Students and faculty from the University of Iowa and MACRO (Macalester, Augustana, and Coe colleges) met in the dry desert of Sonoita, Arizona to finalize the transfer of management to MACRO from Iowa.  This involved having wonderful dinners, going on rejuvenating hikes (and bike rides in the case of Professor Mutel), and installing 2 new control computers, configuring a remote server to run this website and host data, calibrating the telescope motor control and camera system, and catching a friend of Winer observe an asteroid occulting a star.

This trip was profoundly inspiring.  Seeing our institutions come together to meet this challenge successfully, to get the system operational in such a short time was rewarding and exhilarating.  I can't wait to see what our students can do with this system. - James Wetzel