May 4, 2009

Thanks to all that volunteered at the open house this weekend! It was great to have a large undergraduate presence there. I also got the chance to say hello to many of you with your families at the Frank Drake talk on Saturday. Check out the image attached, these are the "Floater" life forms that Frank Drake talked about at the lecture.



Here are some things to keep in mind this week:

Autumn Quarter Registration: Begins Monday! Feel free to stop in to see Paula and myself to make sure you're on track with classes. Run a degree audit (DARS) through MyUW to see what classes you still need to take.

Autumn Astro Classes: Autumn quarter we are offering the following courses for majors:
Astronomy 321: Solar System
Astronomy 425: Cosmology
Astronomy 482: Scientific Writing
Astronomy 497: Undergraduate research seminar
Astronomy 500: Methods for Teaching Astronomy

Annual Drop/Satisfactory-Non Satisfactory Grading: The last day to use your annual course drop or to change the course grading to satisfactory/non-satisfactory is May 17. Review the policies regarding your annual drop (http://www.washington.edu/students/reg/wdpolicy.html) and S/NS Grading (http://www.washington.edu/students/gencat/front/Grading_Sys.html). Courses graded S/NS do not count towards requirements needed to graduate.

Astrobiology Seminar: Tomorrow at 2:30pm, Felisa Wolfe-Simon (Harvard) will give a talk on "Geobiochemistry and Evolutionary Metallomics: The evolution of life and the biochemical consequences of Earth history". Felisa's talk will be in Phys/Astr A118.

Colloquium: This Thursday at 4pm, Shep Doeleman (MIT) will give a talk on "mm/submm VLBI of SgrA*: An Event Horizon Telescope". Join us at 3:45pm in the foyer of Phys/Astr A102 for coffee, tea and cookies.

Page O'announcements: http://pageoannouncements.blogspot.com/ A great place to get info on campus events, courses, scholarships and many other topics! Note that today I posted a job announcement for a student assistant at the dental school and I know a few of you are looking for jobs. Housing and Food Services and the libraries are other great places to look for on campus jobs: hfs.washington.edu "Student Employment" and lib.washington.edu "About --> Employment".

Have a great week! Feel free to stop by if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Sarah