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Summer Visit - 2015 - IC417

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 IC417 team came to visit in June 2015. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] An astronomer must never stop asking questions.
  • [student:] I got to deal with the frustrations of being wrong and trying to figure things out, but I also saw the creative solutions people come up with to solve these problems. I also learned how important it is to code and that fluency in at least one relevant computer language is very important.
  • Several of my students have started rethinking their educational paths/choices (thinking more towards something relating to their experiences from this summer.)
  • [student:] The most surprising part to me was how much this project is truly ours. Our scientist has us do all our own work and trusts our abilities in doing so. We sit, struggle, but then we figure it out, with only assistance when really needed, and that our scientist isn't doing all the work for us. We make the charts and look over the research and we find the answers. So I guess I am surprised by how much we do in this projects, and that it isn’t the scientist doing all the work.
  • [student:] This has for sure changed what I thought about astronomy, especially engineering. I respect what they do a lot more because none of it is easy. And I learned that you can’t have astronomy without the engineers to help them get them where they want to go.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - IC417