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Session Description

Free ticketed event
Workshop Presenters:
Michael Nealon: Henry Ford College; VP Academic Affairs (manealon@hfcc.edu)
Reuben Brukley: Henry Ford College; Facilities Director (rjbrukley@hfcc.edu)
Herb Sinnock: Senior Consultant & former Sustainability Director, Sheridan College (herbert.sinnock@gmail.com)
Pat Fox: ASEE Fellow; Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Clinical Assistant Professor Emerita (psfox@iu.edu)
Rob Kerr: Managing Director, Garforth International Canada Inc. (rob.kerr@garforthcanada.ca)
Peter Garforth: AEE Fellow; Principal; Garforth International LLC (peter@garforthint.com)
(Moderator)

Collaboration
The workshop is based on collaboration between Henry Ford College (Michigan, USA) and Sheridan College (Ontario, Canada) and Hofstra University (New York, USA), supported by analysis and strategic recommendations provided by Garforth International.

Co-Sponsored by
Electrical and Computer Engineering Division
Instrumentation Division
Multidisciplinary Engineering Division

Expected Audience
Faculty involved with green energy projects and curricula
Leadership and staff involved with implementing decarbonization of university / college operations

Learning Objectives of Workshop
At the end of the Workshop, participants will be able to:
1. Appreciate the substantial gap between the engineering tools available to support the global energy transition and shortfalls in the scale and speed of successful implementation.
2. Recognize the multi-disciplinary skills and processes needed for successful campus and community-scale implementation of the energy transition and how the engineers’ roles change.
3. Explore how transforming their institutions’ energy performance could be the basis to supplement, enhance, and staff educational offerings to accelerate the wider energy transition.
Brief Description of Workshop
The Workshop will share the collaborative work being accomplished by two academic institutions to decarbonize their own campuses to create “Living Classrooms” while shifting the academic paradigm to equip energy engineers and others to accelerate the successful, community-scale energy transitions. The ASEE Conference theme of "Engineering Educators Bringing the World Together” is fitting for this discussion.

The background to this work is the gap between widely accepted goals to rapidly decarbonize the global energy system and major shortfalls in the scale and speed of effective implementation. Communities, institutions and businesses all struggle with this mismatch between goals and implementation, despite the growing availability of effective technical tools and financing.

Their preliminary findings based on both their own experiences and wider benchmarking, indicate there is a need for relevant, integrated multi-disciplinary energy transition education, structured around real-world scale projects that are large enough to represent the challenges of holistic decarbonization, and are structured for rapid replication. They also show the need to constantly incorporate technical and other best practices from anywhere in the world.

This collaborative background has led to the creation of a multidisciplinary academic working team tasked with detailed program design. The lessons learned to date and steps towards designing targeted curriculum will be shared to help other universities consider similar programs.

Planned Schedule of Workshop

The Workshop will have sections, each with a presentation followed by a discussion shaped by guiding questions.

1. Energy Transition: Background and Status

An overview of the technical, economic, and environmental drivers of the global energy transition will be reviewed. It will include an assessment of the implementation status at national and community levels relative to both local and global goals. The range of ways in which Colleges and Universities are typically addressing improving the energy efficiency and decarbonisation of their campuses in terms of both goal setting and implementation will also be reviewed.
The discussion will focus on the gap between the decarbonization and associated goals, and shortfalls in implementation scale and speed.
2. Energy Transition: What Drives Successful Implementation?

The section explores the processes and multi-disciplinary skills essential for colleges and universities campuses to transform their energy use to achieve both breakthrough economic and technical performance while delivering rapid decarbonization. The section will also elaborate on the way in which a successful institutional energy transformation creates a “Living Classroom” for many aspects community scale transformations. This is informed by more than a decade of ongoing collaboration of a cohort of three US and Canadian colleges and the lessons learned from decarbonizing their own campuses, and teaming with neighbouring communities.
The discussion will focus on the decision-making and process steps that have proven successful and, equally importantly, approaches that are unlikely to succeed

3. Energy Transition: Colleges and Universities Accelerating Successful Large-scale Implementation

This section explores the interdisciplinary skills, processes, and structures needed for energy systems of campuses, neighbourhoods and entire cities, to successfully plan and most importantly, implement successful energy transitions. It will include an assessment of how these needs change the educational offering and how this may be significantly different from the currently recognized engineering, sustainability, and other curriculum. This calls for a critical assessment of current engineering and other educational offerings, and an awareness of global benchmarks. These changes will also deeply affect the institution’s relationships with P-12 programs, host communities, local employers, and national and international stakeholders.
The discussion will focus on practical steps colleges and universities can take to use the planning and implementing the decarbonization of their own assets as “Living Classrooms” to meet the urgent workforce reskilling needs and how these can be rapidly proliferated across multiple institutions.

Moderated by

1. Peter John Garforth

Speakers

1. Reuben Brukley

   Henry Ford College

   Reuben Brukley is the Director of Facilities at Henry Ford College with 6 years of experience in facilities planning and maintenance, and 12 years of additional experience in operations oversight and labor relations. He holds an MBA from the Mike Illitch School of Business at Wayne State University. Reuben has led numerous construction and sustainability initiatives with demonstrable results, including a 50% reduction in campus GHG emissions, a 40% increase in source utility efficiency, and a 26% reduction in the College’s deferred maintenance backlog. Reuben recently managed the physical implementation of Henry Ford College’s Integrated Energy Master Plan.

2. Michael A. Nealon

   Henry Ford College

   Dr. Michael A. Nealon serves as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer at Henry Ford College (Dearborn, MI). Dr. Nealon brings nearly 30 years of college-level teaching and administrative experience to the post, having previously taught at Lansing Community College, DePaul University (Chicago, IL), Northwestern University (Evanston, IL), and North Park College and Seminary (Chicago, IL). Dr. Nealon earned a PhD in Musicology from Northwestern University in 1997. He holds a Master’s degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and a Bachelor of Arts from St. Michael’s College (Colchester, VT).

   Before joining the Academic team at HFC, Nealon served as Vice President for Instruction at Washtenaw Community College and in various leadership roles at Lansing Community College – including Vice President for Engaged Student Learning, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Chair of the Humanities & Performing Arts Department, and Lead Faculty of the Music Program.

3. Prof. Patricia Fox

   Indiana University - Purdue University in Indianapolis

   Patricia Fox is a Clinical Assistant Professor Emerita in the Department of Technology Leadership and Communication, Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Pat was a faculty member in the School of Engineering and Technology for over 43 years. She spent a number of those years in administration, working in the positions of Associate Dean, Assistant Dean, Assistant to the Dean, and Associate Chair. Pat served as the School of Engineering and Technology’s President of the Faculty Senate and Co-Chair of the University Faculty Council’s Climate Action Plan Task Force. She taught and developed numerous courses in Leadership and Sustainability, including courses for the Sustainable Technologies Certificate. For over 20 years, Pat developed and taught a study abroad course specifically about sustainable practices in businesses and industries in Germany and France. She has held numerous leadership roles in the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), including four terms on the ASEE Board of Directors. She was awarded numerous ASEE national awards, including an ASEE Fellow.

4. Herbert Sinnock

   Sheridan College

   Herb Sinnock, until recently, was Director-Sustainability at Sheridan College and is now an independent senior consultant. For more than a decade at Sheridan, he has been responsible for the implementation of Mission Zero, the institution’s ambitious plan to reduce energy consumption, waste to landfill, and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. Before joining Sheridan College, Herb was Manager of the Centennial Energy Institute at Centennial College in Scarborough, Ontario. With nearly 30 years of experience in the energy sector, he has worked in project management, technology research, and product development for projects funded by Ontario Centres of Excellence, Ontario Power Authority, US Department of Energy, US Air Force, among others. His technical specialties are energy management, advanced control systems, neural networks, system integration, heat transfer, mathematical modelling, and distributed power systems. Herb holds an MSc in Energy Engineering from University of Massachusetts Lowell and is a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Waterloo's Sustainability Management Program.

5. Rob Kerr

   Robert Kerr is the Managing Director of Garforth International Canada, Inc. (GICI). He has over 40 years of experience in many facets of the energy and environmental sector, with a focus on policy development and implementation of energy and climate change projects and programs in the municipal sector. Rob’s primary focus has been in the municipal/community area, having worked with the cities of Guelph and Mississauga, and businesses of Honeywell, Hydro Quebec, Toronto Hydro Energy Services Inc., and Energy Advantage. For 10 years between 1995 and 2005, Rob held senior positions at ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, including the role of Executive Director of ICLEI Canada, where he provided policy and program support to cities around the world committed to energy management at the community level, as well as mitigation and adaptation activities related to climate change.

6. Peter John Garforth

   Garforth International

   Peter Garforth is Principal of Garforth International, a specialist consultancy based in Toledo, Ohio, and Brussels, Belgium. He is also a founding board member of an affiliate consultancy in Guelph, Ontario. He advises major companies, cities, communities, colleges, property developers, and policymakers on developing competitive approaches that reduce the economic and environmental impact of energy use. Peter has long been interested in energy productivity and sustainability, and has a considerable track record establishing successful businesses and programs in the United States, Canada, Europe, Indonesia, India, Brazil, China, Japan, and elsewhere. He has held senior management roles around the world at Honeywell, Landis & Gyr (now Siemens), and was Vice-President of Strategy for Owens Corning.

   Peter is also a published author and has contributed monthly columns to Plant Services magazine as the “Energy Expert”. Peter is a long-standing member and contributor to American Energy Engineers (AEE), where he was inducted as a “Legend in Energy” in 2005 and in 2024 as an “AEE Fellow”. Peter was invited as a Guest Lecturer at IUPUI where, with the School of Graduate Studies, he co-designed and led the course "Economic & Business Aspects of Energy - A Global View"