Published: September 15, 2007
Mr. Spuck came to visit Luisa Rebull at the SSC for a month, Jul 9-Aug 3. His two primary goals were (1) to gain a deeper personal understanding of the data reduction process for Spitzer data and the scientific environment at the SSC, and (2) to turn this personal authentic scientific experience into a richer and more authentic scientific experience for his students in Pennsylvania.
While at the SSC, Dr. Rebull brought Mr. Spuck to as many scientific talks, group meetings, lunch chats, and other events at the SSC, IPAC, and Caltech as possible. Mr. Spuck is working on an education PhD that focuses on the differences between science as it is in the classroom and as it is in reality. He was able to gain more insight into how "real science" works, and this experience has influenced what he is doing in his PhD research, and his classroom.
Mr. Spuck worked intensively with Luisa Rebull on the "Cool Wiki", a repository of materials developed as part of the Spitzer Teacher Research Project. During Mr. Spuck's last week at the SSC, he brought out 4 students from his classes and they got started on several of the exercises in the wiki, including posting some of their results. They will continue to use this resource in the coming year, as they and many of their compatriots at home will be doing science projects using Spitzer data.
Tim Spuck's students (Matt Heath, Matt Walentosky, Nick Kelly, and Greg Goreczny) visited the SSC from July 31 to Aug 3. They worked on several of the exercises in the wiki, including posting some of their results. They will continue to use this resource in the coming year, as they and many of their compatriots at home will be doing science projects using Spitzer data.
Mr. Spuck also co-presented a talk at IPAC as part of the "second friday" talk series on Aug 10.