Recording of the full session
Coming here soon. Thanks for your patience.
NSF-Sponsored ECE Department Heads and Faculty Online Workshop
Dissemination of Electric “Power” Courses/Laboratories Developed through ONR Funding
Monday, March 8, 2021
Workshop Objectives:
This workshop will discuss a three-prong approach as follows:
1. Create a Pipeline of High School Graduates into the ECE programs: Discuss two courses that can be taught by the ECE departments in all universities and promoted in high schools to convey the awareness of climate emergency and ways to implement solutions. Given that many solutions are ECE-oriented, tailoring these courses can become a pipeline to electrical engineering programs in which enrollments are declining nationwide.
2. Facilitate Teaching of Senior/Graduate-Level Courses in Power Systems, Power Electronics, and Electric Machines/Drives:
Anybody can freely download all the material for seventeen courses from our website http://cusp.umn.edu. In keeping with a recent MIT study (“US electricity demand can be met with currently available zero-carbon technologies”), these courses form the foundation for moving toward one-hundred percent renewables that will require up to four times the existing transmission infrastructure. General Motors just announced that it would sell only vehicles that have zero tailpipe emissions by 2035. This will require knowledge of power electronics and electric machines/drives.
Are we graduating students in large numbers with first-rate education to take on these challenges?
3. Provide Hands-On Education using Extremely Low-Cost Hardware Laboratories funded by ONR:
These labs are developed to provide hands-on experience to supplement the courses mentioned above. These laboratories can also be accessed remotely and thus an entire lab can be set up for as little as 2,500 dollars. They are made available through a University of Minnesota startup.
All times are in CDT.
- 8:00 am – 9:00 am Welcome Session and the Importance of EE and STEM
- Prof. Randy Victora – ECE Dept Head, University of Minnesota
- Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty – Program Director, National Science Foundation (NSF)
- CAPT Lynn J. Petersen USN (Ret) – Program Officer, Office of Naval Research (ONR) “Reinventing Power Programs Through Sustainability-Focused Curriculum; an Update”
- 9:00 am - 9:30 am Pipeline Courses
- Outline of two pipeline courses (http://z.umn.edu/ee1701). One of them is being taught in several high schools.
- 9:30 am – 10:30 am Demonstration of ONR-funded Hardware Laboratories
- 10:30 am – 12:30 pm Discussion of Senior/Graduate-Level Courses in “Power”