Shad Valley program opens young minds to science

Few high school students embrace the opportunity to pursue knowledge during their time off in the summer. However, the Shad Valley program attracts an elite kind of student.

Through participation in this international program, exceptional students in Grades 10 to 12 will spend a month living in residence at a Canadian host university and will engage in a summer enrichment program that focuses on the sciences, engineering and entrepreneurship.

"The McMaster Shad Valley program has been helping top students in high school find an edge in the world of academia and research for about 10 years," said Doug Boreham, associate professor in the Department of Medical Physics and Applied Radiation Sciences and director of the McMaster Shad Valley program. "It's an adventure that these young high achievers would not be able to benefit from except in a University setting, and it provides exposure to different disciplines for a multi-faceted experience."

This year, the Shad Valley participants will complete a special component, only available at McMaster. The Faculty of Science and the McMaster Shad Valley Program will spend one week prototyping a new Honours Integrated Science (iSci) B.Sc. program that will start in September 2009.

This component of Shad Valley ran from July 10 to 15, during which time the high school students planned a mission to Mars and met Canadian astronaut Dave Williams.

"We hope that we will eventually see some of the Shad Valley students applying to the iSci program," said Carolyn Eyles, professor in the School of Geography & Earth Sciences and chair of the Development and Instructional Committees for iSci. "They are just the kind of extremely focused, high achieving, well rounded students we are looking for in the program."

Eyles continued, "The iSci program is designed to produce students that will be able to understand how scientific thought is created and communicated. Students will be taught by interdisciplinary teams of instructors in laboratory and field settings as well as in lectures, workshops and tutorials. Much of the program content will be taught as thematic modules such as 'Deflecting an Astroid,' or 'Averting a Pandemic.' This thematic approach will allow students to understand the connections between various scientific disciplines and the relevance of science to modern society."

The Shad Valley students were expected to complete the one-week iSci component in much the same way as future iSci undergraduate students, albeit simplified due to the condensed time frame. The students demonstrated their work during a poster competition on July 14 and met Dave Williams, astronaut, physician and director of the new McMaster Centre for Medical Robotics.

"Shad Valley is an excellent enrichment program and it gives us an opportunity to showcase and model the iSci program," said John Capone, dean, Faculty of Science. "The goal of the iSci program is to produce broadly-educated individuals who will have an exceptional level of scientific literacy and will be able to contribute to any modern field of science and beyond."

For more information about the iSci program, please contact Eyles at eylesc@mcmaster.ca or Boreham at boreham@mcmaster.ca.

Lynn Easson-Irvine
McMaster Daily News