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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

  • Teachers need to maybe be reminded that it is OK if they don’t have any idea what they are doing at times – and that they are not expected to be experts in the field. They do need to be able to admit when they are confused, be open to feed back from other team members, and have time to commit to the study.
  • This week at Caltech was the greatest opportunity of my career. It was an experience that was humbling and at the same time gave me confidence. I cannot thank the NITARP program enough for the professional development, the professional relationships I've grown, and the inspiration. Thank you NITARP! Please keep this educational program going.
  • [student:] By understanding the information that SEDs were providing, I was able to draw conclusions about stars and say whether or not they could possibly be a YSO candidate and that's a pretty cool skill!
  • I saw kids rise to a challenge and meet it – they learned a lot from the process, each other, and the experience – in ways they could not get in a regular classroom setting at home.
  • 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.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2013 - C-CWEL