Awards

2024 Award Recipient Announced

Las Cumbres Amateur Outreach Award

For outstanding outreach by an amateur astronomer to children and the public

The Las Cumbres Amateur Outreach Award, given for the first time in 2001, seeks to honor outstanding educational outreach by an amateur astronomer to K-12 children and the interested lay public.

2024 Las Cumbres Amateur Outreach Award given to Elizabeth Bero of Horizon Elementary School and the Von Braun Astronomical Society for her outstanding educational outreach programs.

San Francisco, California- September 16, 2024 - Established by Wayne Rosing and Dorothy Largay, the Las Cumbres Amateur Outreach Award honors outstanding educational outreach by an amateur astronomer to K-12 children and the interested lay public. The 2024 award recipient is Elizabeth Leedham Bero, retired educator and 34-year volunteer member of the Von Braun Astronomical Society (VBAS) in Huntsville, Alabama.

Elizabeth Bero’s love of the stars led to a lifelong commitment of sharing this passion with others, as a science teacher and a volunteer. A long-time volunteer amateur astronomer with the Von Braun Astronomical Society (VBAS), Bero provides hour-long presentations for their Saturday night programs, as well as programs for schools, private parties, scout groups and others on request. She creates shows celebrating space and educating the public on many topics. Recent shows include Space Junk, Edwin Hubble, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Moon. Bero presents to all ages, but has a special interest in the youngest visitors, delighting children with her annual Spooky Skies program in October and Stars Fell on Alabama each November. As the volunteer Educational Program Director of the Wernher von Braun Planetarium at VBAS from 1991 to 2003, she, along with the Planetarium Director, gained NASA funding to provide a website, presentations and materials regarding the Sun for fifteen middle schools in the Huntsville, Alabama area. To this day Bero continues to volunteer with VBAS and other statewide organizations to bring astronomy to the public. Bero presented to the Alabama Association for Gifted Children annual conference on How to Hold a Star Party (and how to borrow and use a portable planetarium.) For the Alabama Science Teachers’ Association (ASTA) and the Environmental Educators’ Association (EEAA) annual conferences, Bero recently presented her Stars Fell on Alabama program about meteorites and how to locate micrometeorites. She has taught multiple teacher workshops on how to use portable planetariums and present planetarium shows. Bero always emphasizes hands-on experiential learning.

As a middle school Earth Science and Astronomy educator, her early adventures included the 1986 Halley’s Comet. Bero (then, Leedham) invited her students and their parents to meet her in a county park and view the comet at 2:30 a.m. Bero and her students always watched daytime shuttle launches from the front steps of her school in Tampa, Florida and so also saw the loss of the ill-fated Challenger Space Shuttle. Bero was then invited by the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Tampa to act as a volunteer writer of pre and post visit lesson plans for students attending the new Challenger Center installed there.

Bero’s continued promotion of life-long learning has motivated students and the general public to discover astronomy and science. As a Girl Scout Leader from 2008 to 2016, she inspired scouts to earn space and astronomy badges with her VBAS planetarium shows. She helped her own scout troop to host and plan fun astronomy games and activities for younger scouts in an annual scout gathering at VBAS. She also volunteered for her son’s Boy Scout troop as the Astronomy Badge counselor.

As an Education and Public Outreach contractor with NASA from 1992 to 2003, she worked to disseminate educator lesson plans through a new NASA website, planned daytime school shows and presented at a Southeastern Planetarium Association (SEPA) conference.

As a parent volunteer, and then a teacher volunteer, Bero planned and ran a Space Week for her neighborhood school, collecting materials, contacting guest speakers, and planning games and model rocket launches for a total of twenty-seven years. She even put together a “Virtual Space Week” during the pandemic in 2020.

Bero also advocates for dark skies. Through her advocacy, McDowell Environmental Center installed dark-sky friendly lighting on Bethany campus during construction. Bero is now planning a dark sky presentation for this coming spring at the next EEAA conference.

As a testament to Bero’s infectious passion, an educator colleague will never forget how Bero and she lay “in the middle of a road at Camp McDowell one dark night with a beautiful clear sky. She told me of the wonderous stories of the constellations, pointed out airplanes, and we actually saw the ISS go by. It is a memory that makes all of the difference when I look up at the skies at night.”

Join us in celebration of Elizabeth Bero’s achievements at the in-person ASP Awards Gala on Saturday, November 9, 2024 in Burlingame, CA.

Please contact the Awards team if you have questions about the nomination process