Workshops for Facilitating Faculty to Teach Electric Energy Courses for Combating Climate Change. To Be Held at The University of Minnesota.

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The global climate is changing rapidly and 97% of the climate scientists agree that it's changing because of human activities. The business as usual will result in catastrophic consequences with poorest of the poor at the frontline. Combating climate change in a serious way will necessitate that the emission of greenhouse gases be reduced to near-zero levels very soon, before the point of no return is reached.This will require converting much of our energy use including transportation from fossil fuels to electricity generated from renewables such as solar and wind. Renewables are variable in nature and therefore an uninterruptible supply of electricity will require a "smart grid" with storage. Finally, this energy must be conserved and consumed very efficiently. To achieve this goal will entail a sea change in designing, manufacturing, delivering and consuming electricity. Education is always the first step and a thorough look at the titles of the courses offered at the U.S. universities shows that only a handful of universities are offering appropriate courses. Therefore, it is essential to quickly implement such courses at as many universities as possible.With this challenge in mind, large numbers of forward-looking courses have been developed at the University of Minnesota through funding by the U.S. Navy, the Office of Naval Research (ONR). These courses archive the institutional knowledge of academic and industrial experts from across the country, with the express purpose of being a resource for instructors at all universities and colleges to teach their own students teaching the teachers, as a force-multiplier. In addition, the content of all the course can be freely downloaded by anyone, thus making it accessible to practicing engineers as well. Through this NSF grant, three faculty workshops will be held where the experts who developed these courses will familiarize the university instructors in-person who can then quickly implement these courses at their home institutions for the nationwide development of the workforce to combat climate change.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.