NITARP Class of 2011 Announced

Aas2011workshop

NITARP class of 2011

Monday, January 10th, 2011 • News Release • ipac2011-001

The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) class of 2011 was recently announced. A total of 12 educators hail from all over the United States including Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The educators and their scientific mentors are divided into three teams that will perform research and prepare posters for the 2012 American Astronomical Society winter conference.

During the spring, the teams will learn to use the appropriate scientific software for their project and will start analyzing data. Come summertime, each team (consisting of the scientist, the teachers and up to two students per teacher) will attend an all-expenses-paid workshop at the Spitzer Science Center (SSC) and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), both in Pasadena, Calif. In the fall, the teams will create their poster presentation for the American Astronomical Society and the results might be published in a scientific journal as well.

In addition to classroom-experienced teachers, two teams will include non-traditional educators from the amateur astronomical community and a NASA educational outreach center. Stepping beyond the classroom will bring in fresh approaches and help spread the word to thousands in the general public. Also new for this year, in addition to Spitzer observations, one team will work with data from NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler spacecraft.

Applications for the 2012 NITARP class will be available in May 2011 from the NITARP website: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/teacher_research/.

NITARP Class of 2011

Team working with Dr. Luisa Rebull (SSC):

  • Chelen Johnson (Breck School, Minneapolis, MN) teacher mentor for team
  • John Gibbs (Glencoe High School, Hillboro, OR) 
  • Marcella Linahan (Carmel Catholic High School, Mundelein, IL) 
  • Diane Sartore (Pine Ridge High School, Deltona, FL) 
  • Russ Laher (Spitzer Science Center, Pasadena, CA) 
  • Mark Legassie (Raytheon and Spitzer Science Center, Pasadena, CA)

Team working with Dr. Varoujan Gorjian (SSC/JPL):

  • Tim Spuck (Oil City Regional Senior High School, Oil City, PA) teacher mentor for team
  • Merrill Butler (Orange County Astronomers, Orange, CA) 
  • Adam Keeton (North High School, Eau Claire, WI) 
  • Shefali Mehta (Haddam-Killingworth High School, Higganum, CT) 
  • Mark Abajian (IPAC, Pasadena, CA)

Team working with Dr. Steve Howell (NOAO):

  • John Blackwell (Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH) teacher mentor for team
  • Stacy DeVeau (Arizona NASA Educator Research Center, AZ) 
  • Debbie Edwards (Sherando High School, Stephens City, VA) 
  • Michiel Ford (Kickapoo Nation School, Powhattan, KS)

This program was funded by NASA. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.