SuperNOVA summer camp: High school students get hands-on experience solving climate problems

Students at Dalhousie’s SuperNOVA summer program put their remotely operated vehicles to the test.

High school students in Dalhousie University’s SuperNOVA Ocean Climate Innovation Program put their remotely operated vehicles to the test in the Halifax Harbour.

Jarman Ley, the program coordinator of SuperNOVA, said 25 students took part in the program focused on ocean technologies, engineering, and artificial intelligence.

“We started this program to get high school students excited and interested in the climate and how the ocean relates to that,” said Ley.

“They all developed programs for their own sensors and then drove them into the harbour to see the difference between historical harbour data and current harbour data.”

The students are testing for oxygen, solidity, and the acidity of the water, said Ley.

“They are specifically doing dissolved oxygen to see if fish have enough oxygen to breathe. They are doing the solidity because as climate changes or temperature changes you can have saltier waters, which is inhospitable to plants. They are doing the acidity of the water, the oxygen reduction potential, which is essentially how the ocean cleans itself.”

Ley said the program teaches skills the students can take into their university careers.

“It’s been a really interesting way to take all of the knowledge that we’ve learned and wrap it into one project that we can test and see the results of,” said student Finnegan Jafmann.

“A lot of the people here are probably going to use this as really good experience because we got to go to a lot of places. We got to tour multiple parts of the Dal building and the engineering section, and we got to talk to a lot of people about their projects,” said student Emily Whidden. “For me, it was a lot of interesting information, but for the people who are planning to go into these fields or even come to Dal, it was probably a really good foot in the door.”

From 2023 to date, Dalhousie University said SuperNOVA has reached more than 27,500 youth through this not-for-profit initiative.

“Young people are the lifeblood of the future. So, we really believe if we start to encourage them now, that they’ll be that much more advanced when they get to university and potentially study it and develop the next generation of innovation,” said Ley.

According to Dalhousie University, SuperNOVA summer camps introduce participants to STEM concepts, careers and mentors through “fun experiments and innovative hands-on activities.”

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