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AAS - 2015

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is the largest meeting of professional astronomers in the world. NITARP educators attend an AAS first to meet their team, then they go home and work remotely for much of the year, and then attend an AAS to present their results.  At any given AAS, then, we could have two NITARP classes attending - those finishing up, and those getting started. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The 2014 and 2015 NITARP teams attended the 2015 January AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. The 2014 class was presenting results and the 2015 class was starting up. We had many alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 50 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

Quotes

  • [This is going to change my classroom because] Definitely [I have] more empathy for kids who tend to be quiet and not ask questions. I’ll also collaborate more with fellow teachers.
  • [student:] This experience alone has caused me to seriously consider majoring in astrophysics or physics in college and going into the field of astronomy. It has given me more of an incentive to work harder in my calculus and physics classes at school.
  • It surprises me how ‘approachable’ everyone was; I assumed since I don’t have a PhD that I would be talked down to but that didn’t happen at all.
  • [student:] My favorite part of NITARP was to get an insight into the process of real research, where the results are not known and the procedure to be determined by us.
  • The thing that most surprised me [...], was how objective astronomers was in their conversations. Conversations with scientists are all about data, learning about a system, and objectively trying to determine an answer. It can seem like they are stepping on toes, or even being rude, but once you realize that they are just trying to uncover an answer or ferret out an idea, and then it is no big deal.

Related Teams

AAS - 2015