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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 that I learned and did not anticipate was the amount of diversity that was present. I would have never guessed that you didn’t need some sort of astronomical background to be a part of the astronomical community.
  • I wasn’t sure exactly what else, besides looking through telescopes, astronomers really did. I see now that a lot of astronomy can be done without being near any instruments that collect the data!
  • [student:] Yes. I really like [astronomy]. I had an idea of what [astronomers] did but, actually doing it made me realize how much i actually liked astronomy. And as for astronomers… I realized that there is a large team of people from various backgrounds that contributed in their own ways.
  • [student:] . Something that I did not know to be a part of scientific research was the team aspect of it. I expected it to be more solo than teamwork. I always thought that scientist did things all on their own and never worked with anyone.
  • 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