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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

  • I cannot think of anything that would have improved this experience.
  • 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.
  • [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.
  • The best thing about the trip was the ability to work with my NITARP group in person. Yes, it was a lot of work. Yes, the down time was minimal at best but we all learned from each other in a very (very) supportive, yet guided, learning environment. I know that I would not have understood the process or the product as well by working through conference calls.
  • Working together in the same location IRL is crucial for a bunch of reasons: personal dynamics develop more rapidly. It is easier to tell if people are on the same page. You can change the mode more rapidly and flexibly (change from big group to small and back, work on paper, change to whiteboard, share multiple screens at same time).

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2019 - IDYL