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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

  • [student:] When I ran into problems, working together allowed me to talk through the issue, and others proposed solutions that I had never thought of-- I think it is great to hear insight from other people.
  • [student:] The most surprising thing for me on this trip was learning about how multi-faceted the field of astronomy is. I had never realized that there were so many different paths you could follow in this area. It was especially cool to hear from all of the speakers that were brought in because, although they all work in the same field, they all had such different careers and areas of focus and research.
  • 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.
  • [student:] the benefits of actually working together with the group greatly outweigh the financial and logistical hassle. When we were all together, we got to know and understand each other, which in turn improved our ability to work cohesively as a group, which in turn betters our project.
  • [Astronomy] includes people with a broad background of experience, interests, skills, and degrees.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT