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AAS - 2016

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 2015 and 2016 NITARP teams attended the 2016 January AAS meeting in Kissimmee, FL. The 2015 class was presenting results and the 2016 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, and a special article on NITARP alumni at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

Quotes

  • [Now,] I actively search for ways to give my students actual research experience and try to have it so they are working collaboratively with students outside their school. While this is not for all students[...] I offer to anyone who wants to take it on. Currently I have 3 different projects in the works. [...] I now seek out other teachers and opportunities outside of my own school (as well as within).
  • I have already rewritten several labs to include data analysis with Excel. I have also started mentoring an astronomy club at school.
  • [This experience] solidified for me how kind and curious astronomers are. I think that going in to an experience like this as a K-12 educator, I expected to feel a little bit like an outsider, but that was never my experience. I found that all of the people I talked to at our poster were warm and genuine and just enjoyed hearing about our experiences and thoughts.
  • [new teacher:] I have never seen the scientific research endeavor start to play out in front of me before. I think I can already, at least a little, better represent what it looks like to share scientific work.
  • [student: This program] teaches us teamwork and about the the specific astronomy subject at hand. It also gives us an excellent environment to practice and perfect the skills we learned through the process. It creates a great applied education for the people who are good with hands on learning.

Related Teams

AAS - 2016