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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:] The most surprising thing to me was how well we all got along and could work together from the very beginning of the project, I very much enjoyed meeting everyone on the team.
  • It was important to work on the data together, as a large team—we were able to pair with new partners and better understand the questions we had.
  • 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.
  • The visit seemed absolutely crucial to me because the time we spend in person is about ten times as productive and meaningful as the time spent on telecons and over e-mail. There is something about being in a room together that really pushed out understanding and work forward tremendously.
  • [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