Robotic Telescopes to Train Physics Teaching Majors

Brigham Young University has one of the largest Physics Teaching preparation programs in the country. The program has received the PhysTEC 5+ Award every year since 2013, which means the program has graduated 5 or more teachers in each of those years. Many of the students in the physics teaching program will complete a minor in astronomy, which includes our observational astronomy class (Phscs 329). Others will just take Phscs 329 to fill their required hours of 300/400 level classes. Therefore, we have had to take into account the needs of this group of students in the observational class. We want them to have skills that transfer into a high school classroom. We will discuss our programs use of 6 robotic telescopes to obtain data on a wide variety of astronomical objects that can then be used by these future teachers to prepare final results that are publication worthy.