AAS - 2021

Quotes

• [student:] My group has failed many times. We have not gotten the results we’ve expected many times. And that’s okay! Because we’re researching, and when you research, it’s normal to fail; it makes you stronger every time you get knocked down.
• 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.
• The whole year was as much, and more, than I could have expected… the story arc of a real research project means that we faced off with unforeseen forces, confusing data, limits in our knowledge, and other demands on our time. And, as real as it gets, we had to step up, step in, and take all of these on in order to move the work forward.
• This experience changed the way I thought about astronomy. I assumed there would be a wealth of data easily accessible to everyone. I had not considered that there would be gaps in coverage and that there are real limitations to real equipment used to gather the data.
• Young people need to be exposed not to just the body of knowledge that science has produced. In the modern world most of that can be looked up anyway. The essential experience that is needed is to see the way in which science works.

Related Teams

• OIRMA/Gorjian
• Spider/Rebull