Summer "Visit" - 2020 - OIRMA

Quotes

• [...]one of NITARP’s superpowers: the way that research work can reshape the relationship between students and teachers from a hierarchical one to something more collaborative.
• [student:] what the group provided was a system of rapid feedback which I could assist with my own insights and receive help from in times of confusion. At parts in the workflow where I might be banging my head against the wall, I could work through the issue with someone else, which was helped greatly by screen sharing. By the end of the week, the group felt like more than a formal convocation of academics to conduct research, and more of a group of enthusiasts who could also joke and engage in tangent discussion, not just work.
• [student:] Real astronomy is not the enhanced pictures that ordinary people are used to seeing in the news or on the internet, instead it is data. It’s knowing how to manipulate this data to understand what it truly means. It is extracting from these numbers the structure of something that we can barely even see. In essence, astronomy is the ingenuity to turn something that is invisible into something visible. Something that I expected to be a part of scientific research was accessing the data and creating the light curves. Something that I did not expect to be a part of authentic research was the flexibility that was needed to obtain the data that you need.
• [It's important for astronomers to have:] Curiosity. Patience. Tenacity. Ability to collaborate fruitfully. Willingness to ask for help. Willingness to work hard on something that may not turn out.
• I was super impressed with the uniformity of effort and contribution from both educators and students. I think seeing this meant a lot to the students.

Related Teams

• OIRMA/Gorjian