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AAS - 2013

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is the largest meeting of professional astronomers in the world. NITARP educators attend an AAS first to meet their team, then they go home and work remotely for much of the year, and then attend an AAS to present their results.  At any given AAS, then, we could have two NITARP classes attending - those finishing up, and those getting started. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

We were out in force at the AAS 2013 meeting in Long Beach, CA! A record number of NITARP-affiliated people attended, including the 2012 class finishing up and the 2013 class getting going. The 80 or so NITARP-affiliated folks made up about 3% of the AAS attendees.

Special article on AAS attendees!  And don't miss Danielle Miller's blog!

Quotes

  • This experience made me realize how much effort and work is put into research. [..]this experience in research has prepared me for what to expect in college research opportunities. It's not just push a button, get an answer -- we had to work and tweak and make improvements until we had our results. It was very satisfying to come up with our results; it's that feeling of "This is what I contributed to the astronomy community -- and I'm only in high school!"
  • [I didn't anticipate] finding out how many people, so different individually, can be united through one common love [of astronomy].
  • Adapting to not having the answer in the back of the book was something that I never registered upon beginning this, which wasn't expected.
  • Mentoring adults in these capacities 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.
  • I rarely get out among other teachers in the same field as I am, with similar interest and motivations, and even less often do I have time to be in the company of professional scientists to see and hear what they are doing, how it is being done, what technologies are being used, etc. Without this type of program to get me to a meeting like the AAS I would never be able to put all of this together.

Related Teams

AAS - 2013