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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:] 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.
  • [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.
  • [student:] This experience has totally opened my eyes to all the different jobs actually in astronomy.
  • 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.

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Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT