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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

  • 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.
  • To truly make this a successful collaborative effort between all of the teachers and all of the students and to get the commitment to the project it is vital that everyone meet in the same place and work together on site.
  • [student:] I thought working together at Caltech enabled us to become more comfortable with one another and we were able to work together and share ideas and collaborate which made our time and our work more meaningful. We could communicate about which combinations worked or didn’t work or tips about excel. After the visit, I think the group bonded quite a bit and now we’re a much more cohesive team than before the trip.
  • [student:] This experience definitely changed my preexisting views of astronomy. Beforehand, I never really thought about how many different things you could do in the field, and after participating in this program, I learned a lot about some possible career paths.
  • One of the big benefits was how quickly our depth of understanding increased just by being able to talk to each other and work together. Personally, I would not have been able to think as deeply as I did without the in person interaction and conversations over lunch.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT