AAS - 2022

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is usually 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 2020/21 and 2022 NITARP teams had planned to attend the 2022 January AAS meeting in Salt Lake City, UT. However, the meeting was entirely cancelled due to COVID. We still have this special article about the NITARP teams finishing and starting up. All of the posters from the 2020/21 teams we presented are here. Most of the 2020/21 teams came instead to the June 2022 AAS meeting in Pasadena, CA instead. Those posters were iPosters, so the PDF versions that are here are still the versions from Jan 2022, but the numbers are from June 2022.

Science Poster - 101.18 Strasburger et al., "OIRMA: Optical-Infrared Reverberation Mapping of AGN"
Education Poster - 242.05 Sharif et al., "Bringing Experiential Education into the Classroom"
Education Poster - 242.02 Rodriguez et al., "Promoting Student Interest in Astronomy Using Student-Delivered Professional Development"
Science Poster - 406.05 Rodriguez et al, "Visible and IR Light Curve Variability Analysis of Young Stellar Objects in IC417"
Science Poster - 406.06 Urbanowski et al., "Cataloging and Analysis of Young Stellar Objects in the Spider Nebular (IC 417) Using Archival Visible and Infrared Data"
Alumni poster - 242.04 Blackwell, "Opening of New Observatory Facility at Phillips Exeter Academy"
Alumni talk - 212.03 Granucci, "Authentic Astronomy Research Hybrid Course - A method to reach all level of learners in astronomy"
Alumni poster (Jan only) - Rutherford, "Sixteen Years of Astronomy Research at Sullivan South High School" (submitted to Salt Lake City, not going to Pasadena)

The 2022 class got started on Jan 9, just before when the winter AAS would have been held. There are two teams in 2022.

Quotes

Thank you from the deepest well of my heart and mind for a beautiful, challenging, fascinating and life-changing experience.
Look at where my kids are now. Their resumes are leaps and bounds better. Their confidence in talking with other students, teachers, and scientists has gone off the charts. We really changed their paths.
It was transformative to carry a project all the way through from “Yah, IC417… that sounds like it could be cool” to the representation of scientifically valid results in our AAS poster and the publication of a catalog of 512 new candidate YSOs. Some small piece of the collective knowledge of astronomy was produced by our team. That is empowering personally, but more importantly it is transformative for the conversations I can have with my students (in and out of NITARP). These conversations have made the occupational choice of astronomer be more “real” for the students, and thus has increased the number that are actively entering into undergraduate programs thinking that astrophysics is for them as a career.
I use spreadsheets much more now. I do this because the kids need spreadsheet skills that they’re not getting through direct instruction in the “foundations of technology” classes. I also do it because aggregating and parsing data are defining STEM skills and kids shouldn’t have to wait for college before they start doing it.
[student:] One important thing NITARP has taught me is when working in a group environment, disseminate work to other people rather than trying to take on the whole load of the project by myself. In NITARP, it would’ve been impossible for one person to do all of the work, and splitting everything up made the whole project work more effectively and efficiently. I am going to try and carry this strategy into other group work I do in school.

AAS - 2022

Quotes

Related Teams