Christopher Impey, deputy head of the UA astronomy department, has received the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s 2008 Richard H. Emmons Award for excellence in college astronomy teaching, the university announced Friday.

Impey is a University Distinguished Professor. He has received a bevy of teaching awards, including the Carnegie Foundation for the Improvement of Teaching’s Arizona Professor of the Year (2002) and a Teaching Scholar honor from the National Science Foundation.

Impey has written 160 research papers and two astronomy textbooks. His research has covered infrared astronomy and astrobiology, among many other fields.

He joined the UA’s Steward Observatory in 1986.

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific will present Impey with the award during its June 3 summer meeting.

The Chilean Ministry of Education has invited Ruth Claros-Kartchner, an associate professor at the UA South campus in Sierra Vista, to study the country’s deaf-education system, the UA announced Thursday.

Claros-Kartchner will leave for Chile in July and stay through December. She will look at four schools, two in the provinces and two in capital Santiago.

Claros-Kartchner has studied trends in deaf education in 12 countries in Latin America. She wrote her UA doctorate dissertation on deaf education in 11 countries.

In 2005, the Latin American Conference on Bilingual Education for the Deaf’s organizing committee honored her for her contributions to deaf education.

She served as an educator and coordinator for the UA’s Guadalajara Summer School program from 1990-1998.

Information taken from university press releases