• NASA
  • IPAC

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

  • The NGSS writers knew we, as a country, needed to re-focus our science standards to include all science disciplines, specifically astronomy. In order to keep the momentum, we must support the pK-12 educators to entice and excite their students. It is experiences exactly like NITARP that fuels and spreads the love for astronomy
  • [student:] I now know that I want to continue to pursue astronomy, but as a hobby instead of a full career. The amount of time astronomers dedicate to their work is astounding and I don’t think that I could do that.
  • I have already brought back aspects of the AAS conference to my students by sharing photos, websites, and my summaries. Yes, understanding astronomy will definitely help me teach NGSS lesson planning and help [my student teachers] with cross-curricular writing.
  • There is a huge difference between a quick professional development and a thorough professional learning experience and NITARP provides the latter.
  • I did not anticipate how polished and impressive the posters and presentations were from last year’s cohort (Sunday afternoon, Monday evening and the individual poster presentations in the exhibit hall). Students and teachers were really well-versed on the astronomy as well as the data collection and processing. It really showed how much was learned in a relatively short time.

Related Teams

AAS - 2019