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Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT

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 LADDT team came to visit in June 2015. The core team educators attended, plus 14 students.

Quotes

  • [Astronomy] includes people with a broad background of experience, interests, skills, and degrees.
  • The visit seemed absolutely crucial to me because the time we spend in person is about ten times as productive and meaningful as the time spent on telecons and over e-mail. There is something about being in a room together that really pushed out understanding and work forward tremendously.
  • I was most surprised by the technical depth of our project. I thought I had a good understanding coming in to the June workshop, but I was just at the surface. We were literally drawn deeper into the black holes! I also have greatly increased my skills with Excel.
  • It would have been impossible for me to develop the depth of understanding I achieved about our project through telecons. I came to Caltech thinking I possessed a thorough understanding of our project, but quickly realized it had much more depth. We still have much analysis to do that I could not have done without direct supervision. I am much more confident now after having worked side by side with the LADDT crew. Correlating the filters and redshits is still at the edge of my conceptual field, but it is coming into focus thanks to the direct contact I experienced at Caltech.
  • Another moment of frustration involved several hours of calculations based on misinterpretation of data and formulas. It was a wonderfully humbling learning experience for all of us involved. The student especially seemed to appreciate seeing their teachers hit the dead end and have to do an about face.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT