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 with Calculus 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.
tructors chose from three focused breakout sessions:
in-person and virtual. Instructors from Philosophy, American Studies, Maritime Studies, U. S. History, Medieval Studies, Civil Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Biology, Chinese, Marine Sciences, Music, Economics, Physics, Sustainable Plant and Soil Systems, Sociology, and English, along with our ECE Library Media Specialists, have had the opportunity to connect with their colleagues, faculty coordinators, and the ECE program staff so far this school year! We would like to take the time to highlight some of these incredible events and thank all attendees and organizers for their efforts this semester.
with some exciting stories of ECE student successes (congratulations to Cheshire High School for placing 3rd in their Future Business Leaders of America competition!), and brainstorming classroom activities. Several guest speakers joined us in the afternoon, including Ariel Slonim, curriculum designer for Marginal RevolutionUniversity, a nonprofit dedicated to providing everyone with a “world-class economic education”, and Mary Claire Peate, a Senior Economic Education Specialist from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
descriptions were as follows:
Conversation: Cultural Topics, since 2012. His unique gift to ECE classrooms was bringing alive the language, culture, and history through his storytelling based on his extensive travel experiences in the Hispanic and Portuguese worlds, and his Chilean heritage. In his retirement, Mr. Lewis will move on to his third career teaching Buddhist philosophy and practice, and eventually living part time in the White Mountains and in Chile.
International Studies Association Annual Conference in San Francisco, CA in April, where he presented a research paper on Nationalism and identities in South Asia, an article version of his dissertation. He also co-presented on forming national identities, mass culture, and land rights. Dr. Rafiq was able to attend several sessions, including foreign policies, using role theory and Arab Spring 2.0, and civil war research.
UConn ECE Faculty Coordinators from Spanish, Profs. Gustavo Nanclares and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi met with more than 60 Spanish Instructors to listen to Prof. Maria Acosta Cruz, Professor of Spanish in the Language, Literature & Culture Dept at Clark University. Prof. Acosta shared her talk “Ecocrítica, cultura y nación: La cultura puertorriqueña a través de cinco siglos” (“Ecocriticism, Culture, and Nation: Puerto Rican Culture Through Five Centuries”) with the teachers.
UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator from French, Prof. Florence Marsal met with 30 UConn ECE certified French Instructors to hear from Joëlle Vitiello, Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Macalester College for her talk “Enseigner les trésors d’Haïti” (“Teaching the Treasures of Haiti”). In addition, Mary Catherine Decoteau, Career Consultant from UConn’s Career Services, spoke to teachers about enhancing and highlighting career competencies in UConn French courses.
