Chelen Johnson
This virtual team collects all independent research presented in 2008, and done by Spitzer alumni with students outside of a formal Spitzer team. Mr. Spuck's students worked on classifying galaxies in the Spitzer observations of the Taurus Molecular Cloud.
Honestly, I left [the 2013 AAS] a bit more in love with astronomy. I just plain had fun wandering and treated myself to time as a learner. It is not often we, educators, get to slide out of expert mode and into learner mode.
Since starting with NITARP, my Astronomy Research Course has grown by leaps and bounds. Much of this has to do with conversation I have and connections I make at the AAS each year.
[...]that provided a wonderful window into the student’s perspective of the NITARP experience. I loved how they talked about seeing math as a way of communicating and for checking data…not as THE right answer type computations. Many then said that concept was new and they really appreciated it.
