NASA/IPAC Teacher
Archive Research Program

I've been involved in many professional development activities and this is by far the best one I've ever done

Chelen Johnson

Star Formation in CG4: Using infrared and optical space and ground based images to search for newly forming stars in Cometary Globule 4.

I assumed that [research] would require a great deal of data analysis, what I didn’t grasp until after this[, my first AAS] meeting was how focused and detailed the analysis would be. The steps in understanding that are gained through the analysis are much smaller than I anticipated they would be for the amount of work that is done.
The "new" astronomy has become something we all knew was coming: handling huge chunks of data and learning how to mine this information from sets so large that it is simply mind boggling. The interesting thing is that many people are not aware of this, notably teachers in the trenches.
I have been in education for 4 decades and this one program has given me more confidence in teaching space science than any college training I ever did.