Canada’s premier pre-university STEAM and entrepreneurship program.
One summer, lifelong impact.
Shad offers a suite of transformative programs designed to ignite curiosity, build confidence, and prepare students in Grades 10 and 11 to thrive in a fast-changing world. Through hands-on STEAM learning, immersive post-secondary experience, entrepreneurship projects, vibrant community-building, and real-world design challenges.
Shad aims to inspire, connect and supercharge the next generation of changemakers.
Days Immersive Experience
Areas of Discovery
Post-secondary Campuses
Mentor-to-Student Ratio
Every Shad program follows an intentional design. Throughout the month, the program is thoughtfully balanced across four interconnected sections: hands-on STEAM learning, community building, design and entrepreneurship, and exploration beyond the classroom and campus.
Shad’s programs are built around exploration. Rather than following traditional subject boundaries, learning is organized across five interdisciplinary areas of discovery that bring together science, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership, the humanities, and emerging fields. Learning experiences vary by campus, with each offering a unique mix of workshops, projects, challenges, and discussions shaped by its academic strengths, local context, and areas of expertise. Together, they create opportunities for students to broaden their perspectives, deepen their curiosity, and explore new possibilities for their future. Learning topics may include:
Emerging Fields & Science Frontiers
Capture the knowledge frontier
The scientific disciplines shaping how we understand the living and physical world. This knowledge could include human health, genetics, chemistry, Earth systems, astronomy and the research methods that hold it all together.
The Code of Living Things
Decode the science of life at its smallest scale, from DNA and genetics to what shapes every living thing.
The Earth Lab
Step outside the classroom and into the field to discover how the Earth and its living systems actually work.
Exploring the Universe
Look up and look further. Explore the cosmos through astronomy, planetary science, and traditions of the sky.
Investigation & Research Methods
Build scientific thinking and evidence-based research skills, while exploring many ways of knowing what we know.
Matter, Molecules & Materials
Unlock the hidden logic of matter, from everyday chemistry to the materials shaping the future.
Sustainability & Human Impact
Dig into climate, sustainability, and the science of how human choices are reshaping the planet we live on.
The Science of Human Health
Explore healthcare science, from medicine and anatomy to mental wellness and how we heal.
Technology, Engineering & Innovation
Decode the tech innovations
The disciplines of making and building, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, software, biomedical and energy engineering, aerospace, creative media, and design that puts real human diversity first.
AI & Robotics
Engage with AI and robotics as both technology and ethics, learning how machines make decisions and when to question them.
Computational Thinking & Algorithms
Discover that computer science is less about computers and more about decomposing problems and building systems that work.
Creative Media & Game Design
Discover digital media as a craft, where every decision shapes how a person experiences what you’ve made.
Design, Build & Iterate
Discover that the most important engineering skill is the willingness to iterate, and that hands know things minds don’t.
Design for Community & Diversity
Challenge the assumption that technology is built for an average user, and learn to design for real human diversity.
Emerging Technology
Get early access to the frontiers reshaping our world, from quantum computing to aerospace and the technologies of tomorrow.
Engineering the Living World
Explore what happens when biology and engineering collide, from biomedical devices to nanotechnology and the ethics that come with both.
Sustainable Energy & Systems
Tackle the systems behind clean energy, sustainable transportation, and what it means to power a community responsibly.
Society, Culture & the Human Mind
Understand the human context
How humans make meaning, build societies, and understand one another. Explore this across creative arts, psychology, political science, sociology, ethics, and Indigenous knowledge.
Creative Arts & Expression
Discover art as a different way of thinking, one that reveals what no other mode of inquiry can reach.
Governance, Policy & Public Life
Discover how policy shapes daily life, and how to understand power well enough to one day use it.
Immersive Arts & Cultural Experiences
Discover that some things can only be understood by being inside them, where art becomes environment.
Indigenous Knowledge, Cultures & Future
Experience Indigenous knowledge as living, evolving systems that continue to shape land, community, and our collective future.
Narrative, Language & Communication
Discover that stories are the architecture of belief, and that learning to read them is a transferable skill.
Psychology & Human Behaviour
Discover that most of what drives human behaviour is invisible to the person doing it, including your own.
Sociology, Ethics & Justice
Examine how social structures distribute opportunity, visibility, and harm, and the ethical frameworks we use to judge them.
Value, Reasoning & Critical Thinking
Learn to think clearly in the presence of hard questions, where careful reasoning compounds over a lifetime.
Applied Problem Solving & Entrepreneurship
Navigate the business world
Where knowledge becomes action via human-centred design, venture building, business strategy, operations, financial literacy, and data reasoning, anchored by social innovation that measures success as collective good.
Business Strategy & Market Dynamics
Examine the strategy of organizations: positioning, pricing, and the deeper question of what makes people genuinely care.
Data Analytics & Mathematical Thinking
Discover that mathematics is not a subject but a lens, and that quantitative thinking clarifies almost everything it touches.
Entrepreneurship & Building Ventures
Discover that the great ideas that make it are rarely the smartest, but the ones whose founders kept going.
Financial Literacy & Economics
Discover that money is a system with rules, and that most people are never actually taught them.
Human-Centred Design & Innovation
Discover the design discipline that puts the person before the product, and the problem before the solution.
Interdisciplinary Problem Solving
Discover that complex problems don’t respect disciplinary boundaries, and neither do the people best equipped to solve them.
Organization, Operations & Project Management
Discover that operational excellence is its own form of creativity, and what separates good ideas from great companies.
Social Innovation & Community Impact
Explore what entrepreneurship looks like when collective flourishing, not individual gain, is what success actually means.
Leadership & Future Readiness
Learning to build the future
Get students ready for what’s next. Hone skills such as public speaking, leadership, negotiation, wellbeing, creative confidence, mentorship, and a capstone challenge, with personal growth treated as rigorously as any subject.
Communicating with Confidence & Impact
Build the presence to be heard, one of the most durable advantages a person can ever develop.
Creative Confidence & Divergent Thinking
Build creative confidence as a muscle, not a personality type, including the courage to suggest ideas that might not work.
Empathy, Resilience & Self-Awareness
Treat mental health, resilience, and self-awareness as the foundation of high achievement, not the supplement to it.
Innovation Challenge & Learning Showcase
Bring everything together by applying it to a real problem, and present what you’ve built to an actual audience.
Leadership & Team Dynamics
Discover that leadership reveals itself under pressure, often in ways that surprise even the most prepared person.
Pathways, Mentorship & Career Exploration
Discover that the most useful career advice rarely comes from a career fair, and what does instead.
Relationships, Community & the Shad Network
Learn to distinguish between performing networking and actually building trust, in a community that shows up for life.
Strategic Thinking & Negotiation
Practice making real decisions under real pressure, where the skill is not winning arguments but knowing when to move.
Shad partners with some of Canada’s top post-secondary institutions to deliver immersive learning experiences on campuses from coast to coast. From living in residence and exploring state-of-the-art facilities to connecting with faculty, mentors, and fellow participants, each Shad campus provides a unique setting for the same transformative experience in innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership, and community.
Montreal, Quebec
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Sudbury, Ontario
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Waterloo, Ontario
Campus availability may vary each year.
Some institutions will not host a program in 2026.
Shad partners with some of Canada’s top post-secondary institutions to deliver immersive learning experiences on campuses from coast to coast. From living in residence and exploring state-of-the-art facilities to connecting with faculty, mentors, and fellow participants, each Shad campus provides a unique setting for the same transformative experience in innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership, and community.
Montreal, Quebec
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Sudbury, Ontario
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Waterloo, Ontario
Campus availability may vary each year.
Some institutions will not host a program in 2026.
Shad partners with some of Canada’s top post-secondary institutions to deliver immersive learning experiences on campuses from coast to coast. From living in residence and exploring state-of-the-art facilities to connecting with faculty, mentors, and fellow participants, each Shad campus provides a unique setting for a transformative experience.
Montreal, Quebec
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Sudbury, Ontario
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Waterloo, Ontario
Campus availability may vary each year.
Some institutions will not host a program in 2026.
Most Shad participants have experienced the program through our signature Live-In program. Building on this foundation, Shad has expanded its offerings to include four distinctive program pathways that share the same commitment to innovation, community, and personal growth, creating more ways for students to experience Shad.
Live-in Program
Live on campus, build lifelong friendships, and immerse yourself in university life while tackling real-world challenges.
Shad Unplugged
Go offline to plug into deeper conversations, meaningful friendships, and distraction-free discovery.
Shad A-Plus
Learn to drive real-world impact through a powerful blend of humanities, arts, business thinking and STEM.
Francophone
Expand your perspective, and connect with students from across Canada in an immersive French-language environment.
Shad Virtual
Innovation without borders. Same transformative Shad experience with more flexibility and a digital-first approach built for today’s world.
For more than 45 years, Shad has helped future leaders discover new possibilities, build lasting confidence, and develop the skills and connections to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
of Shad participants
recommend Shad
of Shad participants
report improved critical thinking
of Shad participants
feel better equipped to solve tough problems
of Shad participants
say Shad enhanced their communication abilities
Here are various common questions that come up about Shad and our programs:
Program / General
Live-in / A-Plus / Unplugged: July 5 – July 31 | 24/7
Virtual: July 6 – July 31 | Monday – Friday, 11 am – 5 pm ET
Shad’s Live-in program is hosted at our carefully selected post-secondary campuses and Shad’s Virtual program is powered by Athabasca University.
Learn more about Shad’s Live-in experience and Shad’s Virtual experience and our two program options – Unplugged and A-Plus.
The number and locations of Shad campuses offering A-Plus and Unplugged will be determined by the demand from accepted applicants.
While we take into consideration your preferred campus options, Shad ultimately chooses your campus in order to promote a pan-Canadian experience for all participants.
Well-qualified team members work hard to ensure that all aspects of the experience – academic, logistical and social – meet or exceed expectations.
Many of these dedicated team members are top-rated post-secondary professors. Volunteers from all areas of the university and business community also add to the mix to create a dynamic experience. All team members and volunteers subscribe to the highest code of conduct as defined and maintained by Shad Canada.
No. Shad participants must commit to attending the entire duration of the program.
Students who require accommodations related to disabilities, cultural/religious practices, or any other human rights protected ground should contact Shad Canada as early as possible to discuss their accommodation needs and to ensure Shad Canada can meet their needs. Careful consideration should be made prior to accepting the offer to participate.
Requests can be sent to info@shad.ca
Shad can count towards high school credit for participants from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The Shad experience can also qualify as a Sector-Partnered Experience for SHSM students in Ontario and towards CAS requirements for IB diploma students. Shad’s Virtual campus participants also have the opportunity to complete credentials from Athabasca University.
