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AAS - 2017

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 2016 and 2017 NITARP teams attended the 2017 January AAS meeting in Dallas, TX. The 2016 class was presenting results and the 2017 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

  • [student:] Presenting the poster was also great because the people that I talked to had such great advice and ideas. One of the best things that I learned about was all the different places to learn astronomy. I got free magazines, and website names that are absolute gold mines of information and I’m really excited to explore those and learn from them. Learning about the formation of stars through the program and how astronomers take and interpret data was interesting to me. It helped me get a taste of astronomy and it’s what made me decide that I want to go into astronomy.
  • [student:] I was frustrated with being unable to check my answers with some outside source. But it was helpful to know that in astronomy there are no answers in the back of the book, and that’s what made our job so important.
  • If it were possible to speak to congress (or others) about the impact NITARP has had on myself and my students, I would have to start with it being life changing. For myself the experience has been a needed confirmation that the traditional process of science education in primary and secondary education in ineffective and that there are far better methods. The first and foremost being to have students participate in real authentic research work and learn the needed knowledge in a context of its use and application. I have seen students that would never have considered science a favorite subject excel and push themselves harder because it is ‘real’. I have completely changed my teaching style to reflect this and include real research in all my classes. Student participate, motivations, and enthusiasm have increased across the board. For students I can point to several that have had a complete change in their future prospects and ambitions due to exposure to the NITARP program. Directly or indirectly, they have seen themselves as having a real attainable part of science or technology based career. For some this will push them to be the first in their family to attend college of any kind, for others the first to look at a career outside the trades, for others an encouraging push to continue their efforts and look at what will be. Programs like NITARP provide teachers and students opportunities that really get to the core of STEM education and what STEM should be. They should be supported and encouraged.
  • [student:] I didn't expect that we would grow so close after connecting during just 5 days.
  • [student:] NITARP gives students unbelievable confidence in their abilities; of course, in their abilities to do meaningful research and understand complex scientific topics, but also in their abilities to collaborate with adults and express their valuable opinions. I learned so much about interacting with other scientists and tackling seemingly-incomprehensible projects in front of me. Students also gain perspective from meeting other students all around the country who are similarly interested in astronomy and dedicated to research (not common in most schools).

Related Teams

AAS - 2017