AAS - 2023

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. 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 2022 and 2023 NITARP teams attended the 2023 January AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. The 2022 class was presenting results and the 2023 class was starting up. We had alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 30 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

2022 Teams:

Ciambra et al., A More Complete List of YSO Candidates in AFGL 490
Benter et al., Survey of the Spitzer Enhanced Imaging Products (SEIP) Catalog for Potential Debris Disks Around Main Sequence M Class Stars
Bonham et al., NGSS Science and Engineering Practices in Secondary Education through Real Astronomical Research
Swigert et al., Teacher Roles within NITARP: a 13-month Research Collaboration

Alumni:

Granucci, "Does a Solar Telescope generate more interest in astronomy than Night Observing Telescope?" (talk)
Kniezewski, "To Rain or Not to Rain: Correlating GOES Flare Class and Coronal Rain Statistics" (poster and press release; student alumna!)

Quotes

What has changed about my teaching is how I go about asking questions, and I have modeled this after the way Varoujan asks questions and WAITS. I don’t know if he knows this, but he is a master at what teachers call ‘wait time’, which is the process of waiting for students to answer a question and not jump in to answer it for them. He is so patient when asking all of us questions, and it gives us a chance to think and figure out the answer, even if we get it wrong the first time. Most teachers are not good at ‘wait time’ because they are uncomfortable with silence and want their students to know the answers. I have learned to ask better questions with my students and patiently wait for answers, and if my students have the wrong answer, it is OK, we work to figure it out together.
What kept me going during the research project was the knowledge that I was going to be able to present my real research at the AAS to other, real astronomers. I am really proud of that.
[student:] Something that I did not anticipate was the better understanding of different people. I really enjoyed working with a team of people with diverse backgrounds.
I was amazed by the sheer amount of data that’s available out there. Equally amazing was all the subtleties and nuances about the data [...]. I knew that astronomy was hard, but you astronomers really have to know what you’re doing!
NITARP has expanded my vision and increased my confidence.

AAS - 2023

Quotes

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