Astronomy Faculty
B.S., University of British Columbia
Ph.D., State University New York at Stony Brook
dkary@citruscollege.edu
(626) 852-8031

I'm Dave Kary, and I've been teaching at Citrus College since 1999 and teaching honors classes since 2008. My wife also teaches astronomy at Chaffey Community College, so we work together on our class materials.

I'm originally from British Columbia, Canada, a first-generation college goer, and I have a doctorate in astrophysics from SUNY Stony Brook in New York. My research was in celestial mechanics ("I'm afraid your rings are out of alignment – that will be $2,000 for parts and $10,000,000,000 for travel and labor costs."). I've also taught at UCSB, and I ran the planetarium in Santa Barbara for a couple of years.  

I like to run my classes in a "flipped" format, so I don't do much lecturing. Instead, I prefer class time centered on student discussion and group problem-solving. My goal is for the class to be an opportunity for students to practice what it means to think like a scientist in an environment where they have plenty of support from me and their classmates. In the honors classes, students work together to develop plans for a spacecraft to explore another world in our solar system.

revised July 6, 2023