William D. (Bill) Panczner

Bill Panczner has been educated both as a scientist and an educator. He has spent over 12 years working for the corporate/government world as a scientist and almost 40 years in all forms of education within the classroom, museums and as a consultant to universities and other educational facilities. He received his degrees from the University of South Florida in Geology, Astronomy, Chemistry and Science Education.

He was a curator at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona. Bill was it first curator of Earth Science and was the Museum's second Director and Administrator of its Mexican Programs.

Currently, Bill is teaching upper level classes in Astronomy and Astronomy Honors [astrophysics] at Walter L. Sickles High School in Tampa, Florida. He has also held teaching positions in science and mathematics in Arizona and Texas.

Bill is also a writer and has had several published books. The most noted of these being the Minerals of Mexico. He has written for the Journal Meteorite several articles on Mexican Meteorite falls and other related subjects. Bill is in the early stages of writing two other books. One on Alexander von Humboldt and his interests in astronomy and geology the other on Meteorites of Mexico.

He has a moderate sized collection of meteorites which include several from the Moon and Mars. This collection is used as a teaching collection.

His interest in astronomy began at an early age. When he was nine years old, a family friend, Dr Katherine Blodgett, a noted senior research scientists at General Electric's Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York loaned him a copy of the first volume of Albert Ingallis' book on telescope making from the Lab's library. Weeks later he was reading volume two and then volume three of Ingallis' works. With the help of his father, a Glass/ceramic engineer at the Research Lab, Dr. Blodgett and other scientists and engineers he started grinding and building his first telescope at age 10. By 11 he was teaching an adult class on telescope making for the Schenectady Astronomical Society.

Bill is a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador and a NASA/JPL trained GAVRT teacher. He has recently become involved with Goddard Space Flight Center's Radio JOVE Project. He has conducted many teacher training classes for the Hillsborough County School District in all aspects of science education. Bill has also been a member of several writing teams in new science courses and curriculum for the District. His favorite which he was one of three writers is a course called Florida Science, a natural history course for 9th graders. Bill developed the astronomy and geology portion of the course.