2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

We are facing a wide range of grand challenges across the world, such as the continuous increase of energy demand, more frequent extreme weather disasters, and uncertainties associated with climate change. Wind energy, an affordable renewable resource—achieving costs as low as $0.04 per kilowatt-hour in a growing number of regions (Gielen et al., 2019; Wiser et al., 2008)—holds great potential to meet rising energy demands, mitigate the causes of climate change, and contribute to a cleaner, sustainable, and domestic energy generation portfolio. To fully realize the potential of wind energy, we must address research challenges arising from the complex, coupled phenomena that span spatial and temporal scales relevant to both wind energy and the broader power system. This necessitates a diverse, talented pool of future scientists and engineers in wind energy research and industries to tackle these issues. Despite the national and global demand for wind energy research and development (Veers et al., 2019), many undergraduate students of non-R1 universities lack opportunities to participate in active wind energy research. To tap the nation’s diverse student talent pool and broaden participation in science and engineering, there is a critical need to provide these students access to wind energy research early in their career and motivate them to pursue graduate education or research-oriented jobs in the wind energy sector.

The Great Lakes Wind Energy Challenges (GLWind) REU site funded by the NSF Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC), co-hosted by CSU and CWRU in Cleveland, Ohio, has supported nine undergraduate students in a ten-week intensive summer research program during 2023 and 2024 (Years 1 and 2). The REU student cohort actively engaged in ongoing wind energy research within existing learning and research communities at CSU and CWRU. They attended weekly seminars on the latest wind energy research and professional development, visited utility-scale wind turbines on the CWRU campus, and presented their research posters at the Summer Intersection Symposium and professional conferences beyond the program. REU students had enjoyed the rich diverse culture and historical landmarks of Cleveland. Annual program evaluations via surveys and focus group interviews were carried out to inform PIs and faculty about potential improvements and ensure continuous program enhancement. The GLWind REU program focused on recruiting women, underrepresented minorities, and students from community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and non-R1 universities without established research programs in engineering. In the summer 2023, 56% of participants were from non-R1 universities, and 67% belonged to underrepresented minority groups (UMG) in STEM. In the summer 2024, 67% of participants were from non-R1 universities, and 44% were UMG. The educational outcome aims at a diverse group of talented US students who are motivated and prepared to apply the research and communication skills developed in the REU program to succeed in broader STEM fields, and a structured, personalized mentoring mechanism for undergraduate students that will be disseminated to a larger engineering community via the ASEE conference.