WIP: Exploring Electricity Access Education

This innovative practice work-in-progress shares results from two workshops on promoting energy access education in electrical engineering and discusses next steps. There is a need for a significant increase in US workforce development in the electric energy sector as many people in this field are close to retirement age. The field of humanitarian engineering has been found to attract a diverse range of students and motivate students to engage in and persist through their engineering education. Yet, few students who are involved in humanitarian engineering major in electrical engineering. Electricity access refers to the provision of electricity to populations that do not have access to the electrical grid, usually in under-resourced settings. Around the world, over 700 million people do not have access to electricity. Yet, there is very little coverage of this topic in U.S. universities. Recognizing the importance of this topic, the USA National Science Foundation sponsored two workshops in 2022 and 2023 with the goal of identifying approaches to enhance and expand electricity access education at the undergraduate engineering level in the U.S., primarily within electrical engineering. In 2022, there were 25 participants and in 2023, there were 40. The participants at these successful workshops included engineering educators, students, field practitioners, and non-profit organization representatives. In this work-in-progress, we highlight the results from these workshops, discuss next steps, and focus on the importance of the educational challenges and potential for curricular development in this area.