2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 251: Electricity Access and Sustainable Business Models Educators' Workshop

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Over 700 million people worldwide do not have access to electricity. Yet, there is very little coverage of this topic in US universities. This important topic can motivate students to pursue engineering studies and inspire engineering students to engage in a variety of activities related to electricity access, making it a pivotal area for educational focus. This topic tends to attract women and minorities underrepresented in engineering disciplines, particularly in the electrical and mechanical engineering disciplines.
An initial gathering of about 25 engineering educators, field practitioners, and non-profit organization representatives participated in an initial NSF-sponsored workshop in June 2022. A goal of this workshop was to survey the community as to what already existed in this field and to consider how to expand electricity access education in the United States.
Following the success of this initial workshop, an expanded workshop on this topic was held in October 2023. About 40 attendees, including engineering faculty members, students, and field practitioners participated. The two-day program of sessions comprised two keynote speakers, moderated panels, and themed discussions.
This paper presents details of the second workshop along with feedback from the attendees and proposed next steps to advance the development of this topic in engineering curricula.
This project was funded by a grant from the Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) of the National Science Foundation.

Authors

Dr. Pritpal Singh Villanova University [biography]

Dr. Pritpal Singh is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Villanova University. He received a BSc in Physics from the University of Birmingham, UK in 1978, and Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Sciences/Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware. He joined Villanova University in 1984 and has been faculty member there ever since. He has served as the Chair of the Middle Atlantic Section of ASEE, Zone 1 Chair, and has organized and hosted three regional ASEE conferences at Villanova University. Dr. Singh has published papers regularly at the ASEE Annual Conference and currently serves Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee of the IEEE Education Society on Diversity and Inclusion. In 2022, Dr. Singh was recognized with the IFEES Duncan Fraser Award for Excellence in Engineering Education.
Prof. Henry Louie Seattle University [biography]

Dr. Henry Louie received the B.S.E.E. degree from Kettering University, the M.S. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington in 2008. He is currently an Associat
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).
Scarleth Vanessa Vasconcelos Villanova University

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