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

[student:] I once thought that being an astronomer was an intangible career. I thought it was only reserved for the Stephen Hawkings and Neil Degrasse Tysons of the world. But what NITARP made me realize is that not only could “regular” people become astronomers, but that I could become an astronomer. Learning the process of conducting our research was surprisingly feasible and made me feel much more confident in my ability to become an astronomer.
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.
Coming through NITARP allowed me to realize that being passionate about science is a beautiful thing. I'm much more likely to be open to rambling on about space[...] NITARP reignited the "nerdy passion."
[student:] If I had to tell Congress what people who experience this learn is to express their love for information and learning. There is a constant need of learning to understand the many mysteries to us. You develop this new feeling of always wanting to continue your understanding. You might understand the basics of something, but there is something more. No matter what field you are going into, you are able to take back a lot from this. Whether you want to go into math, physics, astronomy or even art, there is something in this program that will help you with that.
[student:] I learned one very important thing about astronomy. I’d always had this romanticised picture in my head of astronomers gazing through telescopes at the night sky and making revolutionary discoveries left and right. Thus, this trip was a bit of a wake up call for me; I now know that astronomy involves a lot more spreadsheet work and data analysis before any life-changing discoveries can be made.

AAS - 2017

Quotes

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