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Patrice Fay became interested in astronomy when her father, an Air Force pilot, first showed her and her sister Saturn through a telescope as young girls. Their mother, a registered nurse, also fostered our interest in science. Their family came to Texas in the mid-1970¿s when they were stationed in Wichita Falls. Patrice attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where she received an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts. After that, she worked for several years in various fields including directory publishing for a grocery food broker, Head Start, and the American Red Cross.
Patrice has been a science educator since 1998 when she began as Instructor and On-Campus Telescope Operator for the Texas Tech University Department of Physics. In her teaching career, she taught undergraduate, graduate, and public school students, as well as teachers, adult learners, and the general public. She received a Master of Arts Degree in Museum Science from Texas Tech University in 2003, where she continued as Education Specialist, and then as Interim Education Program Manager for the Museum of Texas Tech University. While in Lubbock, she was a member of the South Plains Astronomy Club, holding various officer positions. In addition, she served as President of the South Plains Educator¿s Resource Collaborative, a partnership of West Texas organizations dedicated to providing support for formal education through outreach programming related to classroom curriculum.
In 2008, Patrice came to the Three Rivers Foundation, where she has continued developing science curriculum for a wide variety of audiences. Her current projects include development of a distance learning program to be utilized from 3RF¿s 700-acre Comanche Springs Astronomy Campus near Crowell; and creation of a Classroom Resource Kit program that adapts popular 3RF programs into outreach kits that teachers can check out for use in their own classrooms. she currently serves as the foundation¿s representative on several national and international organizations, including Phi Delta Kappa, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Science Teachers Association of Texas, and the Informal Science Education Association of Texas.
Some of Patrice's other accomplishments as a science educator include being a presenter at various national, state and regional conferences including the Astronomical Society of the Pacific National Conference and the Science Teachers Association of Texas Conference for the Advancement of Science Teaching.
In addition to astronomy, her interests include reading, gardening, movies, biking and photography. She and her husband live in north Texas. They enjoy participating in community theatre, and have appeared together on stage at the Garza Theatre in Post, Texas.
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