Power Engineering Education for the Next-Generation Smart Grid Workforce

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This project aims to serve the national interests by enhancing power engineering education to meet the nation’s needs for a highly qualified next-generation Smart Grid workforce. As one of the nation’s most critical infrastructures, the electric power grid is undergoing a fundamental revolution in its physical structure, management policy, and business operation, ultimately leading towards a Smart Grid ─ an enabling engine for the nation’s economy, environment, and future. However, achieving the Smart Grid mission is hampered by a growing shortage of qualified power and energy engineers, as well as the lack of a comprehensive education system to support workforce training. The model approach developed by this project will help provide effective power engineering education to qualified graduates.The objective of this project is to explore a viable and sustainable approach to enhance power engineering education to meet the needs of the power industry. This objective will be achieved via a suite of research and development activities which will retool the Electrical and Computer Engineering curricula, and will create a pathway for students interested in careers working on Smart Grids. Recent advances in relevant disciplines serving the Smart Grid mission will be investigated and new course modules will be developed, continuously updated, and integrated into existing program curricula. Furthermore, to close the loop, a multi-entry point pathway towards power engineering will be established which will offer students in different years of the program clearly defined course sequences. An advisory committee powered by collaborators from key sectors of the power and energy industry will oversee the proposed research. The research and development activities conducted, the lessons learned, the challenges addressed, and the knowledge generated from this project will be disseminated via multiple channels to peer institutions with similar strong interests in educating the next-generation Smart Grid workforce, as well as to educators of other disciplines facing similar education challenges. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.