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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:

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

  • My (original) NITARP experience prompted me to immediately start a scientific research group (like a club) that met before and after school. In Tennessee, Scientific Research is an actual laboratory course complete with state standards, so I started teaching that course when I moved to Tennessee. This year, I was able to expand my course with funding from the Tennessee Rural STEM Collaborative. I followed the example of NITARP and have located subject-matter experts as mentors for the students for their self-selected projects. Nine of my students are taking their research projects to the Regeneron science fair entry event in east Tennessee, including my two NITARP students, who are investigating light variations of stars in NGC 1245. No one from Greene County Schools (my school district) has ever had students present research at this venue.
  • [student:] The NITARP experience helped me realize how broad the field of astronomy is, and how much astronomers can learn from others that specialize in different parts of astronomy.
  • I did not anticipate that my students would develop such a strong bond with Varoujan. They learned quickly that they could ask him questions on the videoconferences and the summer meetings and he would patiently explain, sometimes more than once. I saw a huge amount of growth of my students, especially in their identities as scientists.
  • Programs like this are incredibly important to the growth of teachers. I know that I certainly grew both as a person and as an educator through this experience. It was really fun to be thrown into a group with other people and have to work on working together and learning something entirely new.
  • It was great feeling like we could actually ask questions and get real answers.

AAS - 2023