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Summer Visit - 2019 - IDYL

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 IDYL team came to visit in July-August 2019. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 5 students.

Quotes

  • The second most important and interesting thing was being able to work with EVERYONE in the group. The collaboration between the members of our team was awesome. It was very nice to be in the same room working together to figure things out. I think our team completed a lot of work this week but it really didn’t seem like work because we all came together as a cohesive group. I [..] do not think we could have accomplished so much in just a few short days with just zoom meetings and email.
  • This week changed the way I think about astronomy quite a bit and that's sorta what I wanted out of the program when I applied. I'm used to teaching intro astronomy from a textbook and using a lot of simulations as lab activities, but rarely using real data (even in canned activities). My experience [...] a few years back gave me a taste of astronomy research. That is, I got the chance to see data being gathered [...] However, that was where the experience ended. I did not have the opportunity to see how the data was processed or turned eventually into a research paper. This NITARP experience has been a nice complement to my [past] experience and may be a stepping stone for me to do additional research in pursuit of an advanced degree.
  • [student:] While learning so much was definitely a huge part of this trip, I would say the best thing about the trip would be the teamwork. To get all of us in the same room to work on this research and bounce ideas off of each other was truly amazing. It was great to have a team that was dedicated to the same goal and we were all passionate about what we would do with this newfound knowledge and research when it is all said and done.
  • I knew that there would be a lot of work to do going in to this week so I guess that is what was least surprising for me. I have been looking forward to this for a long time and I absolutely loved learning the specific math and physics behind what we are doing in our project. It makes me want to take more classes in astrophysics!
  • [The best thing about the trip was] Meeting everyone on the team in person and working on astrophysics at Caltech! I have been looking forward to this week ever since I was accepted in the program. I can honestly say I learned astrophysics at Caltech with an outstanding astronomy research scientist. Not very many people can say that! Our team really came together as one and that made the whole process very enjoyable in my opinion.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2019 - IDYL