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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

  • Truly, the value of this program is in the students, teachers and scientists working together as multi-level, multi-generational colleagues at Caltech. The content authority of a teacher is often strong, but the content authority of scientists is on a whole other level! And making a personal connection with a scientist raises the value of the student experience yet another magnitude.
  • [student:] I now understand that astronomers don’t send spacecrafts to Jupiter simply to blow the minds of children—that’s just a side effect of the greater purpose.
  • [student:] The most surprising part of this experience was how easily everyone connected with each other. We are all different, but we somehow were able to become good friends and team members in a short amount of time. This same connection happened between the students and the teachers. We did not view them as teachers, but rather friends that we can trust and exchange help with.
  • [This trip] inspired me. My colleagues and I are teachers. Just as you, scientists, are developing your portfolio and skills as teachers, we need to do a better job of also being scientists. [..] You have reached out to embrace teaching and given us the means to reach out and embrace science.
  • [The best thing was] Making the human connections. From [the first night through the last], it was clear that we were on a human endeavor as much as a scientific one. I believe the kids came away understanding that science itself is a fundamentally human activity.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN