Reedley College, Reedley, California
Community College
Physics Instructor
Ms. Novatne is NITARP's third participant from a community college. She participated on a 2012 team.
Ms. Novatne got some nice local media coverage about her participation in NITARP.
I assumed that [research] would require a great deal of data analysis, what I didn’t grasp until after this[, my first AAS] meeting was how focused and detailed the analysis would be. The steps in understanding that are gained through the analysis are much smaller than I anticipated they would be for the amount of work that is done.
The experience has changed my understanding of astronomy and how it is done, but not of astronomers.
By far, the most interesting part of my entire NITARP experience is the scientific method applied to the discovery process.
I really feel that NITARP is a gem of a program.