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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:] 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.
  • Team build, team build, team build. The work is so much more successful and enjoyable if you build the trust.
  • 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.
  • The most important part of the program for me was the reiteration of the science behind our research. We wrote a proposal and thought that we understood the science and then were amazed every day that there was some nuance to the science that we hadn’t caught yet.
  • [student:] I never really considered pursuing a career in astronomy or astrophysics beforehand, but after doing real scientific work with the subject matter, hearing speakers from this field, and touring facilities like JPL, astronomy and astrophysics has suddenly become so much more intriguing to me. It was great to have this "real-world" scientific experience.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT