• NASA
  • IPAC

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

  • [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.
  • NITARP is the most intense and satisfying professional development programs I have participated in. It forced me to feet the frustrations my students feel when they are trying to learn new material.
  • This experience really made me realize how broad a career field Astronomy really is. That is true of all the branches of science, but I just never really experiences it first hand until now. The students also commented on how surprising it was to converse with researches from other fields of astronomy and teach them the astronomy we were doing.
  • I have already rewritten several labs to include data analysis with Excel. I have also started mentoring an astronomy club at school.
  • Programs such as NITARP keep good teachers in the classroom teaching and leading our next generation of scientists. Good science teachers need to be challenged, inspired, and motivated by the science they fell in love with as a student themselves. This happens when they are able to participate and engage in current, active, real experiences such as this. [... ]These programs make good teachers better, improve the quality of education they can deliver, and keep those highly trained, effective people in the classroom doing what they do best.

Related Teams

AAS - 2016