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AAS - 2019

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 2018 and 2019 NITARP teams attended the 2019 January AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. The 2018 class was presenting results and the 2019 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:

2018 Teams:

NITARP Management:

Returning Alumni Teams:

 

Quotes

  • For astronomy, I underestimated the amount of data analysis and programming required compared to observation skills. It seems like introductory high school and college courses cover a good amount of content but not the relevant research skills.
  • NITARP is going to be hard to top. It’s not just a day long or week long passive PD program where information is given to you but an authentic research experience. I don’t really know what else is out there like this but I’d like to find it and do it.
  • I have already brought back aspects of the AAS conference to my students by sharing photos, websites, and my summaries. Yes, understanding astronomy will definitely help me teach NGSS lesson planning and help [my student teachers] with cross-curricular writing.
  • NITARP inspires and empowers relevant and rigorous STEM curricular creativity. Teachers learn to use the same assets and tools as scientist, gain experience with scientific research culture and come away with the ability to lead their students in a research opportunity.
  • I wondered how our work would be received during the poster session. It was encouraging to see how genuinely interested and supportive the astronomers that visited were.

Related Teams

AAS - 2019