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AAS - 2014

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.

The 2013 and 2014 NITARP teams attended the 2014 January AAS meeting in National Harbor, MD (outside of Washington, DC). The 2013 class was presenting results and the 2014 class was starting up. We had a lot of alumni raise their own money to come back as well. We sent about 75 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. One of our participants, Peggy Piper, participated in a Congressional briefing on Thursday! All the posters we presented are linked from the team's pages below, except for HG-WELS and SIRXS, because they are the two new teams.

Quotes

  • This is my third AAS. I understand so much more than I did the first time, but I STILL HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN! This is a fantastic professional development opportunity, and generates so many ideas each time I come.
  • [student! :] This experience has changed the way I work in the classroom in that I am applying simple scientific practices to the way I study and do homework, collaborating with others to ensure I have a full understanding of the whole picture.
  • I found [astronomers] to be approachable, willing to talk with mere mortals such as myself, and more than happy to explain their work. Everyone I talked with at poster sessions and elsewhere was enthusiastic and excited about their discoveries. It was the kind of community of learners that I try to model in my classroom, and it will be the most important thing I take back from the conference to share with my students – that astronomers are regular people who are happy to share what they know. The second most important thing is that they can do this, too (and will be doing this) and there are no barriers to their becoming professional astronomers if they want to.
  • [student:] The most interesting thing that I learned was that there is just so much research going on and on such small things, but it all is used as stepping stones to bigger and better things.
  • I was again reminded of how eye-opening a conference like this can be to a high school student with limited experience outside their home area. For them, the sessions presented were a view into a world they really didn’t know even existed. They were quick to recognize and admit that they largely knew nothing about what was presented in the sessions – but they were just as quick to talk about the fact that they were interested, curious, and wanted to figure out more. The poster sessions also provide opportunity for them to see themselves as potentially having a place among those attending and presenting. They were able to find people that they could talk to about the things the heard about in the talks and learn more. When they presented their own work it was amazing to see how much their confidence and abilities grew.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014