Month: January 2026

Eclipses

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By Alina Britchi

 

Alina Britchi is a UConn ECE Instructor certified to teach PHYS1201Q: General Physics I, PHYS1202Q: General Physics II, PHYS1401Q: General Physics with Calculus I, and PHYS1402Q: General Physics withCalculus II.

 

Many call a total solar eclipse a “once-in-a-lifetime” event but most people who see one often want more. I’m one of them. I experienced my first totality in 1999 in Romania. A special banknote was printed to celebrate the event. I still remember the awe like it was yesterday: sudden darkness, wind, birds flying all over, crowd growing louder, and then… the Sun’s corona! What a beauty! Two unforgettable minutes of totality ended in a blink of an eye.

 

Fast forward a decade and a half later, I live in the U.S. Year 2016 brings chatter of not one, but two Great American Eclipses heading our way: 2017 and 2024. And now the knowledge that solar eclipses are not very rare, but totality is happening over populated areas. In 2017 I would have only seen a partial solar eclipse, but now a new idea: I could travel to see totality. And that’s how I became an eclipse chaser. Like sunsets, no two eclipses are identical. I’ve seen three and plan to see more.

 

My second eclipse, the 2017 one, became a shared obsession. My husband had never seen one. As we were in Utah for an unrelated event, we drove four hours to Idaho to experience the totality. This time, in an open field, made the Moon shadow traveling in front of our eyes very obvious. With few people around, the celestial show was humbling. We learned to photograph the partiality with simple gear; eclipse glasses over the lens of a simple Canon camera. And thus, our first solar eclipse collage was born.

 

And now we are set for the 2024 American eclipse and booked a hotel a year ahead. I wore eclipse-themed shirts for months and organized a school photo contest. We chose Niagara Falls but clouds limited us to a mere 10 seconds of totality. We hoped for 4 minutes, but now we focused on different things: the light shifting from day to night and back to day over the falls was worth it.

 

Upcoming opportunities include 2025 (Spain, Greenland, Iceland), 2026 (Spain, Middle East), and 2028 and 2030 in Australia.

 

If you’ve never seen a total solar eclipse, consider traveling to one, you will never regret seeing the Sun’s corona and the magic of totality.

A Scholar Across The Ages

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Celebrating the Retirement of Prof. Sherri Olson

 

By Stefanie Malinoski

 

After a 37-year tenure at the University of Connecticut, Professor Sherri Olson retired in January, closing a distinguished chapter in the Department of History. For more than twenty years, Dr.Olson served as the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for European History, shaping curricula, mentoring colleagues, and inspiring educators and students.

 

In 1998, she helped launch the first Medieval Studies outreach seminar for middle and high school teachers, “Late Medieval Europe & the Black Death.” Offered by UConn’s Medieval Studies Program in partnership with the Center for Professional Development, the program was originally known as the Medieval Studies Secondary School Outreach Seminar.

The seminar’s first formal collaboration with ECE, then called the High School Cooperative Program, followed in 2004 with “War, Peace, and Toleration in the Ancient and Medieval World.” The first official mention of Early College Experience appeared in 2006, with the seminar focused on “The Poor & the Idea of Poverty in Ancient & Medieval Society,” marking the beginning of an over 20 year partnership. Over the years, UConn’s Collegium Musicum, under the direction of Professor Eric Rice, added a musical component to the seminars. This ensemble of student singers and instrumentalists perform music from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance and Baroque periods, often using period-specific instruments.

 

In her role as ECE Faculty Coordinator for Medieval History, Dr. Olson provided a wide range of seminar themes in collaboration with colleagues at UConn, and her former graduate students now serving as faculty members at colleges and universities across the country. Her former students were always eager to return to UConn to share their research with Connecticut educators. The program has run almost every year since 1998, each time offering educators a fresh and engaging theme, and we look forward to continuing the program under new leadership.

 

Now embracing a slower pace, Dr. Olson plans to return to some of her hobbies, including knitting, and continuing to contribute to the field through book reviews and other scholarly pursuits.