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Summer Visit - 2023 - SCHARP

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 SCHARP team came to visit in June 2023. The 5 core team educators attended, plus 10 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] The most challenging aspect was navigating the various websites that we used to construct our data. It was frustrating sometimes because we were all learning and trying to figure out which button to press, whether this graph was correct or not, or which steps I am missing.
  • The best thing about the trip was collaborating with my group. Everyone was so willing to help each other and work toward a common goal. You don’t always see that in many work environments.
  • [student:] The most rewarding thing about being part of NITARP is getting an authentic research experience that is not provided in a normal high school classroom setting. By participating in NITARP, I learned more about the actual research process from the beginning to the end and how to better collaborate with others.
  • "Real astronomy" is using real data to analyze and make conclusions. Research is an iterative process in the sense that we get some answers that generate more questions. And we did that!
  • [student:] The most important thing I learned was that it is okay to ask for help and ask questions I may have thought were rather “dumb.”

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2023 - SCHARP