AAS - 2024

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 2023 and 2024 NITARP teams attended the 2024 January AAS meeting in New Orleans, LA. The 2023 class was presenting results and the 2024 class was starting up. We had alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 50 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the press release on NITARP from the AAS, and the special online article about NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here. (In addition to the iPoster sessions as listed here, the physical versions of the 2023 teams' posters were up at the IPAC booth all day Tuesday.)

2023 teams:

171.01 McKay et al., Young stellar students and objects: Illuminating astronomy research for students and teachers (Monday 5:30-6:30)
171.02 Hickey et al., Building Confidence and Combating Imposter Syndrome Through Student-Educator Research Projects (Monday 5:30-6:30)
171.05 Garcia et al., Reaching for the Stars: How Research Experience Has Expanded the Scope of a High School Astronomy Club (Monday 5:30-6:30)
181.01 Kuper et al., Looking for Young Stellar Objects in Obscure Sharpless Regions (Monday 5:30-6:30)
201.05 Carpenetti et al., Building a Catalog of AGN with Erroneous Parallaxes Using WISE and Gaia (Tuesday 9-10)

Alumni:

167.01 Sperling et al., Student-Led High Altitude Ballooning into Solar Eclipses (Monday 5:30-6:30)
171.03 Rebull et al., NITARP Lesson Plans: Bite-Size Pieces of Authentic Science Research Experiences (Monday 5:30-6:30)
171.06 Newland, Using Google Colab to Teach Hubble-Lemaitre's Law with BOSS Data (Monday 5:30-6:30)
176.02 Rebull et al., Young Stellar Object Candidates in IC 417 (Monday 5:30-6:30)
203.03 Wojciak et al., Exploring Color-Magnitude Relationships Among Quasars with z between 1.5-1.75 (Tuesday 9-10)
458.21 Jones & Rutherford, The Three-Dimensional Structure of IC 2391 (Thursday 1-2)

Quotes

[student:] After NITARP, I have a clearer idea of what the future as an astrophysicist may look like and I am more prepared with experience to reach my career goals.
Given the longevity of the program, the consistency of the mentor astronomers and the inclusion of a mentor educator, I had expected the year to be somewhat prescribed and a path forward to be well-trodden. This was not the case (in a good way!) There were certainly deadlines to be met and techniques which had been employed successfully in the past that we newbies could use, but our original research was just that! Original! The end was not in sight at the beginning, and we ran into issues during our year which we were able to work through together.
I’m experiencing an excitement for science that I haven’t had for several years – it has positively affected my teaching and professional development. Over the course of the program I have seen a similar growing level of excitement in the students I am working with.
This experience gave me exactly what I was hoping for, which was a clearer idea of the “steps” of doing a research project and the confidence to lead new students in one on my own.
[Now, in my classroom,] I really push my students to collect authentic data and we have been practicing our presentation skills a lot more. I also use the charts and graphs during our astronomy unit and talk about the experience with my students.

AAS - 2024

Quotes

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