H-K Science Teacher Lands Out of This World Assignment

Shefali Mehta, a third year science teacher at Haddam-Killingworth High School, has been accepted into NASA's NITARP program, a means of partnering teachers with scientists with the goals of getting true research experiences into classrooms and encouraging student interest in science, technology, engineering and math. NITARP, the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program, is funded by NASA and designed primarily for educators and teachers.

Mehta will start the program January, at which time she will attend the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Seattle, Washington. "That's where we get the lowdown on everything we will be doing and decide on a project," she explained.

"The program itself is really designed for teachers to work with scientists in the field and to do some research on data that has already been collected. We're really looking at data that Spitzer and other telescopes have collected and is just sitting there because there's not enough people to go through the data," Mehta says.

IPAC is one of NASA's archives. Mehta explains, "Every time they are looking at something they are collecting data. They may not need all of it so, for a short period of time, only the researcher has access to the data. But, because it's a government funded telescope, at some point that data is released to the general public. The IPAC is one of the archives."

Once the project is decided upon, Mehta will make an announcement to the school explaining the goals of the project as well as how data will be looked at.  "So, if there are any students who are interested, perhaps during lunchtime or after school they can come in and we'll start looking at the data," she said.

The Cool Part

Mehta says she's "just excited about doing research." She's been interested in astronomy for many years, "and it would be nice to do some research because I haven't been able to study astronomy and astrophysics in as much detail as I would like," she adds.

Normally, for this kind of research, one has to be a graduate student or a scientist in the field. "It's nice that I don't have to go through that whole process before I can do some research."

"Participating in research that is current and we can actually discover something that somebody may not have yet is kind of a cool aspect to me," Mehta said.

A Win-Win

"As far as the district or the school is concerned, they don't have to put in a lot because NASA pays for the conferences and any of the trips that I would take, so financially it's not a burden on the district or the school," she informed. 

The plusses for the district include: "they get their name out and have students potentially in the program who get to go to some conferences." 

Students can be involved from January 2011 to the following January and, if they are interested, may be able to attend the conference in 2012.

"NASA will pay for two students to come out for the conference, participate in talking about the project if we have a talk, attend other seminars that are going on, and meet other people who have been working on different projects," said Mehta.

School Support

Mehta received the go-ahead from Department Head Sheila Ward and Principal Charlie Macunas. Only 15 of the 30 to 40 applicants were accepted.

She will miss only four school days this January for the annual conference. During the summer, there is also a short period where she may travel to Caltech (California Institute of Technology) or JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

Interested Students

Students do not need to be taking astronomy to participate in the research. 

"It's really somebody who's interested in science and can potentially handle math because there will a lot of data to look at. It's really just the science, technology, math kind of aspect."

She adds, "If they don't have an astronomy background, we can talk about what we're doing and why it's important, how this fits into space research."

Longer Term

Mehta is excited about being able to involve students who may have wanted to take the astronomy course further or just further their understanding of the topic.

She says, "Ultimately, it would be great if we got published – to have my name on a publication that affects the scientific community would be amazing."

For additional information on NITARP, click here