AAS - 2018

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 2017 and 2018 NITARP teams attended the 2018 January AAS meeting in National Harbor, MD. The 2017 class was presenting results and the 2018 class was starting up. We had 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:

2017 teams:
- Science Poster - Evans et al., "Identifying Young Stars in Cepheus C"
- Education Poster - Stalnaker et al., "NITARP: Bridging the Gap Between the Traditional Science Classroom and Authentic Research"
- Science Poster - Rowe et al., "A Search to Uncover the Infrared Excess (IRXS) Sources in the Spitzer Enhanced Imaging Products (SEIP) Catalog"
- Education Poster - Orr et al., "NITARP: An Example of Effective Archive Data Based Research in the Classroom"
Returning Alumni teams:
- Science Poster - Johnson et al., "Relative Age Dating of Young Star Clusters from YSOVAR"
- Science Poster - Sweckard et al., "Software Development for Asteroid and Variable Star Research"
NITARP Management:
- Evaluations And Impact (presented as education poster): Rebull et al., "An Authentic Research Experience in an Astronomy Education Professional Development Program: An Analysis of 8 Years of Data on the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP)"

Quotes

The NITARP experience has already changed the way I work in my classroom. I try to provide actual data to my students to use whether we are studying Earth science, physics, or astronomy. I also have changed my lab exercises so that it requires students to develop their own strategies to solve a problem. I also have reworked many labs so there isn’t a finite, correct answer.
[student:] Before this experience I wasn’t planning on going to college right after high school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do so I didn’t want to spend thousands on college without complete confidence of my direction. But now I’ve decided on my major and I [...] feel I can credit that mostly to my experience with this program. Getting to see what a career in physics looks like, and hearing from professionals about their careers from college until the present was a great help to me
[..]astronomers don’t spend any time looking through telescopes and most of them don’t even collect their own data—they use data collected by others and it is stored in enormous databases. They generally (probably always now) collaborate with others—there probably aren’t too many areas of current research that a person could do by him- or her- self—there is just too much data.
Most science teachers have never done real science – that is, authentic research into something that nobody else has studied before. Experiencing the thrill and challenge of doing real science is essential if we want our teachers to adequately and accurately portray what science is really like to our next generation. NITARP gives teachers this experience. Through NITARP, teachers improve their understanding of the scientific process, build relationships with professional scientists, and contribute to human understanding of some corner of the universe. It is an amazing program that should be expanded to include science teachers everywhere!
The reality is that the US needs more programs like NITARP, and should consider ways to make it easier for organizers of these programs to renew and grow what works. These programs need to be supported financially to encourage more secondary teachers to join, and also help high school students consider futures in STEM fields.

AAS - 2018

Quotes

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