• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2020

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 2019 and 2020 NITARP teams attended the 2020 January AAS meeting in Honolulu, HI. The 2019 class was presenting results and the 2020 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:

2019 Teams:

NITARP Management:

Returning Alumni Teams:

Quotes

  • I do not think I can properly put into words what it meant to me for you to take the chance on me. I appreciate everything I have been given and will pay it forward to my future students. What an amazing experience!
  • [student:] Not only do we learn educational topics with the science content but we also learn those 21st century skills of working with other people, and through this experience it is so much more than just working with peers it is working with people of all ages and from all over. It is learning how to navigate difficult new concepts and work in a professional way with people you have never met face to face. This experience gave us a glimpse into the world of NASA that people from my area don’t get the chance to see.
  • [student:] NITARP didn’t necessarily change my career plans, but it definitely broadened them. I’ve pretty much always known I want to do something involving space. It’s just been what interests me for longer than I can remember. What NITARP, and specifically the AAS has shown me is there are way more options to think about than I thought. I still don’t know what I’ll be going into, but whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll end up being passionate about it.
  • [At the AAS,] Teachers and students experience real, dynamic science as it lives today, where there may be no answers, explanations that change with new data, and most importantly there is discourse between scientists so that they may learn from each other.
  • Picking the most interesting aspect of the NITARP experience is extremely difficult because there were so many. I knew that I was going to learn new and interesting things but I literally had no idea how many interesting aspects I would be exposed to.

Related Teams

AAS - 2020