Early Adopters WRITTEN BY JON ELLISTON
For many students, the UNC Asheville experience starts long before college TO PARAPHRASE PLATO, the direction in which a person’s education starts will determine their future. That path starts long before higher education, of course, and a growing number of UNC Asheville programs and partnerships cultivate relationships with students who are decidedly pre-collegiate, planting the seeds of a brighter educational future.
FIRST LOOKS
PHOTOS BY DAVID ALLEN ’13
Senior physics major Dylan Cromer leads a group from Asheville Middle School’s “In Real Life” Program.
College must seem a most-distant matter to a kindergartner or third grader, if it’s on their radar at all. But the power of a university setting starts to come into focus at UNC Asheville’s Lookout Observatory, where local elementary school students visit for their first look at the world outside our solar system. “It starts when the roof rolls off, which is cool to see, and then their eyes get even wider when they get excited about seeing the telescopes,” says Judy Beck, a lecturer in physics and astronomy who helps explain the great beyond to observatory visitors. Since opening two years ago in partnership with the Astronomy Club of Asheville, the observatory has hosted more than 4,500 public visitors, with about 700 of them from school groups.
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