Lecturer Instructions

Introduction

As the lecturer, you will be the main event for the first 30 minutes of the outreach night (see PublicLectures for a schedule of how the event will occur). Events take place in Hameetman Lecture Hall inside the Cahill Astronomy Building. Events such as these commence with your talk and are followed by 90 minutes of slideshows and telescope observing on the adjacent athletic fields. While observing is dependent on weather, your lecture is not (although it may have affect the size of your audience). You are expected to arrive at Cahill 20-30 minutes before your lecture begins, so that we can get you set up on the projector, microphone and work out the kinks. After your talk and answering a handful of questions, you are free to stick around, answer more questions of the audience in the hallway, check out the stars through a telescope, or take off for the night. No pressure on any front, we're just grateful for you giving the talk!

Topic Choice and Talk Preparation

I recommend you prepare your presentation as though you are explaining an astronomical topic to someone seated next to you on an airplane with no background in science. I tell parents of children who might attend, that children will likely get something out of the lecture, but not necessarily everything, so you needn't cater the talk to children alone. When choosing a topic for a lecture, make sure it is a subject that intrigues you, a subject that will potentially intrigue a layperson, and it is a topic on which you are knowledgeable. Oftentimes the best topics are not related to your own research. Check out some of the PastEvents to get an idea of what has and has not been covered recently.

Titles and Abstracts

We request a title and abstract before the beginning of the talk season so we can make the schedule and posters (e.g. December before Spring, June before Fall). Try to make the title a little titillating, as it is designed for a public audience. For some reason, audiences are most attracted by talks about cosmology, black holes, and extraterrestrial life (at least, the numbers correlate that way). The abstract is simply a small paragraph describing your talk that will be used on the website and in the fliers for your lecture. While the beginning of the semester is still quite early, it might be a good time to start thinking about your talk so you have ample time to make slides, practice it, etc before the big day!

Audience

To date, our audiences have been ranged from 70-150 people, but our events are growing. There has been a lot of age diversity in the audience: some families, some dates, some solo attendees. Fortunately, we haven't so far had any cranks who show up to promote their pet theories or show off their knowledge on a particular topic. A nice audience with no hecklers!

Resources

Hameetman lecture hall in Cahill has a digital projector into which you can plug your laptop (it is a standard VGA port, so bring your dongle) as well as a good sound system (also pluggable with standard 1/8" output from laptops). There are white boards, and we can provide a laser pointer if necessary. We ask that you wear a wearable microphone throughout your talk, but there is a handheld microphone if you prefer. If you have additional resource requests for your talk or need a laptop on which to project your presentation, please contact me beforehand and we can try to work it all out.

Talk Duration

At the start of the night, the lecture captain will introduce you and make announcements for 2-3 minutes. The duration of your talk is 30 minutes. In general, you will probably have way too much to say to fit it into 30 minutes, so please practice your talk in advance and truncate it to 30 minutes. I'll signal you at 25 minutes, 30 minutes, and cut you off cold at 35 if it gets that far. We'll accept a handful of questions from the audience for ~5 minutes before releasing the audience for stargazing and the panel Q&A. I'm sorry--the show must go on!

Other Notes

The purpose of these events is to educate the public to be more aware and appreciative of the science around them. Please refrain from injecting politics into the talk, particularly by denigrating specific politicians or groups as it can interfere with our ability as scientists to educate people. In fact, injecting politics into the talk can turn some audience members off to the scientific enterprise entirely, when these are precisely the people we need to be reaching. Please just use your best judgement in keeping your talk professional and for a wide audience.