Chelen Johnson
Hungry Giants- WISE Excesses and Lithium Study (HG-WELS) - studying giants which may or may not be eating planets, and may or may not be ejecting enough dust as a result so as to be bright in the infrared.
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.
Because of NITARP my teaching has grown for the better. The entire project really made me appreciate and re-evaluate the scientific process. I was amazed by the support and well organized lines of communication, and found a new level of respect for Google Sheets.The number of connections I have made with other astronomy and physics teachers has really helped me find new and interesting ways to make physics more relevant to students.
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.
