• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2020

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 2019 and 2020 NITARP teams attended the 2020 January AAS meeting in Honolulu, HI. The 2019 class was presenting results and the 2020 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:

2019 Teams:

NITARP Management:

Returning Alumni Teams:

Quotes

  • [student:] NITARP didn’t necessarily change my career plans, but it definitely broadened them. I’ve pretty much always known I want to do something involving space. It’s just been what interests me for longer than I can remember. What NITARP, and specifically the AAS has shown me is there are way more options to think about than I thought. I still don’t know what I’ll be going into, but whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll end up being passionate about it.
  • [student:] I didn't anticipate was that people would really want to interact with our poster. It was really cool how people would ask questions, make suggestions, and talk about their own research and how it related to ours.
  • I believe that no one can walk away from the NITARP experience unchanged. Everyone talks about the learning curve, and it is definitely steeper for some of us than others. I believe the “powers that be” need to know how this year-long astronomy boot camp not only builds discipline knowledge but also group learning dynamics. I have never been so proud to say that I have been part of an exceptional group, and in turn organization. I not only learned what it means to be a teacher leader, but assist in making teacher leaders.
  • [At the AAS,] Teachers and students experience real, dynamic science as it lives today, where there may be no answers, explanations that change with new data, and most importantly there is discourse between scientists so that they may learn from each other.
  • I want to continue our research! I no longer feel like there is an “us” and “them” between us astronomy educators and those astronomers, and I’d like it to continue. I want to continue the teaching that I have been doing, but I want to get more students involved in research.

Related Teams

AAS - 2020