Associate
Professor of Physics Aileen
O'Donoghue keeps an eye on the sky, and helps others to
do the same. As an astronomy professor, occasional North
Country Public Radio contributor and author of the "Mountain
Skies" column in the Adirondack Mountain Club's magazine, she's
sharing the enthusiasm she found for the first time as a community
college student.
"Though I had always loved nature and jumped at every chance
to go to the mountains near my Colorado home, I found science classes
in school terribly boring," she says. "They didn't teach
me about what I saw outside; they made me memorize phyla." Then,
in college, "Suddenly, science was about the universe
I loved." Or, as she put it more succinctly, "Shazaam!"
O'Donoghue earned her undergraduate degree at Fort Lewis College
and her master's and Ph.D. at New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology. At St. Lawrence, O'Donoghue teaches astronomy, global
climate and other physics courses, keeping in mind her own early
reaction to the subject matter. "I'm always trying to figure
out how to get the ideas across," she says. "As a one-time
science-phobe, I still struggle to get others past their phobias."
In addition, O'Donoghue has also been a visiting scientist
with the Vatican Observatory Research Group and a visiting
associate professor of astronomy at Cornell University, and she serves
on the board of directors of the Adirondack Public Observatory.
