Erin Twamley: My name is Erin Twamley and I will be helping with the technical and moderation portion of this webinar. We are going to be beginning shortly. If you have any difficulties, cannot hear me, or cannot see my screen, please let me know via the questions tool.
Matthew Garcia [MG]: Alright, ok, I think we are ready to begin. Welcome to our webinar, “Engaging Students in Energy,” where we will be showing some information from a number of different Department of Energy offices and programs on how we are trying to engage students with an emphasis on trying to engage under-represented student groups in energy.
My name is Matthew Garcia, and I am a Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. I will be moderating today and presenting information on the Energy 101 project. Here is the webinar outline for today. The webinar is broken down into three sessions, and at the end of each session, we will try to address any common questions that have been submitted via the "Ask a Question” webinar tool. But, before we begin our session, we are extremely lucky to have the director of the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity to start us off today. The Honorable Dot Harris, who has done much to advance access of underrepresented groups to energy and STEM careers in both the private and public sector.
Honorable Dot Harris: Ok! Hello everyone. I know you cannot respond, but I am going to pause as if I did hear you respond. Engaging Students in Energy. Wow, that is absolutely the perfect title for this topic today. And I will assure you that this will be worth your while. Every time I see the term "engaging students" I think of a theme that I had when I ran businesses in the private sector, and making sure engaging the employees I had, but it is actually something I made up, and I have used it probably for the last 20 years, and the term is "engaging hearts and minds to achieve exceptional performance." And I tell you, that is very much where I hope you will get engaged with what we will be sharing with you today. It is something that I am assured that you will be able to take beyond this discussion. So we want to start by saying we will share the ins and outs of some of our great student opportunities at the Department and get your questions answered on how you can get involved with the Department of Energy.
And as Matt mentioned, I am actually the director for the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity, and it is an office here that focusses on access to all of the resources, innovations, energy advances, and knowledge that the agency has to offer. Energy, as you guys know, is clearly at the forefront of our global economy. There is nothing you do every day, or nothing that your family or friends, that simply does not involve energy. Matter of fact, I was watching a commercial on TV just last night by one of the oil and gas companies, I think it was Exxon Mobile, and they have some brilliant advertisement and it says how would you describe energy, for example, on just something you can see. I think it had a picture of the folks in an emergency room, and it shows how energy is there—of course, powering all of those devices and equipment for medical use—but also, you may not know that energy provides probably nearly 100% of the plastic used for medical use. So that was interesting to find that oil and gas actually makes the plastic. So that is me being an engineer here, but it just tells you how much the energy sector plays not only in our own lane, but in areas of health and industries beyond what we do.
So with that, let me share a few things with you at this time. The way the world uses and produces energy is changing rapidly. And innovation is surging. So everyone here has climate change on their mind as well, so that is again where energy—you don't really think about it a lot, but you see the number of extreme weather changes in our country, with the super storm Sandy and Hurricane Isaac. And the devastation in the Philippines. So this is just a way that all of this relates back to the Department of Energy, and how we can share with you some of the resources and opportunities with this next wave of getting the energy workforces in gear. We need to get the best and the brightest in the country working on these issues, and with that comes diversity.
That is why we are focusing very heavily on the minority community and students in this country, and it is very important to all of us that we need everybody at the table—all community of students—to make us the economic leader that we are and needing to maintain as such. So we appreciate all of you bringing to the light today, especially the engagement and the places and just looking at the concern that we need addressed, the gap for women and girls and minorities just in this space. It is no secret that women and minorities are underrepresented in the energy field. Right now, women and minorities make up 70% of college students but only 45% of the undergraduate STEM degree holders. And the majority of young children in this country has been documented by the Census Bureau that young children of the minority race is the majority at this time. So, if we are looking getting the pipe line geared up as it should, we really have to focus on the issue of energy here, and in doing that, one of the things we did here at the Department is launch a focus that was supported by Secretary Moniz and lead by my office, and that is the Minorities in Energy Initiative. So I have been tasked by the Secretary of Energy to really take a national look and maintain a national dialogue on this particular action, and I look forward to many of you on the phone being partners as we pursue this.
We are aiming to engage more minorities in the STEM education, climate change, and also energy economic development. When it comes to energy economic development, entrepreneurship for many of the students at your schools and universities would definitely play a role for that. So we are here today about making sure the initiative at this end of the webinar will definitely have some of our staffers support you if you have questions regarding that, and you will learn a lot more from our talented presenters joined on our webinar today. So I would like to thank the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and especially Matt Garcia for leading this event. So we look forward to your engagement on this phone call, and please prepare yourself to have some fun and learn a few things about the Department of Energy. So we hope that after this particular webinar that you spread the word to your fellow educators and students and stay plugged in with us as best you can. So with that, thank you guys, and I appreciate you so much!
MG: Thank you so much Director Harris for starting us off today and for all the work that Economic Impact and Diversity is doing, and we will be learning a little bit about that work later on in this webinar. Ok, so let's begin with Session 1, where we will hear about two Energy Education and Workforce Development initiatives: Energy Literacy and Energy 101. So, why are energy literacy and energy education important topics to the Department of Energy? Well, because supporting energy literacy and energy education will allow us to maintain a world leading technical workforce. Indeed, energy literacy and energy education are deemed important parts of the DOE's mission, as demonstrated by being part of the strategic plan. Starting off Session 1 today is Josh Sneideman, an Albert Einstein Distinguished Education Fellow in EERE's workforce development group. And he will talk to you a little about the Energy Literacy initiative and the Energy Literacy document.
Joshua Sneideman: Thanks Matt and Director Harris for hosting this event in conjunction with the Minorities in Energy event. Through our collective efforts here today, I really hope that we will spread the word about energy education and energy literacy. I hope that this is a tree that will bear fruit soon and really create a more energy-literate citizenry. As Director Harris said, "Energy is everywhere." We experience energy every single day in a variety of ways. To help educators think holistically about how to approach energy in the classroom, the DOE led the development of the Energy Literacy Framework, which you can see a picture of on your screen right now.
This framework was approved by the USGCRP which is a collection of 13 federal agencies. It was also developed through a series of workshops with input and feedback from hundreds of stakeholders. Including educators specific experts, and the Energy Literacy Framework provide the context and background while also identifying essential principles and fundamental concepts that every citizen should know and understand to be considered energy literate. The intended audience for this document is truly anyone involved in energy education, engaging students as we like to say "from K to gray." We want everyone to be energy literate. At the core of the Energy Literacy Framework, there are 7 essential principles, which you see in front of you now. Each principle is supported by somewhere between 6 and 8 fundamental concepts. It is really important that I state that the Energy Literacy Framework is not a curriculum; it is a scaffold, in the teacher terminology, to help you think about how you want to approach holistically a discussion about energy.
Principles 1-3 cover the natural sciences, physics, chemistry, earth science and biology. Principle 4 addresses energy sources, uses and infrastructure – this is largely an engineering and technology principle. Principles 5-7—my personal favorite—are the social principles covering energy issues related to decisions, behavior, civic, economic, and much more, and are largely through a lens of impact and consequence. By a sense, the Energy Literacy Framework is meant to be used across disciplines, with an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to systems learning to help students understand energy in a more robust way. So, I think everyone on the phone—I love preaching to the choir—but we all believe that a better understanding of energy can lead to more informed decisions, improve national security, promote economic development, and reduce environmental risks and such. It was President Obama in The Audacity of Hope who wrote: "A nation that can't control its energy sources can't control its future." and I am going to add to that, a nation that does not understand its energy choices won't necessarily make good choices for its future. Personally, as a ten year middle school science teacher, I find that students are really connected to the idea of national security and energy. Something that calls to them. As well as discussing the environmental impacts of energy.
As Americans we all want what is best for our country, and I think that if we could connect more people to the concepts of energy efficiency and renewables as a national security issue, as well as some of the other things that I will be discussing today, I think we could probably gain some additional traction. I am really excited, especially today for the Minorities in Energy event, to announce that very soon the translation of the Energy Literacy Framework will be completed, we are expecting that to be done around February (end of February, first of March). This document will allow us to reach even more people. Just another fact that Director Harris was talking about: Hispanics, African Americans, and American Indians make up 24% of the overall American workforce, but only 9% of the workforce in science and engineering. 80% of girls are interested in STEM careers, but only 13% choose a STEM field as their career choice.
So as an educator speaking from the educator perspective, there are two resources I would love to share with you. One is “Why So Few?” by the American Association of University Women, which is one of the leading voices promoting equity and education for women's rights. When I read this, I think it really helps frame how to engage more girls in the discussion of STEM careers. So please take a look at “Why So Few?” And the other is “Change the Conversation,” which is how to really engage all students in a way that promotes their STEM ambition and communicates more effectively what an engineering degree looks like. So all of these things hopefully will help us transform our U.S. energy system from where we are today—one that produces 25% of the world's carbon, and depends on foreign sources which are subject to price volatility, and vulnerable to certain delivery systems, and most importantly two-thirds of which is wasted in transmission and heat—to one that is carbon-neutral, diverse, home-grown and sustainable.
That is one of the main reasons that we all are here trying to talk about energy literacy and also some of the initiatives in STEM education. So, the Next Generation Science Standards—some of you may be aware that energy is a cross-cutting concept in the Next Generation Science Standards—and cross-cutting concepts bridge disciplinary boundaries, and they unite core ideas. I really think—and again, I am putting on my middle school educator hat—that one of the greatest strengths about energy courses at your colleges, universities and schools, is that it is a perfect system for delivery of not only advancing national goals and individual goals, but also for helping students develop assistance thinking and helping students gain a 21st century view of the world, where we want people to be engaged, helping people globally escape from poverty and energy poverty in their living situation.
Energy is present in our lives—and I want to talk about interdisciplinary approach—the next time you read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, maybe while you are reading that, you actually look at the energy systems that are being used in that in your literature class. Or, if you have a cinema class, there is a great movie documentary by Dr. Webber at the University of Texas at Austin called “Energy at the Movies,” where he takes a look back at over 70 years of Hollywood films and captures the history of energy through film. Maybe in your civics or government class when you talk about how a bill becomes a law, use an energy example of how energy legislation was passed, or subsidies in government—energy subsidies—to try and take a holistic approach to using energy as one of our methods for spreading energy literacy.
So finally, before I pass it on to Matt, who is going to talk about Energy 101, some things that you can do with this document: read it, download it at the website you see on your screen, share it with others, try and apply some of the interdisciplinary principles in your classroom. And then lastly, if you are interested in communicating with me directly and getting involved in the planning of the next step at DOE for Energy Literacy education. I thank you for this opportunity, and now Matt is going to tell you about Energy 101.
MG: Thank you, Josh, that is a perfect setup to talk about Energy 101. Let's begin with the question, "What is the Energy 101 project?" The Energy 101 project really starts with the recognition that there are a lot of outstanding efforts currently taking place in the nation's colleges and universities with respect to undergraduate education. With the Energy 101 project, we want to recognize those efforts and encourage similar efforts to occur. In the process we hope to foster a coordinated national discussion on energy education at the post-secondary level. All of this is with the overarching goal in mind of increasing the pathways available to students towards training, degrees, and careers in energy and STEM. One of the products of the Energy 101 project is the Energy 101 framework. The framework takes the 7 Energy Literacy principles that Josh discussed, and packages them into a semester-long course format. It includes a set of fundamentals and concepts, striving to teach energy using a multidisciplinary approach, covering the scientific, technological, and societal roles that energy plays in our every lives. Just like the literacy document, the framework alone is not a course nor is it a curriculum. They can be used as a guide or universal set of building blocks to help course creation occur. Providing a core course lab which can be customized to meet the unique institutional needs.
So here is the framework unpacked. It consists of 5 units containing 1-3 sections each, and each section containing a number of core concepts related to each unit in the section. You can see here with this example the three sections in Unit 1: Introduction to Energy, and then the associated core concepts on the right. So far, we have had a number of institutions use this framework to help inform the creation of their own energy fundamentals courses, including one at the University of Maryland that concluded this past spring. Two other institutions in Maryland, Harford Community College and Cecil Community College, received approval this year to teach courses inspired by the Energy 101 project and framework. And next, we will actually be hearing from some of the instructors involved in these efforts, including some that were involved in the development of the Energy 101 framework itself. So with that, I will turn it over to our guest speakers joining us remotely. Professor Idalis Villanueva, Leigh Abts, and Gail Wyant, who will be talking about some of the practical applications of the Energy Literacy principles and the Energy 101 framework in their presentations. So Idalis, take it away.
Idalis Villanueva [IV]: Thank you, Matt, and thank you for the opportunity to have me today to talk about the Energy 101 framework that Dr. Leigh Abts and myself developed and pilot tested in spring of 2013. Basically, we did a collaboration between the Department of Energy, the Energy and Environmental Study Institute, Association of Public Land-Grant Universities, and the University of Maryland in College Park. We convened and looked at these energy literacy standards and, from a curricular perspective, tried to find ways to establish at least a building block by which other institutions and instructors could use this as a building block to create their own courses that envelope one or more of these fundamental concepts and essential principles of the Energy Literacy standards.
Like Matt described before, this is not a curriculum that is intended for everyone to use, but it does provide an example by which instructors can begin to build upon their courses and will inform other instructors of evidence-based practices and best approaches as they think about their own courses.
One of the first steps that our team did, we tried to understand in what ways we can have a course that is including different disciplines and different walks of academic life. We performed a survey across several institutions in the United States that covered one or more energy courses in their institutions, and these instructors were approached and asked to provide a sample of their syllabus along with any comments with respect to how they approached their classes, what projects they had given their courses, and so forth. What you see here is the percentage of alignment to the seven essential principles within the Energy Literacy standards. And as you see in the animation, what you will find is that there are, for example if you look at the University of Wisconsin, although there were two different courses within the same institution, we see a different type of alignment to the Energy Literacy standard. If you look at the University of Nebraska for example, some of them had a really high alignment to the standards, and some of them did not have any at all.
We wanted to make sure that, to some degree, universities had some degree of uniformity in how they apply their Energy Literacy standards and courses. The way that we did this was using design-based models. From an engineering perspective, design is one of the principles by which we can tackle a big and complex problem and identify the steps needed to achieve our goal. We based it off of three educational principles, all based on design, to try to understand how we can create a curriculum that fits all. We first did Understanding by Design, which is sort of a backwards design, where you first identify your end goal and desired results, and then back track on the steps needed to attain the knowledge and the literacy in energy. The second one is Universal Design for Learning, which basically talks about allowing multiple forms of expression of their knowledge as they progress through the semester; so if you are very knowledgeable in music, for example, can you use music as a way to express your knowledge in energy, for example? The last one is Evidence Centered Design. How can we as instructors know if students are really attaining energy literacy and in what ways can they do so?
So we incorporated these three design-based models into what we like to call a hybrid design model. And we used the three principles. Evidence Centered Design: so thinking about what activities, quizzes, classroom work can you develop to ensure that all students across the board can understand energy. Then we looked at the other design model, Understanding by Design, and trying to understand, in our case, what was the end goal—can they develop energy competency, whether it is through STEM knowledge, or if you do not have the STEM knowledge, how can you attain some of that STEM knowledge so that you can achieve some form of energy literacy. We looked at assessment tools, surveys, and potential questionnaires that we can incorporate into the course. Finally, the Universal Design for Learning, which was looking at different ways to represent your knowledge through different simulations, projects, and understanding better the role of the learning environment in attaining that goal. We did this in a cyclical fashion.
When we did that, we decided that the best way to approach this was to incorporate our curricular model in a way and in a course that was open to different types of students. The initial approach that we took and we decided to go for was called the I-Series Course—and I know not all institutions have this—but basically this is a special type of general education course that encourages instructors to think of new and contemporary ways to spark the imagination, intellect, and innovation of the student. You can have different projects that range, like the example that was given before, the use of energy in movies, for example, or understanding the political aspect of a topic. We decided to use this course as the framework for what we now call “Designing a Sustainable World,” or that Energy 101 course that we piloted in spring of 2013.
One of the first things that we wanted to do was have a catchy title. We wanted to make sure that we had a course that was appealing to students no matter what discipline you come from, so we called this course "Designing a Sustainable World," andit was intended to help students walk through the necessary steps to design a sustainable plan within their community. The course was open to all students around campus and our first pilot run was done in the spring of 2013. During this time we had 27 students, only 2 of them were engineering students, and the remaining students were from various disciplines ranging from food science to communication, early education, and science, biochemistry, and so forth. This is just an example of some of the topics from the syllabus that we developed for this course. As you see, there are a series of topics and descriptions that go in line with the Energy 101 course framework. For example, in week 1, we talked about "What is energy?" by defining energy, identifying formal laws governing energy, how it is transformed, and an introduction of units. The next topic that followed was “Energy Medley,” so it talked about different types of energy: chemical, biochemical, physical, thermal, electrical, and nuclear. It then followed with a gap that we called the workshop.
These workshops were specially designed to help students understand via design how can they come up with their end solution. How can they design a sustainable plant? This went in conjunction with elements that you see on your right-hand side. Elements A and B, and Element C. So these elements were used as a form of journaling system that is found on the next slide. This journaling system, or electric portfolio like we call it, "innovation portal," is an electronic portfolio system that is used to help students understand their walk from coming to identifying a problem all the way to potentially identifying a solution to the problem. The nice thing about using a portal like this is that students not only can use this throughout a semester, they can use this throughout their entire education up to the point of graduation. Say a student is going to a job interview, now they have a portfolio showing and highlighting the type of work that they did throughout their undergraduate career. Within this portal, there was a special rubric that was designed by Dr. Leigh Abts and other collaborators and project Lead the Way. It basically takes them through elements from A to M, showing them the necessary steps to the design process, from presenting and justifying the process, all the way to the end of the solution.
I wanted to show you an example of one of the lessons that we covered in the course. The first thing we wanted to make sure was how do we tie in, first of all, design with energy, and how do we make sure that students understand what are the connections between both of them. For example, some of the essential questions that we covered were, how does the design process differ from the scientific method, and what are the steps needed for the design process in terms of energy literacy standards, and this specific lesson plan covered the essential principle #5, which was looking at the use of energy resources and the different types of decisions that are influenced by economic, political, environmental and social factors. We then proceeded to introduce them to a diagram that looks like this. Now this looks very messy and complex at first, and this was a slide that we took from learningfundamentals.com, but it basically shows the complexity of solving an environmental problem, for example, global warming.
What we see here is that even though there is a common problem, everyone will take a different approach to that problem, whether it is making sure that your vote counts and talking to other people more about the importance of saving energy, to eating less meat, to choosing energy-efficient appliances, to traveling less. Everyone has a different approach. However, this complex and messy problem from a design perspective does have a series of steps that you need to go through in order to come up with your own unique solution.
This is just a synopsis of what we did throughout the semester and how we talked students through "Ok, you have a complex problem. Now let's think about it from a design perspective," and how do you go from identifying and defining a problem all the way to evaluating that identification and potential solution is feasible for what you are looking for. Each one of these steps were designed to help students understand: are they really trying to attain to a problem, are they looking at the right types of resources, and who are those resources—is it just internet-based, or are they really looking at people and talking to people about how they can implement this into their community. And work through a series of iterations to make sure there is some progress in their planning.
This is an example of what we did in the class. This is called an affinity diagram. One of the first steps that we did was have students identify a problem in their community, whether it was in their home or whether it was at school, or something that they really felt strongly about. We then had then come up in teams, and using sticky notes, they had to identify problems, potential techniques, and potential solutions to that problem. Once they outlined their idea they put them all on the table, and they had to organize them between the series of topics that allowed them to prioritize the different factors that were important for that specific person and team.
These are just some example of the ways that we used, for example, universal design for learning, on helping students design their own design expression. The first top two examples were examples of mind maps; so, how do students come up with a complex and big problem, and different potential approaches to that problem. Other people, on the other hand, were more artistic and preferred to use word clouds and basic concepts and words that they learned in class to try to achieve the same type of end goal. These were courtesy of Mr. James Mortan and Mr. James Thomas.
What you see here is just examples of two other projects, and if you look at the left side, you see a very rough type of sketch of their ideas, but as you progress throughout the semester, moving from the middle to the right side, you can see more and more elaborate plans, and more descriptions and sort of an overall improvement of their design idea. Of course, they did not get to the point of developing a solution, but at least you see the progression and the incorporation of different energy topics in their design.
One thing that we wanted to make sure is that we understood what were the impacts of this course and in what ways we can improve upon the course in the future. These are just some example questions; we a series of, I believe, 30 questions asking them about the course. The first one talked about "Can students think about complex issues as a result of this course?" We see that there was a high level of agreement. The second one was, "Did the course material keep me engaged?" We see sort of, although we see a majority agreeing, there was some discrepancy. And this is a very interesting finding because we found that a lot of the women students and minority students that took our course had a very difficult time getting past what they perceived as skill sets, and pushing past the barriers, and understanding in what ways they can contribute to the course. We realized that in future iterations of this course, we are going to have to incorporate some confidence-building strategies to make sure that every feels proud about their progress and all that they can achieve at the end of the semester. Although, everyone did agree that by the end their confidence did improve as a result of this course. The relevance of this course (was it relevant to them?), you know, did they understand better the political, social, and economic aspects, and most of them agreed with that course.
These are just some minor student comments that we selected—there are a lot more than that—but it was interesting to see how design could be used as way to appreciate how energy knowledge is attained and how they thought about the problems at hand. So now we are going to talk about current directions for Energy 101, and I will leave you with Dr. Leigh Abts who will talk to you about that.
Leigh Abts: Thank you so much, Idalis, and thank you, Matt, for this opportunity, and those out there listening. What we have done now is taken the lessons learned from our course, “Designing a Sustainable World,” and are trying now to develop a course that is more focused on some basic math concepts covered in algebra II and pre-calculus, and take the hybrid model to develop a course that can be totally online, asynchronous, and blended, and deliver it next semester to transitioning active service members and veterans who are looking at potential careers in energy or power. So the title of the program is “Preparation for Energy and Power Careers,” and thename of the new course is called “Designing Quantitative Solutions for Energy.”
The course that is in development is being supported by the Department of Defense and the Office of Advanced Distributed Learning and is based on the fundamental research that was developed through the Department of Energy, and Energy 101, and the National Science Foundation and programs that are directed at the development of a rubric for the design process and the use of a neat portfolio. The goal of the course is: Can we, using the hybrid model and an online course that is asynchronous, create a process for a course that can be delivered, recognized and transferrable across institutions? The initial pilot course, which will begin in January of 2014, will be a 4-credit course that will combine basic engineering mathematic concepts—starting with liniar equations through quadratics to logarithms to derivatives and intervals—and have the students, which in the case will be active duty service members and/or veterans, do a design project that will be mentored by those already in the field, practicing, for example, in a utility or a power plant. Our hope is to encourage active duty and veteran transitions into the civilian energy workforce through training and education through courses like this. We’re aligning the program to the Center for Workforce Development’s Troop to Energy Jobs initiative, so they will also be mentored throughout the course, not only on their design projects, but also on potential careers, and how they might think about careers in the energy or power field.
The course basically will be asynchronous, meaning that we are in the process right now and we finished filming 6 foundational mathematic video lectures, 18 mathematic lectures ranging again from liniar equations to quadratic sinusoids. On top of that, we are layering 12 application videos. This becomes again aligning with the Universal Design for Learning, where we want to show multiple ways that students might look at problem solving in energy. These applications range from calculations of energy in deep water ocean ways, to solving heat transfer in nuclear power plant condensers. We have also developed 4 virtual laboratories that are actually filmed at the Cecil Community College, with the help of Gail Wyant, who will be talking next. And 7 design videos based on the work that we have been doing to look at using a rubric to guide students through the design process and then submitting their work to an electronic portfolio.
We have now developed 7 design videos to help students and guide them through that process. As I said, we are aligning this to the CEWD Troops to Energy Jobs program, and we are taking all that we are learning through surveys, through the course assignments, through the quizzes, through other ways to evaluate the students next semester, so we have an integrated assessment plan, and using the electronic portfolio, consistent with evidence-centered design. Basically the course, kind of in summary, is to help the students apply basic problem-solving processes like the design process to solve real-world problems using their math at the pre-calculus/algebra II level, taking these and then applying them in actual applications that are done in the real world, using laboratories to reinforce these concepts, starting with Oden's law, through transformers and alternating current, for example. And then finally, all the students will start with a compelling need, like they did in Designing a Sustainable World, come up with a design project, develop the problems that are associated with those projects, come up with solutions, and then purpose solutions to those problems, and present them through the electronic portfolio.
Our target goal is we are recruiting 30 active duty transitioning service members or veterans. So far, in the last 10 days, we have had over 200 invitations that we have sent out to apply. When I sent this slide to Matt yesterday, we had 35 applications received; I think we have over 70 received. The next step is for those that have applied to take a Maryland mathematics placement exam so we can understand where they place in the math knowledge level. And then they will be accepted into the program that, as I said, will begin January 27th, and run through May of next year, current with the traditional second semester of College Park.
So we have many that have contributed to what Idalis has talked about in this course and what we are developing here for the new course. I would like to thank you from my perspective, and I know Idalis would like to thank you for listening for this part of the presentation, and I believe right now Gail Wyant from Cecil Community College… I would like to turn it over to her.
MG: Thanks, Leigh! Gail will be talking about the RET Energy 101 project at her institute, Cecil College.
Gail Wyant [GW]: Thank you, Matt and Dr. Abts! At our college, over the summer, my experience with the program that the University of Maryland had developed with the National Science Foundation—it was a research experience for teachers specifically from the community college perspective, and as a part of this course, I worked with Dr. Abts and Dr. Idalis Villanueva as well.
Our goal is being part of this program that was sponsored by the NSF. We were to take the courses that currently were at our college and to survey them to see how they aligned with the Energy Literacy standard. At our college, we found we had 10-20% of these standards covered, primarily in our environmental and geoscience courses. We created a 4-credit course with lab that will count as a general education science course for our students, and it also counts as an emerging issues course.
We designed labs and hands-on activities to integrate into the course, and we are going to be offering it next fall in a traditional format and it will have lecture and lab, and then it will also be transitioned later on to be offered as a hybrid format. Now in the hybrid format, the students come in to do the labs each week, but then everything else is online. We use the framework of the Energy 101 initiative to develop our course, and these are the materials that we had to put together to get this course approved by our school. At our college, the particular flavor that we gave to it was to emphasis energy and sustainability; hence, that is the title, "Introduction to Energy and Sustainability," a 4-credit lab course. As you can see here, it gives students a good overview of energy, and also they will have hands-on activity with it. Besides the science of it, they will also look at the political and social factors as well. And we will be including some field trips.
This is just a sample of the 13 curriculum elements that we have developed with the course. Parallel with the course materials in class—ours is a 15-week course—we also have 11 weeks of lab, and then the final 4 weeks are worked on the students designing a project. In all of our classes we believe strongly in an experiential approach to helping the students learn about the materials, so as we develop the materials, the students are asked what is it that they know about a topic, they will make a prediction, then they will test their prediction in a lab, and then they will apply their new knowledge and then they will explain what was learned. We have found this workshop approach to be very successful in the physics courses we offer at our college, and we wanted to extend this as a way for us to conduct the energy course.
For their design project in the last 4 weeks, they will have accumulated a lot of knowledge about energy and some particular aspects of it in the labs that they will be doing. And then their design challenge is to come up with a solar house. They will actually design and build a small model solar home. They will test different materials, different thermal masses for the design of the house. They will test different window materials and different insulation materials and try to come up with an optimum small model prototype that would be feasible for people to use. What I tried to present here was just a quick overview of how we took the Energy 101 Initiative and developed into a 4-credit course for our college. Thank you!
MG: Alright! Thank you guys! From those presentations, I hope you have seen that there is a large variety and utility to using the framework in the development of multiple different types of courses and applications. That concludes Session 1: Energy Literacy and Energy 101. And really, just want to leave you with the underlying messages that we really want to know more about your efforts in energy education and energy literacy so: 1) That we can share them, and 2) that we can learn from them, and 3) that we can connect people together and kind of stimulate this national discussion in energy education. To that end, we are going to have a couple other energy education and energy literacy webinars in spring of 2013. And of course, all that information about the projects and programs that you heard today can be found at our website, the Energy 101 website, and the Energy Education and Workforce Development website.
One of the common questions that we are getting is, "Will this presentation be available at some point in time / will the slides be available?" Indeed they will; at some point after this webinar, we will make the recording of the webinar available. We will send out a link to that to everybody that registered to attend, and we will also have the slides in some format as well to share. The other question that we got, and this is open to any of presenters to answer: "Did you use any text books, and if not, are there any recommended text books to help implement these energy courses?"
IV: Matt, this is Idalis. An answer to your question: yes, we did use a whole bunch of textbooks. We realized that after looking at the Energy Literacy standards that there was no one text book that really quite fit in with them. The one that I remember off the top of my head was Introduction to Energy and Sustainability. I know there is whole bunch of other books, I just cannot remember off the top of my head, but if you or Matt email me, I am happy to provide a list for you. In terms of design, we used Universal Methods of Design by Bella Martin. It was a really good, it provides a lot of examples and nice pictoral images that will help these instructors identify good approaches for their classroom.
MG: Thank you, Idalis. And this question is for Gail. Gail, will you have examples of the labs used during your Cecil course available at some point?
GW: Yes, I will make them available, and I’m available for anybody who wants to talk about how do you go about developing the course and getting it through academic affairs at your college.
MG: One of the things that we did not touch upon, but is a critical issue is institutional issues of getting a course passed and transferability issues within a college system. I am happy to report with a number of these courses in Maryland, there is transferability between courses and between universities. So that is one really cool facet about the Energy 101 product that has been going on. And we did not even talk about Harford Community College, which also has their own version of an Energy 101 pilot in process.
So with that we are ending Session 1, and we will start with Session 2. In Session 2, we are going to look a little bit at some of the EERE programs that are trying to engage underrepresented groups in energy, and students in general. We will first start off with the student competitions and the National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition, talk on student competitions in general in EERE, and then we will transition to another program called the Small Business and Innovation Research Program, or SBIR. Our first speaker in Session 2 is Jennifer Garson, and she coordinates National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition. She will share a lot of information about that, but also about some of the other student competitions that we have in the department.
Jennifer Garson [JG]: Thank you, Matt! I still wanted to start off with explaining why we at the U.S. Department of Energy create competitions as a mechanism for engagement. This is actually nothing new; for the last 20 years or so, we have been doing student-oriented competitions that have been seeking out the best and brightest technologists and entrepreneurs to help us tackle some of the biggest energy issues of our day. So this is a way that we can create other modes of engagement for students in entrepreneurship, particularly those who are more technology-focused. A lot of times we find that whether it is at the undergraduate or graduate level, technology-focused specific majors often times do not have crossover with entrepreneurship engagement or on tackling things outside of their schoolwork. So this is one of the mechanisms that we see as an important role for crossing business with technology.
We also try to help raise the bar to spur innovation by using prizes as an incentive. That can be anywhere from a $10,000 prize for mobile app developments, all the way to a $100,000 prize on specific technology applications. It also is a mechanism to tie not just students, but also researchers, industry and government. A lot of the different competitions that we engage in at the U.S. Department of Energy also have a big private sector involvement, which I will go into a little bit further in the coming slides.
First, I want to talk about the program that I run specifically, and that is the National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition. This competition was started 2 years ago as part of the Startup America Initiative through the Obama administration. The aim of it was to inspire entrepreneurship and to spur clean energy technology development by engaging students in these business plan competitions. So we put out a competitive solicitation a little over two years ago, specifically trying to find regional entities that could run business plan competitions. So you can see the list of the different regions. Some of them are open nationally—so the Rice Business Plan Competition is open to any applicant anywhere, as is the MIT Clean Energy Prize and Cal Tech. Some of the other competitions focus more regionally, but they’re still open to any participant within those states. There is a little bit more information on our website in terms of regional applicability, but one of the things that is really important to us is that we make sure that it is not just students at these universities that are applying—it is open to all universities, colleges, community colleges, and minority-serving institutions. In fact, one of our finalists last year was actually from an MSI in North Carolina who went on to win $100,000 at our ACC Clean Energy Challenge and advanced to the national competition.
To back up a little bit, the way that it works is you apply to one of the regional business plan competitions—or we have actually seen teams apply to many, and that’s fine, you just cannot win more than one. We have had about 600 applicants over the last 2 years apply to these competitions, and out of those, we have seen 55 patents and disclosure files. We are now over 90 jobs created and actually more than $20 million of follow-on funding has come into these teams. Once you go through the regional competitions, you also come to a national event.
Our national event is in D.C. in June, and it is completely put on by the private sector. So every dollar that goes towards both the prizes and the event is through private sector sponsorship. While we sponsor the $100,000 prizes at the regional competitions, the national event is completely private sector funded. So it is a really good crossover between industry and businesses. The other thing that I should say is that these are all clean energy technology applications. That is everything from software to hardware. As long as you are developing something with clean tech, you can apply. But these are real companies that are applying. By the time you get to the national event, you have to be incorporated. So we are really trying to spur business development by engaging with students and entrepreneurship. Again, the way that you get involved with the national event is to apply to the regional competitions, we have more information on our website. And as a note too, the teams have to be 50% students, so professors, principal investigators, outside people are more than welcome to be part of the team as long as the team is 50% students. Students can be undergraduate or graduate level.
Another one of our competitions is the Collegiate Wind Competition. This was launched about a year and a half ago, and it was aimed at building prototypes for micro wind turbines. What we had done was we put out a solicitation that went out to colleges and universities to apply to compete, and this culminates in an event that will be taking place next spring, where they will be able to not only show their technology, but they also have to develop a business plan around their technology application. They will be judged by not only engineers, but by investors. They will be pitching at one of the biggest wind conferences out in Nevada next year. While this is the first iteration, you can anticipate that within probably the next year or so there will be another round of this. It is a really good way for students to build hands-on models for wind, but they will also get some of that business acclimation, but this is specifically on wind.
The next program I want to highlight is the Solar Decathlon. The Solar Decathlon is one of our oldest competitions. It has been around since 2002 and happens bi-annually, and right now there is actually a solicitation out for universities to apply to compete in the next round of the Solar Decathlon, which would be in 2016. The way that this works is that it combines architecture, design, engineering, programs across the sectors to build a net zero energy home that has to be able to generate its own electricity. It also has to be comfort ready. There have been over 112 collegiate teams over the last 11 years. It gets a lot of press, and it is a really interesting and engaging way to build strong teams around buildings these homes. They also have multiple applications in addition to the homes themselves. In fact, the one that came from the Washington D.C. region actually shipped the home out to California, which is where the competition took place this year, and it was for disabled veterans. They actually donated the home to a disabled veteran after the completion. These are real homes that you are supposed to be able to live in.
If you are interesting in applying, like I said, the 2016 competition is open for another couple of days, but it is a really interesting opportunity that happens once every two years. It is a really interesting way to get engaged with clean energy. The other thing is that they had a lot of foot traffic. The competition is open to community colleges, it is open to universities; they are not prescriptive on only being 4-year universities.
One of the other major competitions that we run is the EcoCAR program. This has actually been around for about 20 years. This is a competition to design cars in collaboration with GM, actually. They have several technical goals to reduce fuel consumption, reduce well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions, reduce criteria tail pipe emissions, and maintain consumer acceptability to the areas of performance, utility, and safety. Like the other programs, this really helps to bring together engineers as well as different technology developers to have a hands-on competition of building a car essentially from scratch. This is also a really good way for automotive companies to actually gain more knowledge about innovative technology approaches that they may not be thinking about within their own R&D space. But it is another way for students to get engaged.
Another program that was actually recently launched is called the American Energy Data Challenge. This was actually launched as part of a White House initiative to get better information on data, and to have different design competitions on data. There will be over $100,000 dollars in total prizes, so that will include ideas, applications and visualizations to use the energy data that we already have through the U.S. Department of Energy. In the last couple of years, we have seen a wealth of data coming out of own programs, but often times we need to turn to innovators to actually come up with better ideas on how we visualize our own data set. This is actually open to students and other participants; it is open broadly. But we will be putting out three or four different campaigns over the next year, set specifically on data.
One of our other competitions is Geothermal Student Competition. This has been open for the last couple years as well. What this is is they put out an open solicitation for different engineering concepts on geothermal energy. This is included in everything from full system design to exploration. Right now they are in the midst of trying to figure out what their specific requirements will be for the 2014 competition, and like the Collegiate Wind and the Solar Decathlon competitions this will be released through a funding opportunity announcement where students will be able to apply directly. The prize has been usually approximately $10,000.
One of the other big initiatives that just got launched was our Georgetown University Energy Prize, which is a $5 million prize which is actually directed at communities. This is an area where community colleges and universities and colleges could all pair up with their local communities, to spur different ways to decrease energy consumption at a local level. This is also a private / public partnership that is being sponsored our Building Technology Office, as well as Georgetown University and several different private sector market players. This is to really to set the bar for energy consumption reduction, and it is a way to form collaborate partnerships with different parts of the community on how we achieve some of our pretty aggressive energy-efficient targets that we set up through the administration.
In addition to those challenges, the challenges listed here are some other challenges that we have, these different competitions that we have launched pretty recently. We actually have a site—that is listed at the bottom—where we list all competitions that we are engaging in at present. This is a really good resource for you to utilize because this is where we will host new competitions as well and it has a little bit more description on all these different energy challenges.
We really believe that by creating these prizes and challenges we are able to tap into the various points of knowledge across the country. We have seen some really great gains, especially over the last couple of years, on using these as a really good lever for creating local jobs and creating investment in a time where investments and free loan [inaudible]. By having a lot of these different judging scenarios, and having students go through these different processes, it is definitely a way for people to get involved.
We had a question: within the competition for EcoCAR, does it involve bio fuels as an engineering possibility? I believe so. If you want to know more information about the EcoCAR challenge, I am happy to put anybody in touch with some of the organizers. That is run out of our Vehicle Technologies Program, which does include a biofuels perspective under our transportation sector, but I do not want to say anything that may not be right. I am happy to put you in touch with the organizers of the competition. And I am also happy to do so for any of these competitions, in addition to the ones that I run, I am happy to connect anybody up with some of our program leads on these competitions that you can get more information on the requirements and timelines and any other ways that you may be able to get involved.
MG: Thank you, Jennifer! Actually, I am learning about new competitions daily, so I think it is a great idea to go visit that website that Jennifer showed, and we will send that information out as well post-webinar. Up next is a talk about the EERE Small Business and Innovation Research (SBIR) program where we have Adaora Nwokoye and Tina Kaarsberg to talk a little about SBIR.
Tina Kaarsberg [TK]: This is Tina Kaarsberg, I am the EERE lead for the Small Business Innovation Research program. We a not generally a student-focused organization, but we do know that students participate frequently in our research grants, especially in those grants that involve university participants. We are going to focus a little bit on that aspect of our program, which involves university participants. It is also, for you entrepreneurial folks, it is something that would be interesting to learn about early on so that you might consider being involved in this after you graduate and use it as a tool to build your career. I understand you work with grad students as well, as part of your various initiatives, and they are the most likely ones and also post-docs. By the way, I really like the fact that you use the term “engaging” because it seems like more of a 2-way thing than just giving lectures to or whatever.
I am not going to try to say the title of the slide, but the point is that there are an awful lot of abbreviations, some of which are confused with each other that are important to understand. First comes SBIR, the Small Business Innovation Research program, which was signed into law in 1982, and it is not only something at DOE, it is also at 11 other federal agencies with significant R&D. Aside from requiring that you be a small business with 500 employees or less, the other requirement is that the PI spend more than 50% of his or her effort on the small business. From the get-go back in '82, research institutions—which is sort of a catch-all term for universities and national laboratories—were encouraged to participate in the SBIR program. Now, the STTR program came along in 1992, and it is very similar to SBIR! In fact, when you read the policy statements about them, it is almost word for word, except for a few little differences. But, they are considered separate programs, and the key difference—and STTR began in 1992 and focuses on collaboration between small business and research institutions—and in STTR, there is a requirement that a minimum of 40% of the research effort be by the small business and a minimum of 30% of the research effort be by the research institution.
Now, another term has come along just in the past 2 years called a “TTO,” and we are getting a lot of questions about this. Until recently, the way we would run this program is our wind program would say, “What is a problem that is a real show-stopper for us that a small business could work on?” They would put it out there, and the small businesses would send a proposal to solve the problem. A TTO was of the topic where we say, “You know, we have developed this concept for doing something abstract, and we kind of don’t know where to go with it from here,” and small businesses apply to figure out how to commercialize that intellectual property that was developed at one of the DOE national labs or at a research institution that was funded by DOE. And that is a very new program. But, because they both have technology transfer in the title, people get them confused. So, that is enough bureaucracy, I think. I have in the notes some links to SBIR.gov where you can get much more detail about exactly the perimeters, but this slide pretty much gives you the overview.
You know, I do not need to tell you guys all of this stuff about diversity, but I am interested in your feedback about how my idea plays with the people that want economic advantage. We are not talking about, you know, just doing it as a socially beneficial thing, no, we are just saying from a strict economic point of view, it really makes a lot of sense to increase your diversity. To illustrate diversity, we have a number of the staff, some of which are here in this room, in the picture. We have age, diversity, color diversity—I do not know about state diversity, I can’t really tell from anyone—but essentially the idea is that if you can have a lot of diversity in your organization, you can have a competitive advantage over organizations that are less diverse. That is my story, and I am sticking to it! Next is the less-good news, as Dot Harris said, we know that there is very few women and minorities in STEM fields, and there is very few women and minorities in energy fields in particular. These statistics are from the SBA, and the next slide will show you why we think that we can do a lot better, but, just note that the numbers of these categories are small, and one thing that I would also note is that this is all 11 agencies that do R&D. But since this is an energy-oriented groups, I just want to point out that for some reason that we don’t understand—and maybe you guys can help illuminate this—in DOE the minorities are like 10%, and the women are 4-6%. I do not know why. The other think that is a mystery that we do not totally understand is that these numbers have not changed very much in the past 30 years, these percentages. In fact, they have dropped somewhat in DOE in the past 10 years. That is another mystery we are trying to figure out.
When people say, “Well, compared to what is this a problem?” This slide is really hard to read, but the two grey things over on the side, those are the percentages for numbers of award and dollars for awards. The next three slides are PhD rates for life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering. I think the last two are small business ownerships, and I cannot read that other one... But anyway, the basic message is there’s at least a factor of 2, in some cases a factor of 3 difference between a reasonable benchmark and the rates at SBIR. That's all for me. Over to Adaora who has part of the solution.
Adaora Nwokoye [AN]: Thank you, Tina. I will be talking to you on efforts of the SBIR program, and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has employed and continues to explore to reach women and underserved minorities with information about the SBIR program. Then, I will finish up with some key dates to remember for this round of solicitations. In EERE, the SBIR program is making efforts to reach out to women and minorities. Here are some of what we have done and something we hope to do in the future, and we have contacted regional and national organizations that have good networks of women and underserved minorities in the clean tech space, and we provide them with EERE SBIR information.
Also, we are linking up with offices within DOE that already interact with small clean tech businesses and have them forward on our information to these networks. Also we are participating in clean tech conferences and other outreach opportunities where we discuss and hand out information about the EE SBIR program. Organize and participate in DOE and EERE SBIR webinars such as the one we are having today!
TK: And thanks for inviting us!
AN: In the future, we hope to collaborate within and across the federal SBIR agencies on workshops as first time and one time SBIR applicants. In addition to the aforementioned efforts that EERE SBIR program has explored and continues to explore is the creation of a new EERE SBIR website, which is intended to a one-stop-shop for first-timers to the SBIR program. Below is the URL for how to get to this website. On this website is a page dedicated to our outreach initiative. If you want to know more about it, I encourage you to go look on there and learn more. We have a page also dedicated to eligibility. If you are a small business and you want to learn what the eligibility criteria is for your small business, how to apply to an SBIR grant, I will encourage you to go on this page and learn more, and that is also a “How to Apply” page. On this page we have resources that I believe any person that would want to apply to a SBIR program would need—how to submit a letter of intent, and some of the things you need in your letter of intent—all in one site.
These are other resources, I am not going to go ahead and go through every one of them, but if you are going to receive this webinar, it is easier for you to know what to type in when you are looking for stuff. We have the topic that relates with the solicitation, we have a FOA document that tells you more of the administrative type information for this round of solicitations. Also the webinar to the FOA, where you can listen to more general type questions that have come across to the office, and then there is also on there an example of an LOI, instruction of the application process, and even a template of an application that you can follow.
So, upcoming dates. The letter of intent is due December 16, which is Monday coming up, and that is why we have been so busy. And then, the FOA application is in February, February 4. Awards notifications will be sent out in late April, and the grants that date will be in early June of 2014.
To get announcements, topic updates, and other pertinent information about the SBIR program or processes, please sign on to our mailing list which is listed below. If you have comments or suggestions on how we can improve our outreach efforts, or even improve our website, please send your requests or your suggestions or comments to myself, Adaora Nwokoye, at Adaora.Nwokoye@ee.doe.gov, or Tina Kaarsberg at Tina.Kaarsberg@ee.doe.gov.
MG: Alright, thank you guys! Looking at the questions, we have time to try to address 2 of these questions as best as we can. “What programs exist to encourage and help poor minority students—Americans included—learn and benefit from these programs?” Anybody have any comments there?
TK: There is nothing in the R&D grants themselves that is targeted to women, minorities, disabled, poor people whatever, but there is in the new reauthorization a 3% set aside for outreach and training for group like that, but it is still just beginning to be implemented, so we cannot give you any exact details. But stay tuned, sign up for our mailing list. There will be some of those kind of opportunities.
MG: I think that helps to address the second question, which is: “Will there be a set aside for women and minorities, or preference?” And as Tina has noted, these are some of the things that we are actively trying to figure out.
TK: There is no preference in terms of scoring their proposal. There is somewhat of a preference in terms of outreach. -Because we do have a statutory mandate, specifically in the mission of SBIR to foster and encourage socially and economically disadvantaged, which has been interpreted to include women-owned businesses as well. While we, in terms of R&D proposals, it is a strict merit-based, but we try to do things in terms of the infrastructure to make it better for those disadvantaged groups especially.
MG: I think that discussion, and those questions, sets us up perfectly for the next session, which really, the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity and the Office of Science and Office of Nuclear Energy, these are exactly the same issues that they are trying to address in their programs. So, we are going to learn a little bit about the Minorities in Energy Initiative from AnneMarie Horowitz, and the Visiting Faculty Program from Kate Bannan, and the Mickey Leland Program from Alan Perry. So we will continue on. Alright! So Engaging Students in Energy from the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity.
Mekell Mikell: Good afternoon everyone. My name is Dr. Mekell Mikell. I am a special advisor in the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity here at the Department of Energy. To sum it up, what we do is make sure everyone has a seat at the table when it comes to all the opportunities at the Department. Our vision is we address the needs of underrepresented communities in the energy sector and align them with President Obama's agenda for engaging more Americans in energy and science, technology, engineering, and math. Our mission is to help empower, equip and prepare businesses, communities, schools and individuals to partake in the technical, procurement, engagement, workforce and the energy literacy resources of the Department of Energy and the energy sector overall.
We work with a lot of minority-serving institutions, which include historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, Asian American/Pacific Islander institutions, and Hispanic serving institutions across the country. We do this through research opportunities, partnerships, internships, fellowships, and other opportunities that the Department has to offer.
One of the big vehicles we have used to engage more minority students in the energy sector, and particularly to become familiar with the Department, is our Minority Educational Institution Student Partnership Program (or MEISPP for short). It’s a paid 2-week program where students can go to a national lab, they can go to headquarters, they can go to a field site. And they receive a stipend, they receive a place to stay, and they also are reimbursed for travel expenses to a certain extent, so that you actually can go and learn and you are not worrying about where you are going to stay or having to get 2 or 3 jobs to help support your internship. So they can learn, they can focus, they have mentors, they can become involved in science, they can work in different offices.
I was a MEISPP intern myself when I was in grad school, and I went to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and worked in the small business office. And you can see that I came back to this department. So it is a really good opportunity to expose people with all kinds of majors, not necessarily STEM, but we do want more scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, but also people in liberal arts or communications or marketing or graphic design, who can also experience what the Department has to offer and turn that into a career.
Another initiative we are working is The Sun Project which is an initiative that shares STEM opportunities with urban native youth. We are partnering with the American Indian Science and Engineering Society to engage these students in the National Science Bowl. They will have mentors, they will have resources, because part of the problem with keeping students engaged and interested and active in science bowl activities is having a lack of a mentor or a coach or somebody they can turn to, so we are trying to combat that problem.
I will say that Sarah EchoHawk, who happens to be the CEO and President of AISES, which is the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, is also one of our Minorities in Energy ambassadors, which I will talk about a little bit more. Just to give you a brief overview of the Minorities in Energy Initiative, it is an attempt to engage minorities in the energy sector through STEM education, energy economic development, and climate change. The Secretary kicked off here in September at the Department, and we also had events at the White House and on Capitol Hill in November. So we have a very impressive array of ambassadors from all sectors of energy, industry, media and entertainment. Miss America 2014 is one of our ambassadors, and just so you know, she is a STEM student and is planning to go to medical school, so she can speak to that from the perspective of a recent grad and also someone paying for graduate school. We also have a member who is a venture capitalist, we have people who worked in the oil and gas and nuclear energy.
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