AAS - 2021

Quotes

• [student:] Experiences like NITARP teach participants to take responsibility for their own learning. For example., If I wanted to get good at the software we used for this project, the onus was on me to practice and learn it. There was no grade nor enforcer making me. I think this accountability to one’s self is valuable, and absent from current education systems. Experience like NITARP teach participants how to teach themselves and learn on their own whereas traditional school often just drags students along to where they have to be without regard to the underlying quality of the students learning.
• [student:] I never knew how much astronomers worked with computer programs and data, and I think this helped me gain a new sort of respect for them: this is not easy work!
• [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.
• Bracketing the NITARP experience between an opening and a closing AAS meeting empowers us as participants to see that the process we are developing and the research we are doing is legitimate. The opening meeting sets a model in our minds for what the end of the project will look like. The closing meeting makes us defend our work… the real closure on science… peer review! The overall experience makes it clear to me that I am in the right place professionally. I love the research process.
• [student:] I had no clue so much math and analysis went into astronomy and I definitely got to learn something I couldn’t have otherwise.

Related Teams

• OIRMA/Gorjian
• Spider/Rebull