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Summer Visit - 2018 - Cosmic DIRt

The summer visit to Caltech is 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 Cosmic dIRt team came to visit in June 2018. The core team educators attended, plus 10 students.

Quotes

  • Our group is absolutely changed [by the summer visit], especially in terms of engagement from the kids who are now absolutely psyched and won’t stop texting me about wanting to do more research.
  • Going through the project and data in person was incredibly important. I thought I fully understood what we were doing but I understand so much more now after being there in person.
  • [student:] Cool research doesn’t always require incredibly complicated math/science.
  • For teachers it can be hard to let yourself not know things in front of the kids but it is even harder to let yourself be wrong; accept that this is part of the experience.
  • [student:] I think that the most important quality for an astronomer to have other than the obvious (intelligence, writes well, etc.) is perseverance. Because no matter how smart you are or how much research you have done, eventually you will get to the point where there is something that you simply just don't understand. However, being an astronomer means pushing through those difficulties and working at the problem until you have solved it, which is exactly what perseverance is.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2018 - Cosmic DIRt