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AAS - 2022

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is usually 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 2020/21 and 2022 NITARP teams had planned to attend the 2022 January AAS meeting in Salt Lake City, UT. However, the meeting was entirely cancelled due to COVID. We still have this special article about the NITARP teams finishing and starting up. All of the posters from the 2020/21 teams we presented are here. Most of the 2020/21 teams came instead to the June 2022 AAS meeting in Pasadena, CA instead. Those posters were iPosters, so the PDF versions that are here are still the versions from Jan 2022, but the numbers are from June 2022.

The 2022 class got started on Jan 9, just before when the winter AAS would have been held. There are two teams in 2022.

Quotes

  • The NITARP experience provides the highest quality environment of building on the existing, limited, knowledge and skill sets of both teachers and students while challenging both in terms of both their depth and breadth. But more importantly, because it is real-world science carried out in collaboration with a team of both professionals and amateurs, it is a develops the personal perception of the participants of themselves as already being on the spectrum of what a scientist is and does… seeing themselves moving persistently along that spectrum toward a more knowledgeable and skilled place… and developing the meaningful confidence in their ability to pursue the next steps to remain engaged in STEM inquiry in the future. Participants have a personal and accurate first-person knowledge of what a career in STEM might require… which helps them to refine and define their own academic and professional development goals for the future. And, the engaging way in which this is accomplished creates new participants in the pipeline to professional participation in, and support of, the STEM disciplines.
  • The most interesting part of the whole experience was getting a glimpse of what real Science research is like–and just how variable it can be. I thought it was amazing that when the data wasn’t showing us what we expected, we were able to use different tools and shift our understanding fairly quickly.
  • It has become commonplace for me to contextualize a concept, lesson or procedure through the reality of my NITARP experience. This makes the experience of my students live in a space in which the science itself is not a body of knowledge or a collective of results, but instead a living thing… in which they are participants already and that can grow with their engagement and growth in knowledge and skills. There is always a question for the now, a process for challenging ourselves to try to figure out an answer, and an infinite prospect for new question that arise from both the process of inquiry and the results obtained.
  • [student:] After NITARP, I am definitely going to look out for more authentic experiences (especially when it comes to research) where I can do new, original work in a self-enriching manner. There are a lot of programs out there, many of which I have gone through, that are very structured and “follow the procedure” type experiences. NITARP is nothing like those experiences and teaches you to be innovative, creative, and original, and I’ll definitely be looking for more experiences like it.
  • Look at where my kids are now. Their resumes are leaps and bounds better. Their confidence in talking with other students, teachers, and scientists has gone off the charts. We really changed their paths.

Related Teams

AAS - 2022