AAS - 2021

Quotes

• Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, my unconscious misconceptions of science continue to burble forth. I finally came to understand that “research” is a much broader term than I thought. [...]the struggle continues, and continues to delight.
• The NITARP experience, with its focus on the teacher, and the allowance of inclusion of students, is a powerful engine for accomplishing [sharing how science works]. It ensures that the limited capacity of the program is leveraged through the many years, and multiple classes taught by a single teacher. The involvement of students binds these teachers to embrace participation to a depth and degree that makes the experience understandable to their future students by providing the evidence that a small number of their current students are getting it… it makes sense as it is occurring. And the passage through the whole process from unlimited brainstorming, to focused questioning, selection of a research topic, literature search, proposal, research, analysis, visualization, communication and defense of your results allows one to know, first person, how this engine works.
• NITARP has given me is a glimpse of an infinitude of pursuable interests.
• [student:] I've never had any formal classes in astronomy. I always figured it was similar to cartography, or just making big maps of the sky. I thought it would require a lot of memorizing, like when I had to memorize the solar system in fourth grade. But during this process I learned about the science behind astronomy.
• [student:] [This project] showed me the importance of not only performing authentic research, but also by communicating it and involving interested parties that are not professional astronomers.

Related Teams

• OIRMA/Gorjian
• Spider/Rebull