Stephen McNeil

Citizen Science and the Great American Eclipse

Using totality to educate and create a new generation of citizen scientists

Stephen R. McNeil was born in Inglewood, California in 1965.  He finished high school at El Dorado High in Placerville, California in 1983. He served an LDS mission to Brazil during 1985-87, and graduated from Brigham Young University (BYU) with a BS in Physics in 1990 and an MS in Physics in 1991.  

He started work as a faculty member of Ricks College, now known as Brigham Young University-Idaho (BYU-Idaho), located in Rexburg, Idaho.  During this time, he earned a PhD in Physics & Astronomy from BYU in 2004.  Stephen served as a Fulbright Specialist and Scholar to Italy and Brazil in 2015, and is currently the Physics Department Chair and Planetarium Director at BYU-Idaho.  

He is married to Rosemary Tenorio since 1989, and has three boys Jeanyck, Jackson, and Bryan.