The Vermont Muench Family Blog

Barb and I used a grant to travel to 8 states on 10 lights in 16 days to interview 14 astronomers and astronauts! The boys were at summer camp while we were gone. We started in New York City, then Yellowstone then on to San Fran, Long Beach, Pasadena, Flaggstaff, Tucson, Houston, Coco Beach and back home. Along the way we spoke with some of teh biggest names in astronomy and space travel.

Bill Muench Receives 2009 Ormbsy Hill Award

English teacher Bill Muench is the 2009 recipient of the Ormsby Hill Trust Fund for Excellence Award. Muench plans to use the grant to “travel, meet, interview and thank the guest speakers” who have addressed his students in his Space and Time class at Burr and Burton.

Muench started teaching the course five years ago to share his passion for space exploration with his students. “This class has evolved into a truly interdisciplinary course,” said Muench, who over the years has invited dozens of speakers to address the students, both in person and through teleconferencing. The award will give him the opportunity to visit space-related sites and meet the men and women who have been involved with space exploration. He will start his journey in Pasadena, California, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and end at the Kennedy Space Center where he will have an front-row seat at the launch in August of the Space Shuttle Discovery. “I will videotape interviews with each person I visit and present the final project to my future students.”

The Ormsby Hill Trust Fund for Excellence provides selected teaching faculty of the school with the financial resources necessary to further their professional development in a profound way. Each year a grant is given to a teacher whose proposed program or project best fulfills the award’s goal of supporting the improvement of the school’s educational mission by enhancing the professional abilities of its teachers.

The object of the grant is to allow faculty members to get outside their routine and engage in activities that will re-energize them as passionate learners and committed teachers. The fund, established by the late Ed Latz, a Burr and Burton teacher and coach for over twenty-five years, is administered by the Board of Trustees as part of the school’s restricted endowment.