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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

  • [student:] I know from our discussions that an astronomer has to be creative. They have to think outside of the box to do work that has never been done before. I think they also need to be extremely patient. It takes a long time and a lot of hard [work] to do astronomy research and I constantly found myself impatient to move onto the next thing.
  • [student:] The least surprising thing that happened was that it was a lot of work. We were told going in that we were going to work the hardest we might have in all our lives. We did so much work and learned so many new things in such a short span of time.
  • I appreciate knowing that astronomers celebrate their “geekiness” and their families. I believe that point alone squelches many preconceived notions. Not only did it change how I understand astronomers but how others understand astronomers. The look on people’s faces when I talk about the Caltech astronomer and how *she* is guiding us through the research process, is extremely telling. I think it is easy to point the finger at others when they profile astronomers as “old white guys in lab coats” but I am afraid I may have also held that misinformed preconceived notion.
  • 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.
  • I find it amazing that a group of individuals, from across the nation, with a variety of different backgrounds can cooperatively produce a research project in one year. I learned the research was not only about being able to master [..] the discipline but actively engage in group-supporting soft skills. I learned more about star formation and SEDs than I ever thought possible.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2019 - IDYL