Associated Universities Inc. (AUI), based in Washington, DC, was chartered in 1946 as an independent not-for-profit educational organization whose goal was to design, build, and manage complex, pioneering facilities necessary for world-class scientific research and experimentation (www.aui.edu). Education and public outreach has long been a component of AUI’s research facility programs.

Since 1956, under various cooperative agreements with the National Science Foundation (NSF) AUI has managed state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities for use by the international scientific community. These facilities include the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), including the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico; the North American share of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile, and the Central Development Laboratory in Charlottesville, VA. Also, AUI manages the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, and the Long Baseline Observatory (LBO) stretching from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands.

In addition to education and public outreach (EPO) programs at these facilities, the AUI Office of Chilean Affairs (OCA) in Santiago Chile, and AUI Headquarters in Washington DC also develop and implement their own education and outreach initiatives.