Conference Session

Sustainable-energy Education: Lessons Learned

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Tom Ferguson, University of Minnesota, Duluth; Paul Weber, University of Minnesota, Duluth

Tagged Divisions

Energy Conversion and Conservation

disciplineshave a sound understanding of energy issues as they design their systems. Such facets includenot only conversion technology, but also resource availability, energy delivery, policy,reliability, and short and long-term financial, social, and environmental costs.This paper will describe class projects in energy conversion that attempt to raise awareness inthese areas, and do so with respect to a diverse group of senior and graduate engineeringstudents. For the projects, students chose a conversion technology primarily for electric powergeneration, wrote a paper outlining why they supported or opposed its implementation, and thenpresented their research to their peers. Meanwhile, the entire class was split up into groups ofshort and long term

Conference Session

Investigating Alternative-energy Concepts

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Narayanan Komerath, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Energy Conversion and Conservation

. Maybe build a few devices from plans without the research and write ups. Just to get a feel for construction and energy balances. • Also provide a survey of contemporary commercial solutions so students can see what is being done. Maybe also reference E. F. Schumacher, Buckminster Fuller, etc. • Able to gain a lot of hands of experience with the course and would like to see more. • Could perhaps investigate a wider range of modern energy concepts to more depth but quite a few were covered extensively in the course.4 Question: Please comment on the balance between class lectures, class discussions, assigned readings, outside readings for assignments, discussions with people outside the class. Should this