Thirty-Second Overview

One-Sentence Description: This card offers guidance for a rewarding research experience grounded in Entrepreneurial Mindset for undergraduate students and offers avenues to create a societal value towards a cleaner environment.

Course: This is designed for a course that has a research component or for senior design capstone. More specifically, this will unleash the propensity of the students to make the right connections enroute to creating societal value. 

Topic: This card deals with research question formulation, research design, data collection, optimization modeling, stakeholder engagement interviews, and the writing of a scholarly report or paper that is based on conducted research.

Type: This card encompasses the A-Z processes involved in research execution with a focus on a domain that offers multiple opportunities for curiosity, making connections and creating value.

Time: This is designed to be a year-long course that could be broken into two research seminar courses or a year-long capstone seminar. A reduced variant may be feasible in one academic semester.

Materials: The only material required is a functioning computer with a spreadsheet, e.g., Microsoft Excel, installed. Other materials are data collection, archival or interviews.

Detailed Card Description

Who? There is a growing deviation from the traditional engineering curriculum where students are prepared for careers in the private sector or strictly for private benefits to a curriculum that accommodates students that are increasingly interested in using their engineering knowledge to address real and pressing societal challenges (creating value). The intersection of this changing trend with the need for faculty to engage with students in research projects that are viable not only for the application of the students’ interests, but also for the benefit of the society (creating value). This card is aimed at courses to enhance students’ entrepreneurial mindset in the creation of research outcomes that are curated from the connections they make between their engineering education and an identified societal challenge (curiosity and connections). The outcomes will be of value in two ways. First, the student’s curiosity has an ecosystem to flourish. Second, the opportunity to bridge the gap between the use of extant data and the provision of solutions meets the curiosity of the students while also creating societal value. This card is suitable for a semester-long course-based research project for either sophomores or juniors in any of the engineering disciplines.

What? This card lays out a comprehensive framework for addressing research at the intersection of policy and renewable energy. Specifically, the framework addresses questions related to making optimal investments into energy systems with the intent to inform policy making. The incidences of climate change are on the rise as we see increased devastation either through flooding or wildlife fires. The faculty will provide the required ecosystem with emphasis on how to meet the student’s curiosity with the knowledge to address the optimal societal strategies to consider limiting carbon emissions and in turn reduce or ameliorate these disasters. Given the rising global attention to this issue, the faculty will identify the pathways for the student to develop a sense of civic responsibility integrated inspired by a data-driven competency. The activities will follow tasks related to:

1. examining the extant literature to understand the status of progress in the domain.
2. data collection on the acquisition costs of electricity technology, operational costs, emissions, and modularity of the systems.
3. model development to serve the basis for an optimization framework with considerations to specific approaches to quantify clean electricity policies.
4. model verification to benchmark preliminary model outcomes in the context of sense making.
5. model-date integration to characterize the actual performance of the system model within the boundaries of the geographical environment that the collected data describes.
6. identification of the impacts on policies in a process that establishes the connections between the model outcomes and actionable plans.
7. engagement of stakeholders to ratify the proposed solutions as feasible within a socio-technical frame.
8. writing of either a report or an academic paper for peer review. The student will take ownership of the entire process particularly in the creation of connections between the core research variables, the integration of the data into the defined modeling framework, and the establishment of values that offer emissions reduction technological combinations for electricity generation.

This card includes a detailed timeline of the project with specific tasks. It also includes a prerequisite template for the model variables and the modeling platforms to consider.

When? This project will last a full academic session (long term) or one semester (short term). There are two main phases in the project. The first phase addresses the students’ curiosity through the examination of the extant literature and through the data collection episodes. The second phase entails data-model integration where the students are to make the connections between the variables defined by the collected data, the extant policies, and the technology profiles. This phase also offers the avenues for value creation in the outcomes that for decarbonizing the economy. The first phase will take no longer than a month while the second phase will take no less than three months in a four month-long semester. Please see the document labeled, "Implementation Guide."

Where? This project will commence in the classroom but will take place mostly outside of the classroom. There will be regular weekly meetings between the faculty and the students. The progress in the research will be in tandem with progress in the actual semester course that connects the faculty and the student.

Why? This activity will achieve three objectives:

• Excite students' curiosity about energy technology and understand the implications for emissions reduction strategies through clean energy systems.
• Introduce students to the process by which research informs policymaking.
• Excite students in the STEM academy on the use of mathematical programming for impactful decision making.

For the faculty, it offers an approach to initiate research experience for the students. These are synergistic to the Research for All Initiative sponsored by KEEN. Specifically, the faculty will:

• Delineate the students' learning by curiosity archetypes, i.e., by the fascinated, the analytical person (problem solver), and the avoider. 
• Integrate the archetypes following Kashdan's Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale.

These two will combine to provide an ecosystem for full inclusion and immersion.

How? This activity is meant to fit into the larger proposed changes in the curriculum that to expose all students to research opportunities particularly through the lens of the entrepreneurial mindset.