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Summer Visit - 2013 - C-CWEL

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The "C-CWEL" team came to visit in August 2013. The core team educators attended, plus 11 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] I have had a challenge and I want to continue with the challenge and find new stars.
  • [This trip] did have a big impact on what my students thought – it was very eye-opening for them to see that astronomers were not stuck in front of a telescope all night, have high computer skills but can also not understand all of what a particular program does or how, and are ‘normal’. Great for them.
  • [student: Advice for others: ] be ready to work! This was an amazing experience, but is not for the faint of heart or those looking for a “summer camp” experience. That being said; do not pass up on this. I had an amazing time, learned a lot, and had fun.
  • I was pleasantly surprised at the mature behavior and intellectual level of the student participants. They have taken the work seriously, enjoyed the out of work time activities and gained an incredible new network of resources for their future career endeavors. The students make excellent partners for learning and are highly able to acquire new skills. When partnered with more careful and experienced researchers, they can move through large data sets with ease, and accuracy. They are more easily frustrated by errors and do not have training in trouble shooting and meta-cognition that can let them solve more problems alone.
  • Again, NITARP never fails to positively surprise me by changing my perception of astronomy and the scientific process in general. I have been blown away with the amount of work that, for our respective project, goes into reducing a tiny patch on the sky. There is so much to know and not enough time to learn everything - I understand what PhD really means and how astronomy explains the Universe.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2013 - C-CWEL