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AAS - 2019

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 2018 and 2019 NITARP teams attended the 2019 January AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. The 2018 class was presenting results and the 2019 class was starting up. We had 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:

2018 Teams:

NITARP Management:

Returning Alumni Teams:

 


Quotes

  • There is a huge difference between a quick professional development and a thorough professional learning experience and NITARP provides the latter.
  • Astronomers are a lot nicer than I thought they would be, and they’re much more willing to chat about their research than I expected.
  • I am trying to make my astronomy class more discussion-based and trying to make it more inquiry-based. I was able to network with other teachers and got some ideas of how to move away from lecture. Although lecture has some usefulness I really want to try to be more inquiry driven.
  • I was very excited to learn what research we will be doing. All of the information about the program itself and what is expected of us was very good on Sunday. I do not think the reality of the experience has really hit me yet but I’m sure it will over the next several months. It just seems unreal that we will be using data from the Kepler and Spitzer telescopes and possibly Chandra as well to look into an area of star formation and try to discover new young stars! Truly amazing to be a part of this!
  • The NITARP experience is one that has had a profound effect on me—it has changed the way I look at science, at teaching, and at a lot of other things connected to my job. I really cannot imagine not doing things like this in the future—it has changed my life in a lot of positive ways.

AAS - 2019