ONR/NSF-Sponsored Workshop: Reforming Electric Energy Systems Curriculum : 3 Workshops; 1st to be held in Wash, DC Feb 12-15 2009

Various governmental agencies such the Department of Energy, Edison Electric Institute (an association of shareholder-owned companies) and various utilities are concerned about the aging workforce and are predicting sever shortages of qualified electrical engineers. At the same, there is a crisis in the undergraduate education where the courses have not changed for decades while the industrial and utility practices have changed, in some cases dramatically. Most Electric Power Programs nationwide are stagnating, downsizing or disappearing. This is a trend that must be reversed, given the aging workforce in most utilities and many industries.

The objective of this proposal is to obtain NSF collaboration and funding to continue the dissemination of the educational material and approaches developed at the University of Minnesota. The development of these educational materials was previously supported by NSF and is currently supported by ONR. NSF support is request for partial participant travel funding to attend three annual workshops organized for carrying out the above dissemination effort. ONR will be cosponsoring the workshop.

Intellectual Merits: The attempt of this curricular reform is to excite our students so more of them, compared to the present rate, pursue graduate education and PhD research. By creating a Community of Teaching Scholars, all instructors will have an opportunity to bring the enthusiasm of research in their classroom and possibly carry out research themselves, for example, by approaching their local utilities. All schools, regardless of their size and research-versus-teaching orientation, will be approached, thereby creating a much larger pool for creativity and innovation.

Broader Impacts: The objective of the curriculum reform being promoted through the workshops is to provide first-rate education to undergraduates in the Electrical Energy Systems nationwide. This curriculum has been developed to be effective, regardless of the severity of the workforce shortages that cannot be predicted accurately, to train undergraduates broadly so they can be flexible in their employment choices. This broad impact on well-educated pool of graduates nationwide is made possible by this curriculum by using the faculty and teaching assistant resources very effectively. Therefore, this curriculum can be adopted by the entire spectrum of schools spanning from four-year colleges that primarily focus on teaching to large research universities. A special attempt will be made to encourage minority-serving institutions to participate in the workshops organized under this project.