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Professorship Helps Faculty Star Illuminate Mysteries of the Universe
"Astronomy,” says Dan Stinebring, the Francis D. Federighi Professor of Natural Science at Oberlin, “is loaded with mind-blowing concepts.” So on the first day of Introductory Astronomy, he sets out to introduce the hundred-plus students packed into Craig Lecture Hall for his popular course to at least one of them. He dims the lights, cues the video, and treats them to Powers of 10, a film that starts with an image of a sleeping man in a field and then moves farther away by a power of 10 every 10 seconds, transporting students in a matter of minutes from the human scale to the edge of the universe. The effect is eye-opening and exhilarating. “They start to realize just how vast the universe is,” says Stinebring. And they’re hooked.
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"They're a blast to teach," says Oberlin College Professor Dan Stinebring of his students |
Hooking students on the wonders of astronomy is one of the central goals of Stinebring’s professional life, and distant parts of the universe are not too far away to travel to in pursuit of it. Each year he takes students to do research at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, home to a massive radio telescope the diameter of three football fields that’s the largest of its kind in the world. There they explore realms of the universe that are tens of thousands of light years away, giving whole new meaning to the term “off-campus learning.” Mostly they study pulsars, versatile and highly magnetized neutron stars that shed light on everything from the General Theory of Relativity to what happens when stars die. In particular Stinebring and his students are looking at what pulsars tell us about the Milky Way, whose “enriched debris” gave birth t our own solar system about five billion years ago.
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"When I sign a graduate-school recommendation letter as the Federighi Professor," Stinebring says, "it carries weight." |
The research is valuable for Stinebring because it’s intellectually invigorating and keeps him at the leading edge of his field. It’s valuable for his students because they come to understand astronomy as it’s practiced by professional astronomers. “The research experience stretches students’ ability to solve problems,” says Stinebring. “They learn to ask the right question, and then they learn to ask the next question.”
As Federighi Professor, Stinebring is the first Oberlin faculty member to hold a position created by a gift from Renie Federighi ’54 in honor of her late husband, Dr. Francis Federighi ’53, who was a theoretical physicist at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in upstate New York. Stinebring was selected for the position by his peers, which is a high honor, though when asked about it, he mostly wants to talk about what the professorship means for his students. It carries a stipend, which he has used for everything from taking an extra student with him to Arecibo to buying pizza for those working in his lab. The professorship also carries a significant amount of prestige, which Stinebring is not shy about leveraging on a student’s behalf. “When I sign a graduate-school recommendation letter as the Federighi Professor,” he says, “it carries more weight.”
Stinebring became an astronomer because as an undergraduate at Williams College in the 1970s, he was hooked by his professor, who took him to Prince Edward Island in Canada and to northernmost Kenya to observe and do research on total solar eclipses. If that’s what astronomers do for a living, he reasoned, then that’s what he wanted to be. He finds it gratifying to be able to return the favor for Oberlin students today. “The students here are so open to fresh ideas, so open to wonder,” he says. “What’s satisfying for me is the excitement I see in their eyes or hear in their voices. They’re a blast to teach.”
To learn more about creating an endowment through a planned gift, please contact us at gift.planning@oberlin.edu or (440) 775-8599.
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