2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress: Student Reflections from a Semester-Long Place-Based Photovoltaic Solar Energy Project

Presented at Environmental Engineering Division (ENVIRON) Technical Session 2

In spring of 2022, the University of San Diego integrated engineering department offered a new sociotechnical solar energy course for junior and senior students. The course differed from traditional, technical upper-division engineering electives by facilitating student learning through a semester-long, team-based solar energy project that students worked on while concurrently gaining technical insights through lectures and problem sets. Informed by place-based pedagogies and culturally sustaining pedagogies, we designed the course to be relevant to the students’ lived experiences by coupling the learning about technical elements of solar energy with a focus on solar energy projects on campus. Prior to running the course, we studied the university’s Energy Master Plan, learned about the current state of solar energy on campus, and identified four potential new solar projects. We divided the 14 students in the class into four teams, with each team conducting a feasibility assessment for their solar project over the course of the class. Students started by exploring the solar we already have on campus. Once familiarized with the current system, we guided the students in completing their assessments of the new projects through four, two-week phases, with each phase focusing on a different sociotechnical analysis for their project: 1) social, 2) technical, 3) economic, and 4) environmental. During the fifth and final phase, ‘integration,’ we supported the students in integrating their analyses from each phase and making final, all-class recommendations to the university about how to proceed with solar energy investments on campus. In this paper, we share our findings from implementing this sociotechnical learning approach gained from student reflections, and our own observations and reflections from the course experience.

Authors

Dr. Marissa H. Forbes University of San Diego [biography]

Marissa Forbes, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of San Diego. She is co-creator and co-leader of the Water Justice Exchange, a cross-campus, inter-community initiative fostering synergistic research, teaching and solutions for water challenges in the San Diego/Tijuana region. Dr. Forbes earned her MS and PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder in Civil (environmental) Engineering, and conducts research that aims to advance water justice and sustainability, as well as sociotechnical engineering education research. She previously served as the project manager and lead editor of the NSF-funded TeachEngineering digital library (TeachEngineering.org, a free library of K-12 engineering curriculum), during which she mentored NSF GK-12 Fellows and NSF Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) participants on the creation and publication of their original engineering curriculum. Dr. Forbes is a former high school physics and engineering teacher and a former NSF GK-12 Fellow.
Dr. Susan M. Lord http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2675-5626 University of San Diego [biography]

Susan Lord is Professor and Chair of Integrated Engineering at the University of San Diego. She received a BS from Cornell University in Materials Science and Electrical Engineering (EE) and MS and PhD in EE from Stanford University. Her research focuses on the study and promotion of equity in engineering including student pathways and inclusive teaching. She has won best paper awards from the Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transactions on Education, and Education Sciences. Dr. Lord is a Fellow of the IEEE and ASEE and received the 2018 IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award. She is a coauthor of The Borderlands of Education: Latinas in Engineering. She is a co-Director of the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI).

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