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Summer Visit - 2016 - LLAMMa

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 LLAMMa team came to visit in July 2016. The 3 core team educators attended, plus 11 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] The most surprising thing to me was how relaxed it was. I was expecting a “cookbook” experience and instead we were given the tools and then figured it out ourselves. I really liked that and I think I understood everything better because of it.
  • [student:] Real astronomy is a lot of numbers and a lot of work. I didn’t realize quite how interactive it was with the engineering, I thought they were more separated.
  • Overall, *all* of my experiences with real scientists, especially those who work in the field to collect data, contradict the simple model of the hypothesis-experiment-conclusion that textbooks taught me and (attempt) to teach students even to this day.
  • [student:] I think seeing the images and comparing them to the SED graphs was surprising. I sort of tied everything we were learning together.
  • The best thing about the trip was getting to spend time together working. I enjoyed watching the kids get to know each other and the other adults. I watched them grow in confidence and it made me feel very accomplished. Even though I was exhausted at the end of every day, it was well spent time and that face-to-face block of time was necessary for making sure my students and I understood everything.

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Summer Visit - 2016 - LLAMMa