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:

Education Poster - Rebull, "A Way to Categorize Programs that Bring Data to the Classroom"

Returning Alumni Teams:

Quotes

[student:] There is no way that I could have even imagined doing a project like this without the guidance that I had. Now, after the fact I believe that with some fluency in python that I could do our project in a mere fraction of the time that we spent collaboratively. The fact that others had to depend on me getting my work done was a big motivation. Another was my passion for learning, especially when I had the opportunity to apply it. I could not have learned or applied anything of this project without guidance, I would simply be wandering blindly.
There is no limit to what teachers and students participating in NITARP can do! With the expertise of scientists, mentoring teachers, and the enthusiasm of students and teachers working as a team, NITARP provides an experience like no other program out there. The long-lasting impact goes far beyond the year long experience to increase quality and quantity of space related programs in the classroom and community.
I was very excited to learn what research we will be doing. All of the information about the program itself and what is expected of us was very good on Sunday. I do not think the reality of the experience has really hit me yet but I’m sure it will over the next several months. It just seems unreal that we will be using data from the Kepler and Spitzer telescopes and possibly Chandra as well to look into an area of star formation and try to discover new young stars! Truly amazing to be a part of this!
To be able to be a part of actual scientific research is what science education is all about. From a teacher perspective how can we prepare the next round of scientists if we do not have first hand knowledge of what scientists do? With this opportunity, we can involve students in the research process and give them a better understanding of how scientific research is done -- thus preparing them for their own future discoveries.
I am trying to make my astronomy class more discussion-based and trying to make it more inquiry-based. I was able to network with other teachers and got some ideas of how to move away from lecture. Although lecture has some usefulness I really want to try to be more inquiry driven.

AAS - 2019

Quotes

Related Teams