Michael Thacher and Rhonda Rundle Endowed Collection for Astronomy and Planetary Sciences

Michael Thacher and Rhonda Rundle are both graduates of the UCLA Anderson School of Management. A former public affairs executive, Michael began his career as a magazine writer and editor, contributing astronomy-related opinion pieces, news stories and book reviews to a wide variety of daily papers and periodicals. Michael serves on the Board of Advisors of UCLA’s Division of Physical Sciences and of the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences. He supports a summer fellowship for a doctoral student in astronomy at UCLA and an annual postdoctoral research award in astronomy for the Carnegie Observatories. Since 2004, he has conducted public tours and educational outreach for Mount Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, California. Rhonda is a former news editor and reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where she covered topics ranging from financial markets to healthcare policy. Before her journalism career, while a graduate student in European history at UCLA, she worked as a circulation desk clerk in the Charles E. Young Research Library. Michael and Rhonda have toured astronomical observatories in Australia, Chile, England and the United States. They experienced their first total eclipse of the sun on a UCLA-sponsored trip to Oregon in 2017.