2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Motivation:
In 2022, the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) were signed into law. These Acts are intended to promote investments in domestic energy industries. The US Executive branch established multiple grant funding mechanisms to distribute investments. Recognizing that IIJA and IRA investments will require significant workforce development and that investments must benefit disadvantaged communities, the funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) for these grants include requirements to achieve these ends.

U.S. Department of Energy FOAs specify that applicants must include Community Benefits Plans (CBPs) within their proposals. CBPs require applicants to invest in domestic workforce development, advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the nation’s workforce, and meet the objectives of the Justice40 Initiative. Justice40 mandates that at least 40% of the benefits of certain federal investments must flow to disadvantaged communities.

The CBP requirements present opportunities for universities to provide undergraduate engineering students with career development pathways within the industries targeted by the IIJA and IRA. The opportunities are particularly well-suited for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), such as Asian American, Native American, Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) and Hispanic Serving Institution (HSIs). Such universities often have programs that support the career paths of their diverse student populations, but insufficient funding often prevents them from providing holistic career development support.

Methods:
[Our university] is partnering with a [local investor-owned utility], a [local transmission authority], several electrical equipment manufacturers, and [a local Native American nation] on multiple DOE-funded projects to create an internship program that will provide engineering career development pathways within the electric utility industry. The internship program will help ensure that federal investments in the electric utility industry advance the priorities of supporting quality jobs and ensuring that the future workforce represents our diverse and vibrant regional population. The internship program contributes to the projects’ CBPs through multiple actions: by increasing the representation of MSIs as project partners, collaborating with faculty in an MSI, and identifying workforce training partners to foster improved access to careers for members of the community, including under-represented individuals. The intern program also supports goals of the Justice40 Initiative, specifically by increasing job creation, addressing the clean energy job pipeline, and providing job training for individuals .

Assessment:
As is often the case with many MSIs, [our university] hosts multiple programs that serve historically excluded students, including career services, mentorships, and internship preparation. Considering that these DOE grants span multiple years , our team is currently developing assessment tools that will allow us to measure the program over several iterations of internships using a consistent set of tools. These assessment tools will inform project operation and provide our project partners with metrics pertaining to their CBPs. This WIP will discuss how our team will :
● work with companies to propose internships that align with the project objectives.
● prepare internship candidates using methods such as CV reviews and mock interviews.
● work with minority-serving programs at the university to identify internship candidates .
● provide guidance to interns during the identification, preparation, and internship periods.
● identify, coordinate, and communicate with company mentors.
● align assessment tools with ABET student outcomes .
● report findings in alignment with CBP objectives, including Justice40.
This WIP will report on the development of both the internship program and our assessment methods. The authors will follow up on this WIP with subsequent ASEE publications that report on the assessment findings.