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

I plan to develop more problems of a statistical nature. Gross data from astronomy and other realms leads to insight; this is a side of scientific inquiry that I’d never really thought about before. If I’m going to be about modeling, I’m going to have to learn to be about statistics.
I have realized how many different things there are to study in the universe and the different roles that people in the community can take on. Astronomy research can be complex, involve multiple layers of investigation, and play out over long time scales.
[student:] I’ve learned to be less critical of myself. I’ve realized that the actual learning process is much more valuable than always getting the correct answer. I’ve been less discouraged when I get confused because I know understand that it is good to be confused, and that even the greatest astronomers get confused by problems.
[student:] At the beginning of the program I wanted to be a medical examiner. Then throughout the year I learned more about astronomy and the processes that astronomers go through and I just want to do more of that. I still want to be a medical examiner, but astronomy, discovering exoplanets, whether or not they could potentially sustain life, how stars, planetary systems, galaxies are formed, that is what really sparks my curiosity. At the conference I got excited about everything there that I forgot to eat and even got up early. I basically ran on excitement because everything was so fun to learn about that, and I want to always feel like that.
While it is widely reported that students entering STEM fields in college feel like they hit a brick wall when science and engineering courses shift from the typically conceptual level of high school to the quantitative modelling of college, NITARP students arrive on campus having already seen firsthand that “doing” science means doing math – and that as intricate and occasionally tedious as this may be, it makes sense. NITARP students learn in their bones that math and the tools of math comprise the most natural way to talk substantively about science. NITARP students are ready for science in college.

AAS - 2017

Quotes

Related Teams