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Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN

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 HIPS AGN team came to visit in June 2016. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.


Quotes

  • [student:] I was surprised about how our procedure veered off from its original course[...]
  • I don’t feel that this work could have been completed online. The teachers did come up with a procedure, but we abandoned it once we were all together and working because we could communicate more effectively in real-time. We could read one another’s body language and quickly play off of others’ ideas. We could also work on different sub-projects concurrently with others and thus get more work done in a shorter time period.
  • [student:] I was least surprised at the amount of trial and error and patience that was required as we began to delve into our data. It’s most definitely not a quick process!
  • [student:] I think the two most important qualities in any astronomer are hard work and passion. Hard work is necessary in constantly building the knowledge base required to succeed, and passion is necessary in providing the intrinsic motivation required to succeed.
  • The best part of the Caltech trip was learning to work together with people you have never met before. Students and adults as learners together; it was really cool to participate in.

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN