2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Project Based Learning and Engagement of Multidisciplinary Student Teams in Ocean Renewable Energy Projects

Presented at ECCNED Technical Session 3: Renewable Energy Design, Prototyping, and Capstone Learning

This work in progress paper will discuss how providing students with the opportunity to display skills they learn is imperative to their learning experience. Connecting engineering problems with emerging industries inspires students to create and accelerate professional practices through friendly competitions. Over the past three years, a cohort of multidisciplinary students at UNC Charlotte have been developing innovations in harnessing marine renewable energy through participation in the Marine Energy Collegiate Competition (MECC) and University Marine Energy Club. Funded by the United States Department of Energy (DOE), MECC provides students with technical design, community connections, build and test, and business plan challenges to develop a wave energy converter (WEC) for their chosen powering the blue economy application. Completion of technical design, build, and test challenges requires students to create innovative WEC designs for power generation and manufacture prototypes to conduct testing and evaluation. In addition to engineering focused problems, students must address the business plan and technoeconomic efficacy of their chosen design. Throughout the competition cycles, the MECC team at UNC Charlotte, composed of undergraduate students, has created three different WEC designs. Through a project-based learning and management approach, students gained invaluable hard and technical skills as well as soft and professional skills that are inaccessible in a typical engineering curriculum. These skills include problem solving, data analysis, software coding, and manufacturing as well as communication, teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, leadership, and project management. The students performed outreach activities in K-12 classrooms and provided ideas and lesson plans for the school systems in two regional counties (Guilford and Mecklenburg). Students also benefited from oral and written presentations of their work at reputed regional, national, and international venues. Through leadership positions, students gained experience as leaders and managers, and learned the importance of responsibility, organization, and collaboration. Over the last three years a multidisciplinary cohort of 35 students with majors in engineering, computing, business and finance, and social sciences has been engaged through the MECC. Qualitative feedback from the students indicates significant skills development in simulation, CAD modeling, and data analysis while adhering to the engineering design process along with gaining insight into business and financial aspects of the projects across various sectors of the blue economy.

Authors

Dr. Saffeer M. Khan P.E. University of North Carolina at Charlotte [biography]

Dr. Saffeer M. Khan, graduated with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte. He has served in various academic positions at University of Arkansas Fort Smith and Arkansas Tech University between 2014 – 2022. Presently, he is a Research Associate Professor and manages the Flexible Energy Lab Suite in the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC) at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Khan has over 20 years’ experience of research and training, project management and engineering, and multidisciplinary collaboration in defense and academia. He is a principal investigator on several ocean renewable energy related projects sponsored by the North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute and focused on wave and wind energy resource characterization and powering the blue economy applications. Dr. Khan was the Principal Investigator on a multi-institutional, two-state, National Science Foundation Type 1 Developmental Regional Innovation Engine project focused on clean energy and grid modernization. Dr. Khan is an active member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and IEEE Power and Energy, Industry Applications, Oceanic Engineering, and Power Electronic Societies. He is also a licensed Professional Engineer (Power) in Arkansas and North Carolina.
Patrick Evan Hultberg http://orcid.org/0009-0005-0790-6600 University of North Carolina at Charlotte [biography]

Patrick Hultberg graduated from UNC Charlotte with his Bachelors in Computer in Engineering and will be attending Carnegie Mellon University to get his masters in Computer Engineering. He has served as an Undergraduate Research Assistant at UNC Charlotte between 2023 and 2026. He has contributed to various projects including a resource characterization of the wind and wave energy resources off the coast of North Carolina and microgrid fuel efficiency modeling. Patrick Hultberg is also an active IEEE Eta Kappa Nu and is the team co-lead for Duck, Duck, Goose, UNC Charlotte's Marine Energy Collegiate Competition which has been named as the rising star of the competition and has won best poster in the competition.
Michael Alexander Poole University of North Carolina at Charlotte [biography]

Michael Poole is a junior-level undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Michael Poole has been a research assistant underneath Dr. Saffeer Khan for over a year and will continue his assistantship throughout the completion of his Mechanical Engineering degree. Additionally, Michael Poole is a Department of War sponsored SMART Scholar for NAVAIR Flight Readiness Center East.

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