AAS - 2017

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 2016 and 2017 NITARP teams attended the 2017 January AAS meeting in Dallas, TX. The 2016 class was presenting results and the 2017 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:

2016 teams:
- Science Poster - Orr et al., "Finding High Quality Young Star Candidates in Ceph C Using X-ray, Optical, and IR Data"
- Education Poster - Orr et al., "STEM Education is Missing This ..."
- Science Poster - Kilts et al., "Searching for Short-Term Variable Active Galactic Nuclei: A Vital Step Towards Using AGN as Standard Candles"
- Education Poster - Kohrs et al., "NITARP: Changing Perceptions of Science Among Secondary Students and Teachers"
Returning Alumni teams:
- Education Poster - Bensel & Cool, "Are We Alone? GAVRT Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Project"
- Education Poster - Tran et al., "Analysis of Visual Double Stars"
- Science Poster - Johnson et al., "An Infrared Search for Young Stellar Objects in IC 1396"
- Science Poster - Wilson et al., "Searching for Infrared Excesses around White Dwarf Stars"
- Education Poster - Linder et al., "Confirming and Improving Ross Variable Star RV Del"
- Science Poster - Linder et al., "Rotational Study of Ambiguous Taxonomic Classified Asteroids"
NITARP Management:
- Evaluations And Impact (presented as education poster): Rebull et al., "The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP): Lessons Learned"

Quotes

I plan to develop more problems of a statistical nature. Gross data from astronomy and other realms leads to insight; this is a side of scientific inquiry that I’d never really thought about before. If I’m going to be about modeling, I’m going to have to learn to be about statistics.
This experience will be hard to top. I may try to create a partnership with staff at a local university or community college to do more research projects. I also want to get better at programming. That is a valuable skill to share with students. NITARP helped me to see these opportunities.
NITARP 1) improved my classroom teaching and 2) by expanding my understanding of astronomy, astronomical research and science in general, gave me so much more to work with as I continue to broaden my students’ experience of mathematics.
As for its impact on the next generation of American scientists, NITARP is the Johnny Appleseed of STEM.
I was expecting professional astronomers to be much more aloof, but everyone that a I engaged with was very open to the interaction and more than willing to talk and share their knowledge.

AAS - 2017

Quotes

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