Conference: Energy Access Educators Workshop

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Attracting and retaining undergraduate engineering students is a difficult problem, and one of national interest. One effective way to increase engineering student recruitment and retention, particularly among underrepresented groups, is by incorporating humanitarian engineering themes and projects into curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular activities. Students are more likely to show interest in and persist in engineering if they are exposed to the application of engineering to improve the lives and livelihoods of people in marginalized, under-resourced, or at-risk communities. However, student participation in humanitarian engineering activities varies unevenly by discipline. While civil and mechanical engineering students may easily see their disciplines reflected in the more common humanitarian engineering activities such as clean water and shelter projects, electrical engineering students are less likely to see the connection of their discipline and serving humanity. An underutilized entry point for electrical engineering students to engage with humanitarian engineering is in the field of electricity access. Electricity access is concerned with providing electricity to the 800 million people presently without it. Unfortunately, the number of faculty active in this area is relatively small, and there is no venue, professional association or infrastructure dedicated to serving these educators. This limits the quality and quantity of humanitarian engineering experiences available to electrical engineering students, and stifles community building, academic exchange and opportunities for collaboration among the faculty. This project will create a first-of-its-kind workshop dedicated solely to enhancing and expanding undergraduate engineering education in electricity access.The project will convene approximately 25 energy access educators and stakeholders from industry, government, and non-profit organizations for a two-day workshop. The workshop agenda includes targeted discussion, panel and networking sessions. In these sessions, participants will share best practices, lessons learned, and innovative ideas for curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular activities as well as identify gaps and challenges such as identifying educational materials, establishing local partnerships, and acquiring funding. Pre- and post-workshop surveys will be given to create a preliminary snapshot of the state of electricity access education, shape the workshop agenda, and assess the success of the workshop in meeting its aims. The key findings of the workshop will be synthesized and disseminated through publications and presentations. The workshop will lead to the development a roadmap of future activities and infrastructure, such as additional workshops, email lists, sharing of course materials and resources, and collaborative pedagogical or applied research. The workshop participants will be recruited from a variety of higher education institutions, with particular emphasis on Primarily Undergraduate Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities.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.