Chelen Johnson
This virtual team collects all independent research presented in 2010, and done by NITARP or Spitzer alumni with students outside of a formal NITARP team. Four different teams presented results in 2010!
Every time we meet or talk or work on the project I feel just a little bit more knowledgeable, skilled and, perhaps most importantly, confident in what I know and can do...
By participating in NITARP, I'm leading by example as I'm trying to be a lifelong learner. The students are seeing that there are things that I don't understand, and it's not in a ‘gotcha’ type of way, but in a more reassuring way that we're all going through this together. I like collaborating with my students as if they were colleagues of mine, and I think that is a very redeeming prospect of this opportunity that will benefit them in the long run.
As a result of my student Cody's work with NITARP, Cody is now working with Chris Crawford who developed a meteor counting system for NASA that was used on a plane in 1999. Cody and Chris are making an app for counting meteors that will take users' GPS position and uses that to do spatial analysis on the data.