Impacts on Teaching Practices from a Solar Photovoltaic Institute Faculty Professional Development Program

The Center for Renewable Energy Advanced Technological Education (CREATE) and Madison College has run a Solar Photovoltaic Institute for STEM Educators for the past three years. The institute provides three days of intensive professional development for high school and two-year college instructors who seek to incorporate solar photovoltaic technology into their curriculum. Participants work with the tools of the trade to install and commission residential sized solar arrays, including sloped roof, flat roof, and dual axis tracking systems. Instruction includes electrical fundamentals, code compliance, and safe workplace practices. The outdoor hands-on instruction is complemented with several smaller bench scale lessons and activities that can be replicated easily in the classroom. In 2017, CREATE and Madison College conducted a followup study to assess the impacts of the Solar Institute on the participants’ teaching practices. The results showed significant changes to participants’ curriculum and instruction. The findings yielded several useful lessons learned, and recommendations for future faculty professional development programs in the STEM fields are suggested. Introduction Electrical energy generation trends of the 21 century have been characterized by a surge in the growth of clean renewable energy generation in the form of biomass, wind, and most recently solar power. Building on a decade long trend of double digit growth rates shown in Figure 1, global installed solar photovoltaic capacity has now exceeded 300 gigawatts (GW) [1], Including projects still under construction in the fourth quarter, it is estimated that the United States alone installed approximately twelve GW of new solar photovoltaics in 2017 [2]. Even after accounting for capacity factors when the sun does not shine, these new renewable power production facilities installed in a single year provide the equivalent amount of electricity of several nuclear power plants. Recent analyses have shown that growth of the renewable energy industry over the past two decades repeatedly beat predictions by experts such as those at the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Energy Information Administration [3,4]. This trend is being further accelerated by tremendous reductions in the price of solar technology. Numerous records for solar pricing have been set in recent years, with auction bids and contracts signed for prices at or below 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour (5, 6, 7). These developments have positioned solar technology as a low-cost generation source that is cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels in many markets [8]. 1.4 1.8 2.2 2.8 3.9 5.3 6.9 9.4 16 23 40 61 101 139 179 229 301 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 35