Although we were not in the path of totality, the eclipse was beautiful to look at. We really got amazing weather. Luis Rodriguez got some really cool pictures on his iphone with the telescope, and I am excited for looking at them after he has sometime to process them. Professor Sean Bentley got the best one I saw today.

Today’s eclipse was special but for reasons other than the eclipse and I would like to talk about it. There are three really big positive takeaways from today.

The first – How awesome was it to have the whole campus outside in one place having fun? Its been a while (pre-covid) since I have gone to an event like that on campus. I hope this is a sign of more amazing events to come.

The second is that Luis Rodriguez (physics department lab coordinator) is really been doing a great job. He handled setting up the sun telescope, getting it to work, and then handling all the people with ease – not an easy task. Considering he had never used the thing just few days ago; it is impressive. It was great because it freed me up to walk around and talk to people. Luis has been really delivering lately and I appreciated it. Some times all the chairs, provosts, and deans get all the credit but it is the people behind the scenes that make great things happen.

The final is that our students are great. I told students they had to show up to my gen ed class today and look at the eclipse. What was surprising was that almost everyone was there. The students were asking questions and having fun. It was great to see them in such an informal situation. I answered a lot of good questions today.

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And honestly, I am so happy this eclipse is done. It was kind of stressful being the chair of the physics department. Everyone had such high hopes for this event and they were asking me what I was doing for it. I knew that it would be interesting in NYC but wouldn’t be life-altering unless you were in the region of totality. I also knew clouds could be a problem. My bestie (who was in the path of totality) said “I can tell you there is a huge difference between 99% eclipse and 100%.” We were only about 90%.

I didn’t know what the best thing to do would be. Ultimately doing almost nothing proved to best the best thing.

• The library threw one hell of a party! You go library!
• Bringing the sun telescope was helpful and interesting. It was better to amplify what the library was doing rather do something on my own. You go library!
• I was going to plan a physics trip for students, and one of the places I was going to turned out to be really cloudy. Could you imagine how upsetting that would have been to drive 8 hours and paid $800 per hotel rooms to see clouds? Or we would just have taken over my sister’s house. But still the van costs money and it takes time.
• Another idea was to plan a camping trip, which would have been epic. The weather was even perfect at that location today. The only issue was that they got about a foot of snow last week and that would have made camping terrible.

So in the end it was perfect. And now it’s over and I can get back to work!