• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2021

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.  This year, the pandemic forced the Jan 2021 meeting online, and meant that we didn't select a new class for 2021, so only one class is attending the online AAS. 

The 2020 NITARP teams attended the 2021 January AAS. We sent about 30 people to the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

2020 Teams:

Also see video "turbo talks" from ORMA team : science and education.

 

Quotes

  • 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.
  • [student:] Experiences such as NITARP help start teachers and students down a road of curiosity. If there is one thing I’ll remember doing in NITARP, it’ll be asking questions. Instead of sitting in silence wondering what to do, I was encouraged to ask questions, and when that happened, I would always get a reply that sparked my curiosity even further. Having the ability to observe the world around me and wonder how it works is something that would not have happened without NITARP.
  • 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 support offered was fantastic as we were given the environment to be very comfortable with asking any questions we may have.
  • [student:] There are always [...] summer classes you can take or a special class in robotics, but NITARP has shown me that these things aren’t as unique as doing actual research. Nothing beats making an actual contribution to human knowledge, no matter how small it is, and this contribution cannot occur in a classroom.

Related Teams

A NITARP pause: we are not expecting to be able to support a NITARP 2026 class as a result of the current funding uncertainty. We hope to resume in 2027.