sabbatical year during 1991-92 when Gary Welch was acting chairperson). Dave also became the first chairperson of the combined Department of Astronomy and Physics on April 1, 1993. Since the Department currently consists of three faculty and one technician who have first names of "David" (Clarke, Guenther, Lane, and Turner), and since the Dean's first name is also David, we have jokingly advised prospective applicants of the same monicker that a name change might be appropriate. For the moment we are living with the fact that whenever someone calls out "David" at formal Department functions (that include the Dean), half of the heads in the room turn around in response!

The direction we are taking at Saint Mary's is somewhat experimental, but with the solid backing of the Dean. Faculty positions have been filled on the basis of several, different, agreed-upon criteria that include the demonstrated ability to teach well in various areas of our revised physics/astronomy curriculum, research expertise that complements -but not necessarily duplicates - existing expertise within the Department, and a dedication to the Department and Saint Mary's University. Our progress towards attaining these goals has gone smoothly so far, although the impact of the curriculum changes is only beginning to be felt. The process of University "rationalization" currently taking place in Nova Scotia affects us in a variety of indirect ways to which we have been forced to respond. Presently all of the impact on our curriculum and reputation has been positive, and we are looking forward to exciting years ahead. The close involvement of Dean Richardson in nearly all of our endeavours makes him an unofficial "ninth faculty member" of our Department.

Activities

Most of our activities of the past year have been centred on the revamping of our undergraduate curriculum in physics and our undergraduate and graduate curricula in astronomy and astrophysics. Some headaches of previous years, namely an undergraduate physics credit course at the level of grade 12 physics and a 3-year major degree, were eliminated by the University in the past year, and both majors and honours students now require four years of instruction to graduate. The revamped curriculum includes new undergraduate lab courses as well as a solid selection of courses in physics, astronomy, and astrophysics for students in all programs. During the summer a new lab manual for first-year physics was generated by David Guenther with the help of other faculty members. Curriculum development is still proceeding in collaboration with members of some of our cognate departments, most notably Mathematics and Computing Science.

The Burke-Gaffney Observatory is undergoing major work in connection with the efforts of Dave Lane to upgrade the operation of the 0.4-m telescope. A lot of old paint was scraped off the telescope to facilitate the improvements, and it currently looks much the worse for these efforts. The addition of a CCD camera and automation, with associated computer terminals, gives the dome quite a different look from that of a few years ago. The developments in this area have only just begun. Dave Lane has also produced a Windows planetarium program called "The Earth-Centered Universe, " available through shareware, which has attracted the attention of a large following of users in Canada and the U.S. (see John Mosley's review in the September issue of Sky & Telescope).

Dave Lane was the major focus of media attention during the May 10th annular eclipse, which was visible under clear skies locally - much to our surprise! Members of the Department and members of the Halifax Centre of the RASC set up telescopes and other displays on the front lawn of the University's McNally Building that afternoon, and attracted over a thousand people to view the event. Over 700 pairs of mylar eclipse glasses were available for distribution to the waiting multitudes, and all had disappeared ten minutes prior to first contact! Dave Turner and Gary Welch were also heavily involved with media interviews during this period (including a CBC Newsworld spot during the eclipse itself by Dave Turner), and Dave's comments to a local newspaper reporter about the sad situation of students being shut in the schools during the event were requoted in the newspaper's "Quotes of the Week" section. The annular eclipse attracted many more people to Saint Mary's than had come for the partial eclipse in October of 1986.

Malcolm Butler has been responsible for including particulars about our Department and programs on the World-Wide Web, and the handling of requests for information and applications to the graduate program have been streamlined through his efforts. The designation of new undergraduate and graduate coordinators (Guenther and Butler, respectively) was necessitated by the merger and the resulting increase in the number of students under the nominal responsibility of the Department. Fortunately most of our "growing pains" in this area have been minimal.

Our only other remaining activity of note in recent years was the hosting of the Society's annual meeting in 1992. Despite a relatively low attendance, we were delighted by the positive comments on the meeting arrangements made by those in attendance. Laurie Reed and Gary Welch spent a great deal of time to ensure that the meeting ran smoothly, and were ably assisted by others on the LOC - Cameron Reed, George Mitchell, Cathy Read, Doug Forbes, our student assistants, and myself. Our steak and lobster banquet and Tattoo evening were clearly popular events, and will likely be repeated at the next meeting here, which some of you have already asked us to host soon!

Research

The complement of the new Department includes a relatively balanced mix of researchers with observational and theoretical interests. Observational research includes interstellar chemistry, star formation and gas outflows from young stellar objects (Mitchell), the study of open clusters & associations of various ages and the evolution of massive stars & pulsating variables (Turner, Forbes), the cluster distance scale and interstellar reddening in the galactic disk (Turner), galactic structure and kinematics (Forbes), the origin and structure of early-type galaxies (Welch), clusters of galaxies (West, Welch), and radio interferometric observations of extragalactic radio sources and their environs (Clarke). Theoretical research includes particle physics/astrophysics, low- energy tests of quantum chromodynamics, neutrino astrophysics and the solar neutrino problem (Butler), the modeling of solar and stellar pulsation modes (Guenther), magnetohydrodynamical modeling of the interstellar medium, the study of supernova remnants and extragalactic radio sources and the propagation of cosmic rays and their associated emissions (Clarke), and clusters of galaxies, large-scale structure of the universe and observational cosmology (West). Bill Lonc has interests in radio astronomy and ties to the Vatican Observatory, and in the past year was involved with the construction of a demonstration radio telescope for the science museum at the foot of Mount Graham in Arizona.

Undergraduate Programs

Our formal program in Astrophysics was approved by the University Senate in 1989, and in the last few years has produced its first four graduates, with one from the honours program. Until 1993 the program was administered jointly by the separate Departments of Astronomy and Physics, but is now under the exclusive control of the new Department. The exciting changes in personnel and program curricula which have occurred in the last year have initiated fundamental changes to our visibility at the local and national levels. This is currently reflected in increased enrolments in our graduate program and in the second year of our undergraduate programs. We hope that our next report will be as encouraging.

Graduate Program

Up until this year, there have been no more than 4 to 6 students in the M.Sc. program at one time. Successful students who completed all of the requirements for graduation since the last report in late 1987 include (with their undergraduate institution, year of completion, thesis title, and supervisor): John Takala (U. Toronto), 1988, "A UBV Study of the Field of NGC 7790," with Turner; Ken Belcourt (Eastern Connecticut State), 1989, "A High Resolution M Band Study of W3 IRS 5," with Mitchell, David Wing (U. British Columbia), 1990, "Surface Photometry of the Shell Galaxy NGC 2865," with Welch; Jason Schella (Saint Mary's), 1991, "A CO J = 2-1 Study of the Outflow Sources GL 490 and NGC 7538 IRS 9," with Mitchell; Siow Wang Lee (National U. Singapore), 1992, "A Multi- Transition CO Study of the GL 490 Outflow," with Mitchell; Jean Giannakopoulou (Athens), 1993, "The Star Forming Core of Mon R2," with Mitchell; Jeremy Beckett (Concordia), 1993, "Empirical Confirmation of the Mass Dependence for White Dwarf Luminosities," with Turner; Georgi Mandushev (Sofia U.), 1994, "A Photometric Investigation of the Fields of Two Short-Period Cepheids in Cygnus," with Turner; and Lifang Ma (Beijing Normal U.), 1994 , "," with Mitchell. Abstracts for the most recent theses have been or are being forwarded to the editor of Cassiopeia.

The influx of new faculty has resulted in a recent expansion of our graduate program. Continuing students from last year include full-timers Yonghui Xie (Sichuan U.) and Ken Sills (Western Ontario), who are working under the direction of Clarke and Guenther, respectively, and part-timers Melvin Blake (Saint Mary's) and Wayne Barkhouse (Saint Mary's). New full-time students this year include Michael Casey (Dalhousie), Stefan Elieff (St. Francis Xavier), Todd Fuller (Waterloo), Gary Gidney (Acadia), and Beverly Werstiuk (Carleton). Michal Sersen (Comenius U.) from Slovakia has also been accepted into the program, but the start of his studies currently depends upon a family situation. Modifications to a few of the old lab rooms in physics were completed over the summer in order to provide working space for our new graduate students, additional teaching space within the Department, and room for the recent expansion of computing facilities. A significant change from "the old days" at Saint Mary's has been the provision of start-up funds to our new faculty members by the Dean of Science. This has had a significant impact, primarily in the area of computing facilities.

David Turner, Department of Astronomy and Physics
Saint Mary's University (not St. Mary's)
Back to Autumnal Equinox 1994 Index.

Back to Book Review

Up to Cassiopeia index.

Up to CASCA Home Page

Please e-mail any suggestions/comments to Jack Penfold (jpenfold@mtroyal.ab.ca)