North Island College’s two teams of engineering students finished one-two in a recent “hackathon” that focused on food and farming challenges.

The college found out about the event over reading break in Mid-February, but NIC still had time to enter two teams: the first-place Bulldozers comprised of team captain Connor Gallagher, Joel Baker, Tyson Bonnier and Justin Shepherd; and the second-place WestCoast BestCoast with team captain Fallon Hayter, Austin Salt, Spencer Vallintine and Ryaan Kalaar.

This was the first time for the Food and Farming Hackathon, organized by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council, along with STEM Minds and Boreal Farms. From 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., Pacific time, on March 3, the two NIC teams hunkered down in the Village M building at the Comox Valley campus to compete virtually against students across Canada. Modelled on coding hackathons, the hybrid event engaged teams of engineering students to use skills to solve real-world infrastructure problems—in this case, food and farming scenarios.

All participating NIC students are enrolled in the Foundations of Engineering Certificate, where they complete a recognized common first-year engineering curriculum before transferring to their second year at the University of Victoria, University of British Columbia or other engineering university programs in B.C. and across Canada.

For the event, the WestCoast BestCoast team designed a system for vertical farming to grow food, for example, in an apartment, which earned them second place.

"During the Food and Farming Hackathon, we realized that simply giving a topic your full attention for a few hours can really grow your perspective,” said Hayter. “We opted to design a hydroponic system, but we needed a way to stand out in the current market … This design, made in a time crunch, needed every team member working in harmony for success, allowing our ideas to bounce around and become their strongest versions."

Meanwhile, the first-place Bulldozers looked at a scenario of how to make an inherited farm profitable, using methods such as developing rentable greenhouse space to provide a steady, scalable revenue stream. An advantage was that they included costs as part of their submission.

“One thing that contributed to our success was that we didn’t try to reinvent the wheel,” Gallagher said. “Instead of changing what the farm grows, we focused on strengthening the systems already in place and making them more efficient and resilient.”

A key to the success of the NIC teams, said instructor Dennis Lightfoot, was their ability to collaborate. He was on hand for guidance, as was Co-operative Education employment services advisor Nicole Novak.

“The strengths of both teams was really teamwork. I saw all four people on each team engaged,” Lightfoot said. “When they got the results, they were ecstatic.”

The plan now is to have even more students take part next year or even encourage local secondary students to sign up for their division. 

“Our students all said we should do it again next year,” Lightfoot added.

The event aligned well with this year’s #WILbuilds theme of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Month from March 1 to 31.

On March 13, as part of WIL Month, the engineering students will also take part in a student-industry event in which small groups of students will have career conversations with professionals in the field. This includes partner engineering firms like McElhanney, Urban Systems and Muir Engineering, along with the BC Society of Engineering and Geoscience. For NIC, having these collaborative employer partners is important in order to help bridge the gap between the campus and the workplace.