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AAS - 2016

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 2015 and 2016 NITARP teams attended the 2016 January AAS meeting in Kissimmee, FL. The 2015 class was presenting results and the 2016 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, and a special article on NITARP alumni at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

Quotes

  • Thank you so very much for this opportunity to improve my teaching and my professionalism. Through this NITARP experience, I will be able to communicate to my students a mindset that can never be learned from books or uninspired teachers.
  • I loved seeing the progress of science as it unfolded. New results were shared, discussed, questioned, and next steps were stated that could be worked on the next week in some cases. It was amazing to see “science builds on itself” for myself. I was not expecting to have that opportunity.
  • I have always done hands-on science in my classroom. I see that only scratches the surface of students’ experiences. I want to create a more adventurous experience by having them work with real data and doing some real research projects.
  • [student:] . Astronomy was always looking at constellations and going to the moon before I joined NITARP. It's been eye-opening.
  • The other unanticipated occurrence for me was the empty feeling of being done with the NITARP experience but having a strong desire to continue working on our project. We had put so much time into it and now there is a large void in my life, especially Monday evenings when we had our telecon.

Related Teams

AAS - 2016