Motivation
The threats posed by greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and global efforts to contain them are well known, as are the U.S. Administration’s energy economy targets to reduce GHG emissions to 50 to 52 percent by 2030 and entirely by 2050, just 26 years away.
Less well-known is the uneven distribution of energy production’s impacts. Marginalized communities in the U.S. have historically been most affected by legacy oil production, have paid a disproportionate amount of their household income for energy, and face significant obstacles in making energy-efficient upgrades.
To meet the critical energy economy goals, the U.S. will need to identify low-cost, low-pollution, renewable energy sources and methods of production and distribution. These are daunting challenges that require powerful new tools and pathways. The new energy economy needs skilled innovators and leaders to work for a decarbonized energy landscape and create equitable access to energy.
Graduate school offers an important pathway to realizing these goals. The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded a team of researchers at Lehigh University funds to develop and implement an innovative graduate curriculum focused on developing energy leaders who will decarbonize the future of energy while promoting equitable access to those new solutions.
What is the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Research Traineeship (NRT)?
The National Science Foundation, a federal agency that funds science and engineering research, established the NRT (research traineeship) program to create new graduate research programs. It funds proposals that focus on workforce development and provide graduate students with the tools to take on “grand challenges,” or complex social problems, using methods and expertise from across science and engineering.
In fall 2023, NSF awarded one of its 15 NRT grants to a team from Lehigh University. The proposal, “Stakeholder Engaged Equitable Decarbonized Energy Futures,” or SEED-EF, was led by Arindam Banerjee, Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, as PI, and Shalinee Kishore, Director of the Institute for Cyber Physical Infrastructure and Energy (I-CPIE) and Iacocca chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, as co-PI. Senior personnel include Karen Beck-Pooley, Political Science; Alberto Lamadrid, Economics; Carlos Romero, Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics and Energy Research Center; Joan Ramage, Earth and Environmental Science; Hyunok Choi, Population Health; Farrah Moazeni, Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Breena Holland, Political Science and Environmental Policy.
The program emphasizes a broad definition of stakeholders: Initial partners include municipalities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and environmental organizations. Students engage with a wide range of stakeholders and complete interdisciplinary electives with core ethics and policy components. On the engineering side, students can enroll in any Lehigh engineering department and will be responsible for meeting the same credit requirements as regular engineering students in the same program. In SEED-EF, graduate training catalyzes the creation of equitable clean energy.
Focus on interdisciplinary graduate education for equitable energy solutions
The focus on energy equity may be one reason the National Science Foundation awarded the novel proposal the green light. Banerjee noted, “I think the panel liked our emphasis on the energy-equity aspect and that it was part of the solutions,” he says. “Merging policy aspects to these engineering solutions is talked about a lot, but is never really done primarily because of the challenges [involved].” Although challenges remain, the leadership team has focused the program on building a group of stakeholders and students to ground efforts in solving energy problems.
In identifying initial major research efforts, Banerjee and Kishore relied on research that shows students from underrepresented groups, in particular women, Black, and Hispanic students, are especially motivated and engaged in real-world issues that affect them and their families. It’s a good fit, as these are the same types of issues the NSF NRT initiative wants to engage as it develops a future workforce. Projects such as rooftop solar panels, zero-emission transit fleets, and energy-water microgrids for coastal islanded communities bring immediate impact to engineering research, especially when combined with a drive to solve social problems.
Accomplishing any of these projects will take more than engineering. Building a transit fleet, for example, will require skills in urban and government policy, communication, advocacy, and engagement with communities and individuals. SEED-EF has this interdisciplinary approach built into its DNA.
The SEED-EF framework
SEED-EF is built around seven novel areas Banerjee and Kishore call program pillars: Stakeholder Engagement, Ethics and Equity, Certificate Program, Multi-modal Interdisciplinary Research, Stakeholder Internships, Community Building, and Profession Leadership and Development. The SEED-EF elements derive from the required electives that fall under each of these pillars, often in a non-engineering department. For example, students will complete a two-semester course in stakeholder engagement or an industry- or policy-based internship.
The stakeholder engagement and multimodal pillars are especially foundational. While the phrase “stakeholder engagement” may conjure an image of a corporate boardroom, Banerjee says he uses the phrase to distinguish this approach from a stakeholder-driven one: “As we come up with these solutions to decarbonization,” he says, “we bring in aspects of energy equity to the solution by involving stakeholders at a very early stage of that process.” This early stakeholder engagement, from community to industry partners, is key to creating solutions that all parties can endorse and implement. Banerjee also notes that the program is impact-focused, with the goal of making a difference for the stakeholders involved. Other members of the leadership team point out the importance of keeping people and communities at the forefront of technology development.
Karen Pooley, Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science, Director of the Environmental Policy program, and partner in an urban planning and neighborhood development consulting firm, says, “Technical experts need to understand that the things that they’re building and designing interact with humans and their people and communities. And so technical solutions have to be strong, but they’ve also got to figure out how to integrate into places people live. And so especially for a technical degree, I think it’s incredibly important to have a minute to see how those things hit the ground.”
Breena Holland, professor of political science and part of the environmental initiative at Lehigh, points out that the technical barriers are often not the biggest hurdles: people are. “Many barriers to clean energy are social, cultural, and political, not technological. Engineers who want to advance technologies and infrastructure have to understand how to communicate their solutions with ordinary people.” Coursework and practice in communication, such as organizing and conducting workshops for stakeholders, will help students gain these skills, which they can later use professionally.
SEED-EF graduate student participants
Under NSF guidelines, students are required to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents to receive NSF funding. However, the program's activities and coursework are open to graduate students across the University who are interested in learning more about stakeholder-engaged energy decarbonization research and practice.
Students attracted to this program, Banerjee says, will be those who already see the value of an interdisciplinary approach, who have a “more holistic approach to solving real-world problems by engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders across the spectrum and then work with an interdisciplinary team to develop an equity-driven multi-stakeholder approach for energy decarbonization.”
Pooley describes SEED-EF as on the “cutting edge” of trends in graduate education. Although challenging and important, she says that built-in support structures and community building make it feel accessible. Kishore says that traditionally a student will “do all their degrees in one discipline and their focus gets more and more narrow over time.” But while the disciplinary focus may tighten, the student’s view of the world broadens–and one value of a program like SEED is that adopting a broader worldview is a goal of the program.
Other than coursework, SEED-EF students will participate in a variety of learning, stakeholder-related, and team-building activities. For example, students will spend time at the Nurture-Nature Center in Easton, Pennsylvania, where they will learn from community engagement experts on communicating data to broad audiences and running community-based forums. Students will also work with faculty and the project coordinator to host a one-day workshop bringing stakeholders together.
The team engages cross-displine faculty members because the approach does move away from the traditional, singular focus on one disciplinary perspective. Banerjee says, “We faculty are experts at creating clones of ourselves; that’s how we’ve been successful, that’s how we run our groups, so this is thinking outside the box and embracing the different pillars.” This broader thinking pulls on the diverse threads that can contribute to building a decarbonized, equitable energy system.
Lehigh's unique commitment and context for interdisciplinary graduate education
Lehigh’s five colleges and new strategic plan presents an ideal platform for a graduate program such as SEED-EF. Recent growth at Lehigh, which includes the establishment of I-CPIE (Institute for Cyber Physical Infrastructure and Energy) as well as two other research institutes (I-FMD and I-DISC), the ESE master’s in electrical engineering program, the Environmental Policy Community Fellows program, and funding awards such as the Atlantic Marine Energy Center (AMEC), provides support and resources for SEED-EF, as well as research opportunities for its graduate students. I-CPIE, for example, brings researchers across the university together to work on interdisciplinary proposals and research initiatives and allows for the sharing of knowledge and resources.
Lehigh’s new strategic plan, “Inspiring the Future Makers” aligns with the SEED-EF mission (“advancing learning through integration of teaching, research, and service”) and vision (preparing “graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning”). Lehigh has committed to building faculty and facilities to support new initiatives such as SEED-EF.
Kishore says, “At Lehigh we have the right environment, a vibrant portfolio of projects going on with ICPIE that requires us to have students that are encouraged to think in this interdisciplinary way. Lehigh set the stage for us to be successful in developing SEED EF.”
Pooley agrees, noting that Lehigh’s assets provide the raw materials for a program like this: “We have the multi-disciplines that you’re going to want to help with that kind of problem. We have the engineers who are experts on it. We have policymakers who are experts. We have the environmental scientists who are experts on it. We have the economists and business folks and real estate people who are experts on it.”
Toward impactful energy futures
Joan Ramage MacDonald, Earth and Environmental Sciences says that things are moving so quickly in engineering that information and even knowledge can become outdated in a handful of years. While students need to master technical skills, they must also “develop collaboration and life-long learning skills,” MacDonald says, “that will allow them to be creative and resilient as the world changes around them and they collaborate with a global workforce.” SEED-EF prepares students to do this, she says, as it will prepare them to “work together across boundaries.”
SEED-EF may reverse the usual trajectory: Instead of education leading to research, it can leverage Lehigh’s constellation of research initiatives, institutes, and teaming activities into a unique educational program focused on decarbonization and equity. Banerjee says, “We are developing an educational program with a research and interdisciplinary research team as the backbone. In a way, you can think about this as an educational program coming out of all our research initiatives.” To that end, the team welcomed Valerie Holt onboard as a Teaching Associate Professor and Operations Director for SEED EF. Holt has an extensive background in graduate program development and teaching and serves as a critical liaison for the program's interdisciplinary educational programming.
And that educational programming, in turn, becomes part of the new energy economy. SEED-EF graduates will lead research and implementation, communication and policy change, ethics and social awareness to bring communities, industry, and individuals closer to a cleaner, more just, and net-zero world.