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

Team Red Shift: Using Spitzer Space Telescope images to find clusters of galaxies at a large distance from the Earth.

Using this research in my classes has provided my students with a glimpse of what professional astronomers are tasked with in describing the workings of the universe.
Mentoring adults in these capacities [as a NITARP mentor educator] improves my ability to act more as a mentor to my classroom students, allowing them to become more self-sufficient learners. I feel this has improved my ability to mentor my colleagues as well.
To me what stood out [at my first AAS] was the wide variety of work – from characterization of the structure of the Milky Way (more of a challenge than I ever knew!) to the search for and characterization of exoplanets to the understanding of how quasar evolution relates to the origins of the Universe.