New Hampshire sends its first students to National Youth Science Camp
Apr. 12—Diya Mahaveer of Nashua and Molly DellaValla of Jackson live more than 125 miles apart, but they are next-door neighbors and kindred spirits in the universe of science, computer programming and engineering.
This summer, the girls will meet in person as New Hampshire's first delegates to National Youth Science Camp. Each state is eligible to send two students based on requirements that include academic achievement and leadership.
This is the first time in the program's 60 years that any Granite State high school applicants have qualified for the three-week, West Virginia-based summer program dedicated to nurturing future science, technology, engineering and math professionals and fostering research experience in biological and physical sciences and computer programming.
"I'm looking forward to meeting students from across the country," said DellaValla, a junior whose curriculum combines homeschooling, online courses and in-person classes at Kennett High School in Conway and at the Mount Washington Valley Career and Technical Center.
"Besides scientific research, I'm interested in how it gets implemented in a community through policy, and the ethical and philosophical side of it," she said. "There's a disconnect between all this exciting research and getting it put into practice. How can that disconnect be solved?"
Mahaveer, a senior at Nashua High School South, is interested in the intersection of computer science and visual art. Next year, she will attend the University of Michigan's College of Engineering.
At National Youth Science Camp, she said, "I'll get to meet delegates from different states and collaborate," attend hands-on workshops, and be exposed "to diverse perspectives and different cultures and regions."
Although their passions and academic trajectories are different, they demonstrate the value of flexibility in education, ongoing parent involvement, mentorship, nurturing interest and meeting students where their abilities and passions lie.
"New Hampshire is proud to have two academically focused youth that will represent our state at the national level and serve as role models for today's youth," Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said in a news release.
Rising in STEM
Surveys show that 28% of scientists and engineers are female, according to Chris Moore, CEO of FIRST Robotics, but that percentage is growing.
DellaValla moved to the Mount Washington Valley from Michigan's Upper Peninsula at age 4. She is technically homeschooled, and took hybrid education to an art form.
Her self-directed curriculum combines school clubs and classes in art and environmental science at Kennett, online math through Khan Academy, vocational education classes in aviation, advanced manufacturing and computer assisted drawing and design and an ongoing research project through the New Hampshire Academy of Science, based at a laboratory in Lyme.
Mahaveer is a senior who studied visual art for eight years then discovered a career interest in engineering and computer science as a junior. She participated in FIRST Robotics then took an online computer programming course for girls, "Coding with Klossy," over the summer.
She has been guided by her parents, including her software engineer father, and decided to combine design and computer science after studying Java programming at Nashua South.
With hard work and a commitment of time, "you can grow and expand more in something you find more enjoyable," Mahaveer said. "There's a huge convergence between design, analytics and art — and art and technology in general."
DellaValla traces her interest in design and engineering to Lego League at age 4.
But it was her experience and mentorship starting in eighth grade at the New Hampshire Academy of Science summer camp that set her passion in motion. There she began a four-year research project that continues.
For several years she commuted virtually or in person to a laboratory near the Vermont border, where she explored the programming side of biology research. She collaborated with peers and an optical engineer to design an illumination system that would enable developing chicken embryos to be photographed at different developmental stages.
"That was my first real introduction to engineering," she said. "I started to design an illumination system to go on a microscope."
Using a Raspberry Pi, a computer the size of a cellphone with the capabilities of a laptop, she took pictures and ran LEDs to illuminate embryos living on yolks in petri dishes. "We're just now imaging a living embryo outside of the shell of an egg," she said.
DellaValla said she's grateful for teachers who became mentors, and for being able to take classes in three different career pathways at Mount Washington Valley Career and Technical Center.
"They're one of the reasons I feel lucky to be homeschooled," DellaValla said. "I've been able to take more classes there than a regular student."
She fits online work around assignments with specific deadlines and takes core classes after school and on weekends through the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School.
"Going into high school, I was a very academically minded student and never thought to try vocational education courses," she said.
Mahaveer hopes the Youth Science Camp will be a trial balloon for the learning environment of college. Pondering what she found most helpful in high school, she said, "Make sure you surround yourself with people with similar interests."
