• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2024

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 2023 and 2024 NITARP teams attended the 2024 January AAS meeting in New Orleans, LA. The 2023 class was presenting results and the 2024 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 press release on NITARP from the AAS, and the special online article about NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here. (In addition to the iPoster sessions as listed here, the physical versions of the 2023 teams' posters were up at the IPAC booth all day Tuesday.)

2023 teams:

Alumni:

  • 167.01 Sperling et al., Student-Led High Altitude Ballooning into Solar Eclipses (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 171.03 Rebull et al., NITARP Lesson Plans: Bite-Size Pieces of Authentic Science Research Experiences (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 171.06 Newland, Using Google Colab to Teach Hubble-Lemaitre's Law with BOSS Data (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 176.02 Rebull et al., Young Stellar Object Candidates in IC 417 (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 203.03 Wojciak et al., Exploring Color-Magnitude Relationships Among Quasars with z between 1.5-1.75 (Tuesday 9-10)
  • 458.21 Jones & Rutherford, The Three-Dimensional Structure of IC 2391 (Thursday 1-2)

Quotes

  • The work that is done [in NITARP] is NGSS at it’s heart. Students and teachers do real, hard research where Google won’t help. Students can learn that science really is a best effort to expand understanding and knowledge (after covid the public perception of science has taken a hit with some groups).
  • I hope to shift more from the “survive” to “thrive” mode in implementing what I’ve learned and experienced in NITARP. While “authentic scientific research” may not always be practical in my 41-minute high school science classroom, I still want to bring along and model the same wonder, curiosity, optimism for self-improvement and self-actualization, and sense of community that I experienced in NITARP.
  • The reason that schools offer business, agriculture, engineering, etc. courses is to give students a sense of what that career is like. NITARP is one of the few opportunities that students get to experience what a “career” in science is like. For teachers, NITARP can showcase and teach the skills that are necessary for success in a scientific career and allow teachers to better educate their students on what that career path is like.
  • The sum of my NITARP experiences have changed my professional goals and career plans. I’m currently a Ph.D. student in STEM Education at an R1 university and hope to influence current and future STEM Educators to embark upon a research process with their students.
  • [student:] I have always wanted to work in Aerospace. I still do not know exactly where I want to work but this experience has given me a taste of what hands-on research is like and it was really fun. Presenting and sharing our research with the AAS community was an experience that I loved and want to do again. So yes, this program has impacted what I want to study and my career path.

Related Teams

AAS - 2024