Engaging Educators in Renewable Energy (ENERGY)

This three-year RET Site: Engaging Educators in Renewable Energy (ENERGY) seeks to educate, inspire, and engage educators in middle and high schools and community colleges in the exciting field of renewable energy for their classrooms through research, pedagogical activities, and projects. Participants will work alongside university faculty, graduate students, and industrial advisors through the summer-term research activities and academic year follow up. The program focuses on interdisciplinary research in engineering, computer science, and information technology. RET participants and faculty will explore energy-related research and transformational activities that reduce Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and leverage curricular approaches that allow them to directly transition this knowledge into highly inspirational STEM classroom experiences for their students. Research faculty will deepen their understanding of classroom practices, curricula, pedagogy, and precollege and community college educational environments. RET participants will be encouraged and supported to present at state and national teachers’ conferences and the RET research symposium on campus. The RET team will also participate in K-14 outreach programs (e.g., Science To-Go and Science Olympiad at regional schools). The RET program will expand participants’ knowledge about renewable energy and provide hands-on examples and opportunities to develop pedagogical methods for incorporating engineering and computing into their curricula. Dedicated lab time and visits to regional industries involved in cutting-edge engineering research in energy-related fields will help teachers inform and excite students about scientific careers and embed energy topics in their STEM curriculum. Topics include renewable and alternative energy (solar and wind), enhanced energy transfer technologies, the development of sensors and controls for energy applications and Smart grids Cyber-Security, energy production and efficiency of the HAWTs array, interactions between free-stream turbulence and boundary-layer on the particulate transport, the effect of small-scale turbulence on the particulate dispersion and deposition, the efficiency of PV systems, focused on the shading patterns on PV panels and algorithms to improve efficiency for energy conversion, and data science, AI, and cybersecurity to detect networks’ malicious intrusions, smart grids, and energy networks. RET lessons will be available widely through the Energy RET Website, the Teach Engineering digital library, and the University’s Digital Commons repository. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.