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:

2016 teams:
- Science Poster - Orr et al., "Finding High Quality Young Star Candidates in Ceph C Using X-ray, Optical, and IR Data"
- Education Poster - Orr et al., "STEM Education is Missing This ..."
- Science Poster - Kilts et al., "Searching for Short-Term Variable Active Galactic Nuclei: A Vital Step Towards Using AGN as Standard Candles"
- Education Poster - Kohrs et al., "NITARP: Changing Perceptions of Science Among Secondary Students and Teachers"
Returning Alumni teams:
- Education Poster - Bensel & Cool, "Are We Alone? GAVRT Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Project"
- Education Poster - Tran et al., "Analysis of Visual Double Stars"
- Science Poster - Johnson et al., "An Infrared Search for Young Stellar Objects in IC 1396"
- Science Poster - Wilson et al., "Searching for Infrared Excesses around White Dwarf Stars"
- Education Poster - Linder et al., "Confirming and Improving Ross Variable Star RV Del"
- Science Poster - Linder et al., "Rotational Study of Ambiguous Taxonomic Classified Asteroids"
NITARP Management:
- Evaluations And Impact (presented as education poster): Rebull et al., "The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP): Lessons Learned"

Quotes

[student:] Astronomy and astronomer work in ways that I didn’t know until this. I am pretty sure that I have changed how I think about all scientists now.
NITARP has changed how I teach and the focus of my classroom time. After this experience I have included more long term research work and scientist/student partnering into the classroom. I have reached out to local professionals to act as mentors for student work and to develop partnerships I hope can continue in the far future. I show students more use of technology and integrate more coding, use of databases, and online research tools to aid student work and support topic curriculum. I have felt I really need to find more ways to get more students the change to do work like this because of the incredibly high interest I have form the whole area.
I really enjoyed watching the ways that the older members of our team supported and interacted with the younger students. They really bonded together better than I expected given the range of ages and skills. I was also impressed by the number of people that came to talk with the students and really engaged with them in conversations about the science and process related to their poster and talked with them about their experience. Astronomy is a wonderfully supportive community.
[student:] I have sparked more scientific conversations with people in classes. I speak differently in these conversations because now I am more confident with what I talk about.
The scientific method cannot be narrowed down to 6 simple steps. The process is very much ingrained in trial and error and coming up with new solutions to problems.

AAS - 2017

Quotes

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