Mile High

Hi all,
Tuesday morning, long before dawn I left for airport on what, at age 39 is my very first 'business trip'. Thus far I will chalk it up in the 'success' category. I was concerned about flying in December but amazingly I managed to change planes in Chicago and fly out here Denver all without a single flake of snow. And the weather looks as though it will cooperate flying back east this weekend. Fingers crossed.
I am out here just west of Denver in Golden CO not to visit Coors brewing but for meetings at and a tour of the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and the National Wind Technology Center. The Department of Energy operates 17 national research laboratories across the country, places like Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Savannah River, etc. Most of them are run out of the Office of Science at DOE. My office, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has but one and that is NREL.
The business end of my trip began shortly after I landed. I drove promptly to Lakewood high school to visit with a teacher there who has developed and is teaching, full time, a sustainable energy curriculum. It is a regular high school that has managed to hold onto its shop classes. And the shop classes are updated to include CAD, electronics and engineering in addition to carpentry and metal shop standards. While his curriculum does include Project Lead the Way, an excellent engineering program available to middle and high schools, he has infused that curriculum into his energy courses. Students all begin by taking an intro renewable energy class which covers 1. Our Current Energy Picture, 2. Intro to Energy, 3. Energy Efficiency & Conservation and then into solar and wind power. We had a wonderful conversation about energy illiteracy and the power of this class (pun intended?) to change that. For instance: many people know that turning off a light when not in use will save energy. Yet few people really understand that at the other end of that switch is a fire burning, likely fueled by coal in this country and that the energy released in that fire is going to create that electricity. Shut off the light and the fire can dim too. And the kicker is that 2/3 of the energy released in burning that coal never makes it to your light bulb but is lost as heat in the power plant or in resistance getting to your home.
Once students have passed the intro course they can take Sustainable Energy 2, SE 3, and Design Technology. Students learn about weatherization techniques, HVAC, Fuels and power, Hydrogen power, biodiesel, ethanol and electricity. In the design course they learn basic principles of engineering and have to solve all sorts of basic engineering problems and build things. In the second year they can also take a process technology course in which they learn all about and participate in the process of identifying a problem/need, brainstorming solutions, prioritizing and doing cost (energy/time/$) analysis for various solutions on up to product design and deployment. Very cool. For both the Design and Process course students can get dual enrollment credit at Red Rocks community college. If they choose to head there after high school they can get an associates in wind or solar installation, etc in less time in that they are ahead of the game. Some students also transfer after Red Rocks over to the Colorado School of Mines to pursue an engineering degree. Some interesting things in the courses Matt teaches are 1) that it's at least 40% girls and he says they are way more methodical in design and process than the boys, 2) given the PLTW rigor of the engineering element it attracts many academically minded students as well as the more 'hands on tinkering - less academically motivated' students. He says they have a lot to offer each other throughout the course.
My next step is to figure out how this curriculum can be replicated at high schools far and wide in order to educate the masses about energy and to use the energy conversation as a means to teach engineering - an instant relevance for students in learning and applying the math and science they are already learning.
More soon. Next up: touring the renewable energy labs. Highlights to include Jimmy Buffett, tinfoil, 45% efficient solar panels, solar t-shirts and more!!