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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 want to continue our research! I no longer feel like there is an “us” and “them” between us astronomy educators and those astronomers, and I’d like it to continue. I want to continue the teaching that I have been doing, but I want to get more students involved in research.
  • [The] intrinsic motivation that comes about when a student learns that struggling with a problem yields a result (btw, the NITARP idea that research sometimes leads nowhere (forgive the oversimplification) is an important lesson, but at the same time, students ARE successful with every step of the process. [...] how much of the Algebra 2 curriculum is embedded in astronomy, and how abstractly weird ideas like logs fall out as the most natural way to talk about things. [...] NITARP exposes kids to the reality of STEM employment… things like the normalcy of your families, the kinds of things STEM can do in a professional setting. Few kids have real world scientists as role models and hence have no basis for visualizing a future as a scientist. NITARP kids do.
  • [student:] I definitely will take more chances at doing “hard” things and things that challenge me. I think I was stuck doing what was comfortable and not really challenging myself but this showed me that I can do really complicated things that are “outside” my major.
  • It so amazing how much can be learned about the cosmos around us from the color, location and intensity of light, gravity waves and neutrinos… the multimessenger universe is unfolding before our eyes. I am so jazzed to be given the opportunity to participate as a researcher in some small part of this great adventure.
  • [student:] I learned so much and met so many interesting people. It was intense mentally, which I expected it would be, but definitely worth every second.

Related Teams

AAS - 2020