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Session Description

Free ticketed event
2026 ASEE Conference Workshop

Title:
Campus and Neighborhood Energy Transformation and Decarbonization – Are we teaching to achieve the right outcomes?

Workshop Presenters:
-Dr. Michael Nealon: Vice President, Academic Affairs at Henry Ford College
manealon@hfcc.edu
-Dr. Hassan Mohseni Nameghi: Director-Pre-Engineering Program at Henry Ford College
hnameghi@hfcc.edu
-Dr. Alaa Elmoursi, Electrical Engineering Technology - School of Business, Entrepreneurship and Professional Development
aaelmoursi@hfcc.edu
-Tanusree (Tammy) Coomar: PMP, Project Manager, Capital Projects at Henry Ford College
tcoomar@hfcc.edu
-Pat Fox: ASEE Fellow & Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Clinical Assistant Professor Emerita
psfox@iu.edu
-Herb Sinnock: P.Eng., CEM, CMVP, CBCP, WELL AP; Principal Stranova Inc, GIL Associate, and former Sheridan College Sustainability Director
herbertsinnock@gmail.com
-Peter Garforth: AEE Fellow & Principal; Garforth International LLC
peter@garforthint.com

Collaboration:
The subject matter of the workshop is based on collaboration between the Academic and Facility Teams at Henry Ford College (Michigan, USA), and Sheridan College (Ontario, Canada), supported by technical analysis and strategic recommendations provided by Garforth International, derived from transformative energy planning experiences with colleges, universities, and municipalities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
The Workshop and Panel Session are sponsored by the Energy Conversion, Conservation & Nuclear Engineering Division (ECCNED) of ASEE. Their focus is on providing opportunities for engineers and educators interested and involved in energy conversion and conservation to exchange information, share views, and respond to specific issues and problems related to energy.

Expected Audience:
• Faculty responsible for energy engineering curriculum development
• Faculty and staff with multidisciplinary program development accountabilities
• Faculty and staff with community relations responsibilities
• Faculty and staff with a focus on sustainability
• Facility management and staff

Learning Objectives:
At the end of the Workshop, participants will be able to:
1. Understand the parallel values that are created when large-scale energy transitions are successfully and rapidly implemented by colleges, universities, and communities.
2. Recognize the multiple internal and external incumbencies contributing to the low success rate of implementing large-scale energy transformations in both institutional and community arenas.
3. Identify the coalitions that need to be formed, along with the relevant multi-disciplinary skills and processes the coalition members will need to deliver the benefits of large-scale energy transitions.
4. Explore how their institutions’ current educational offerings could be supplemented, enhanced, and staffed to accelerate the global energy transition, including teaming between academia and facilities to use the “campus as a living classroom”.

Brief Description of the Workshop
This Workshop will share the collaborative work underway between the college’s academic and facilities teams to build on the college’s success in decarbonizing their own campus to create new curriculum aimed at equipping energy engineers and others to implement transformative institutional and community energy transitions. The ASEE theme of "Engineering Education – Where Legends Take Flight and Innovation Races Forward” is fitting for this discussion.
This redesign is being built on a clear understanding of the values created by breakthrough energy transformation. Conventional wisdom is that there are clear social and environmental benefits from energy efficiency and decarbonization, but with marginal or negative monetary value. Conventional wisdom also positions energy transition as predominantly solved by engineering.
However, benchmarking indicates there are substantial economic values for campuses and neighborhoods to have global best practice energy performance. For universities and colleges, these include new educational revenues from many sources. For communities, these include enhanced property values, inbound investment, and high-value employment. Predictable large-scale decarbonization is also a gateway to monetizing greenhouse gas emission reductions.
While hundreds of institutions and communities have goals to transform their energy use by 2050, few are on track to meet their goals. Closing this performance gap indicates a need to rethink the structure, content, and targeting of educational approaches specifically aimed at capturing the benefits of rapid, large-scale implementation.
The Workshop will review the ongoing collaboration between the academic and facilities teams at Henry Ford College in designing new curriculum and structuring their campus to be a relevant “Living Classroom”. The curriculum design team includes GIL, providing experience and feedback from real-world campus and community decarbonization projects from the U.S., Canada, and the European Union.

Planned Schedule of the Workshop:
The Workshop will have three sections, each with a presentation followed by an interactive discussion shaped by guiding questions.

1. Energy Transition: Benefits
This section will present benchmark examples of institutional and community energy transitions to highlight the breadth and scale of the economic, social, environmental, and other benefits. The benchmark examples will explore the multidisciplinary factors that had to come together to not only create credible breakthrough energy plans, but also to implement them. This section will include an overview of the implementation status at the national, community, and institutional levels.
The discussion will focus on the scale and range of potential benefits relative to commonly held preconceptions, and how this perception gap can be narrowed.

2. Energy Transition: Creating Relevant Implementation Coalitions
This section will explore the coalition structure, roles, and multidisciplinary skills necessary to plan and implement large-scale energy transitions. This will be informed by the experience from a cohort of three U.S. and Canadian colleges, including decarbonizing their own operations and teaming with their neighboring communities. It will also draw on extensive experience from energy planning and implementation efforts in cities across North America and the E.U. The presentation will address the effect of multiple incumbencies that need to be recognized and managed.
The discussion will focus on the coalition creation, decision-making, and process steps that have proven successful, along with how incumbencies were successfully managed.

3. Energy Transition: Creating a New Curriculum and a Living Classroom
This section will present an advanced concept of pilot educational offerings aimed at effectively planning, resourcing, and implementing institutional and community energy transitions. The concept will address the challenge of reskilling both traditional and non-traditional students. It will also include areas where existing programs are candidates for both content adjustment and scaling, and how relationships with P-12 programs and host communities will be affected. The degree to which the content and context of the currently recognized engineering curriculum may change will be a key part of the concept. The collaboration and teaming between the academic and facilities teams, such that the campus will be a relevant and evolving “Living Classroom,” will be presented.
The discussion will focus on the practical steps colleges and universities can take to operationalize new educational offerings aimed at effective implementation. It will also discuss how these can be rapidly and consistently proliferated between institutions.

Moderated by

1. Prof. Saquib Ahmed

Speakers

1. 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.

2. 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, 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.

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 member of the faculty 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. 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".

5. Prof. Saquib Ahmed

   SUNY Buffalo State University