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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

  • The best part of the trip besides watching the students interact with each other would have to be participating in actual research. Making analysis mistakes, regrouping and getting back to work. I really enjoyed the authenticity of the experience.
  • [student:] The most interesting thing that I learned was just how many different jobs there are in the field of astronomy and how they all can work together or separately on different projects.
  • [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:] Some of the graphs and charts confused me at some point, but I was eventually able to work through it once it was explained to me. The support system that we had as a whole was amazing. If I got confused at any point someone would help me. Mostly the teachers helped with the information as a whole, but many students helped with my problems with excel.
  • 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