Sarah Pruys
This year, two students from Fort Frances High School participated in the annual Shad Valley program, a month-long university experience focused on engineering and entrepreneurship.
Meghan Metke, 17, stayed at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver while Mallory Duffy, also 17, went to Carleton University in Ottawa.
And while they both had different experiences, they agreed it was one of the best summers they’ve ever had.
Metke, who would like to study environmental engineering after graduating high school, outlined what the program was like.
“You get a taste of university life,” she explained. “You are living on campus and having rez food every day, and attending lectures in the actual lecture halls and getting to visit the different faculties.
“You do work hard when you’re there,” Metke stressed. “There is an academic base to it.
“You go to lectures frequently, and a lot of the lectures at first are based on engineering and entrepreneurship.
“We had a lot of guest speakers,” she added. “We had businessmen worth millions and millions of dollars come in and talk to us about starting up businesses.”
They weren’t tested on what they learned, but Metke took notes because she wanted to remember everything.
In addition, they also participated in multiple workshops.
“This one time, we had a mock [forestry] economy, where we had different roles,” Metke recounted, noting some students were foresters, some played government officials, some were traitors, and some developed the “trees.”
“It got really heated and really hectic, and everyone was yelling at each other . . . it was really interesting how into it everyone got,” she laughed.
It wasn’t all business, though. In another workshop, they made an instalment of lanterns for a lantern festival.
Weekends were more
relaxed. They went to downtown Vancouver for a shopping day and also went camping for two nights at the beginning of the program, where they enjoyed rock-repelling into a cave and canoeing.
“Some of my favourite stuff was going on the little trips that we would do—the stuff that was different from a normal day,” agreed Duffy.
“One day we did ‘Ottawa Day,’ and we went to Parliament and saw all of the Parliament buildings,” she noted.
“We saw the changing of the guard, and then we got to tour around a bit and go to a museum.
“We went camping at a conservation area,” Duffy added. “It was awesome, but some kids weren’t used to being out in the bush so it was funny seeing them react to mosquitoes.”
Both teens also had to complete a group project over the course of the month for the “Shad Cup.”
The 60 Shad participants at each campus were put into house teams of 10 people, then the six teams each worked on developing a business.
“At the end of the month, you pitch your business in front of investors and experts in business, who then judge the pitches and rank them in different categories [best marketing, best financial plans, best overall],” explained Metke.
Her team earned second overall. But when all of the participants voted on the best business, it was her team that came out on top and was chosen to represent the school in a national competition in Waterloo in October.
Thanks to a newly-introduced “wild card,” two additional teams from UBC also were chosen to participate in the competition, so it will have three teams at the final awards ceremony in the fall.
Because Metke is going on a school trip to Greece at the same time, she will be unable to attend. But she’s still busy putting the final touches on the business plan and turning point form notes into a 25-page paper.
The theme that all projects across the country followed was “to prevent or mitigate obesity in North American youth.”
Metke’s business is called “Start Healthy,” which she said is a service where families can go and get meals prepared, as well as take part in preparing them.
“Then they can take them home and freeze them, and eat them over the next few weeks rather than go to a fast-food restaurant,” she explained.
Aimed at young, busy families, Metke’s team created a service that would save time and take the guesswork out of making healthy meals, as well as follow Canada’s Food Guide along with correct proportions.
“You all have different strengths and can learn from each other,” Metke said of her team.
Duffy’s project was focused on exercise rather than nutrition, which she described as “a watch that has an accelerometer that tracks movement, and then you can plug it into a computer and it will send information to your doctor.”
That way, doctors or other people who need the information will know exactly how much exercise a person gets.
The house teams were not always together, and the students often were separated into other groups so they all could get to know each other.
“They want you to get to know everyone and develop a strong community, so that was definitely an awesome aspect of it—that you get really close with everyone there,” Metke said.
Speaking of her overall experience, Metke admitted “it was draining.”
“You’re going from 9 a.m.-10 p.m. every day,” she recalled. “You don’t have a lot of free time.
“But it’s so worth it because of the people you meet, and it’s just so much fun when you’re there.
“There’s so much opportunity to just have fun and explore a new place, which was really, really exciting for me,” she enthused.
Metke also feels the experience has better prepared her for university next fall.
“I loved having that independence and feeling, ‘I can really do this. I can be off on my own and make new friends and make it somewhere else,’” she reasoned.
Duffy also enjoyed living in the city for a month.
“I thought it was crazy,” she remarked. “Just being alone in the city was a big deal, but I really liked it.”
She was amazed by the size of the Carleton campus, which sees 25,000 students attend throughout the school year.
“It was crazy that that many people were at a university alone; it’s just so much bigger than here,” Duffy marvelled.
She added she would “absolutely” recommend the Shad Valley program to fellow students.
“Not only is it good for a résumé or an application for school, but just the whole experience of it,” she explained.
“There was not one time that I was wanting to come home, and not one time I wasn’t wanting to be there.
“You’re surrounded by so many kids that are so driven and are the same kind of people that you are,” she noted.
“These kids are just wanting to get out and start doing their lives already.
“I was bawling when I had to leave and my mom came and I totally freaked out; I didn’t want to go.”
In fact, Duffy already is considering attending Carleton after completing Grade 12 as it offers a neuroscience program she’s interested in.
Metke said if students are interested in participating in Shad Valley, she recommends applying by the first deadline in late 2012.
She noted the application process has multiple parts, as well as additional forms for bursaries.
