Alex Harding (’13) is in some pretty select company after recently being named one of 10 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) 2014 3M National Student Fellows.

The CAS grad and Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia native, currently in the third year of a five-year Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) program at Dalhousie, is described on the STLHE web site as a born innovator who integrates his talent for thinking differently with his passion for bolstering international education and outreach.

In 2013, Harding was President of World University Service of Canada (WUSC) at Acadia, which won Club of the Year and a WUSC People’s Choice Award, beating out 61 other universities across Canada for that honour. He has also prototyped a dual-axis solar stove that is currently in post-development and published a mathematical model to reduce power estimation error on wind turbines by up to 30 per cent.

In a wide-ranging e-mail interview, he discusses his time at Acadia and the formative experiences that led to the STLHE selection.

Q. What led you to choose Acadia as the starting point for your post-secondary education?

A. H. Acadia University was almost a "Hogwarts" of sorts for me; that perfect combination of being both remote and compact enough to really foster this exciting home-away-from-home feeling. Eaton-Christopher was Gryffindor, Chipman was Slyth?erin (despite the former being green), and Wheelock was the Great Hall. I still remember looking down on campus from the top storey of Tower (my new home at the time) and being able to see every part of the University: Minas Basin to University Hall, and all covered in snow. You just can't get that anywhere else.   

Q. How did your Acadia experience influence what you're doing now?

A. H. What Acadia really excels in – more than any other University I've been to - is allowing you to connect with the right people. Everybody's so close, all the time. The passion I found for globalism and renewable energy came from the students and professors I met in just the first week of classes. The engineering faculty at Carnegie already had professors working on finding energy and power in the most unlikely of places, from compost to airborne turbines. They challenged me to join in and I wholeheartedly accepted. When your professors cease to be academic overlords, but instead have the ability to spark new interests in your mind, you know you're in for a wild ride.

With respect to working with international students, I was inspired almost immediately by the WUSC committee based out of our Wong International Centre. The local sponsored students, from refugee camps in Kenya and South Sudan, opened my eyes to a world of education outside of Canada. It's one thing to hear numbers and figures from local outreach groups and NGOs. It's another completely to look into the eyes of people so resilient as these men and women and hear their stories first-hand.

Q. Is there any particular faculty member or Acadia experience that stands out in your mind?

A. H. Wow! That might just be trickier than picking out a roster for Team Canada. Dr. Paul Arnold from Carnegie (although he prefers the title "King Compost") certainly stands out as being instrumental in leading me to pursue innovative ideas in both wind and solar. When your professor manages to extract enough energy from natural waste to nearly boil water, there's not an energy idea in the world that could be too crazy to pursue.

As for experiences, I couldn't talk about Acadia without mentioning its WUSC team, and the dramatic resurgence we undertook together during my term as president – from nearly needing to shut down to a complete turnaround that won the highest possible national honours for Acadia (People's Choice Awards, 2012) is something I'll never forget. The committee is still going strong, and this past year received approval to sponsor two student refugees for the first time in its history in Wolfville. I can't tell you how proud I am of their continued growth and accomplishment.

Q. Leadership is a key component of the STLHE 3M Fellowship. Did your time at Acadia foster and develop leadership skills?

A. H. Absolutely. Leadership is something that I believe needs to be learned first-hand; there's really not a textbook or class that can prepare you quite like finding an initiative and ways to succeed with it. Acadia presents you with opportunities in spades – and I think every tackboard and wall on campus that is covered in posters for teams, clubs, committees and events is a testament to that.

Most importantly, I discovered that leadership is about giving tools, not orders; opportunities, not directions. I learned the strengths and weaknesses of every one of my peers in both engineering and WUSC life, and built on them. Acadia was a fantastic training field outside of the classroom even more than inside, and I believe that the National Student Fellowship is recognizing our accomplishments together. This is the first time in history for Nova Scotia to be included in STLHE's student branch, and it's something we all deserve to be proud of.

For more on Alex and STLHE 3M National Student Fellows, please visit: http://www.stlhe.ca/awards/3m-national-student-fellowship/20143mnsf/