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AAS - 2015

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 2014 and 2015 NITARP teams attended the 2015 January AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. The 2014 class was presenting results and the 2015 class was starting up. We had many alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 50 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

Quotes

  • As a result of NITARP I will have a firm commitment to include some component of active, original, ongoing research in my teaching every year.
  • [student:] I really was surprised at the vastness and variety of everything presented at the conference. I had no idea what the AAS conference would be like since I've never attended a convention event like this one, and was shocked to realize how progressive and advanced astronomy was. It's amazing to realize that the knowledge presented at the conference was just the surface of the knowledge really possessed by the brightest minds in astronomy.
  • I already had a pretty good idea of how astronomers do science, but NITARP helped me see more exactly how data is collected, processed, and analyzed. It helped me also see that I can do astronomy myself, and can make a contribution beyond my own classroom. Not only can I analyze astronomical data to find scientifically useful results, but I can publish my work as a poster and be part of this community. I did not feel like a stranger or usurper or even out of place – it felt like I belonged.
  • [student:] Be prepared for unexpected setbacks and changes to the project, for this is how real science works.
  • No district-led professional development can compare.

Related Teams

AAS - 2015