My name is Christopher Miller, and I am a professor here at Heartland Community College. And I started here in 2000. So it's been a little bit. And I am very fortunate that in the year 2009, we started to develop and create the renewable energy program. So that is now at year 10. For us.
Well, part of that program has extended itself beyond campus. And recently, there were some efforts to bring other educators to campus tell us what is the stem educator, Renewable Energy Institute,
I have been very fortunate over the years to have lots of phenomenal training, opportunities to learn, develop, and share those ideas and deliver those content to students. And I've been really fortunate that our students are able to get good jobs in the renewable energy fields, such as solar installation or wind turbine that I just thought part of me was, it's time to help spread that to other instructors that have not had that opportunity. And National Science Foundation has a variety of at ease, which are advanced technology education centers, and there's a Center for Renewable Energy. They've been very kind to me over the years helping me learn about all of these technologies that they approached me and asked me if I would be interested in offering a workshop here on campus to local and state high school teachers that are science or technology related math related, that could help benefit them and improve their materials in their classroom. And that is what happened over the summer. And in late July, we were able to offer a course and had 16 participants come in and take the three day class. So it was really quite an exciting, it was nice, it was a really good exciting experience. And a lot of benefit was gleaned from both of them and ourselves. So I
would imagine there's a bit of a variety of high school instructors that are interested in participating in this kind of training, what some of us would think of as the more traditional industrial technology classes and programs at the high school level. Are those programs as robust as they need to be to train kids who might want to go right into some sort of industrial technology job involving renewable energy.
So Let me twist the question a little bit and ask it as the following. Are we getting enough students at the younger levels interested into all things technology? And the answer is no. And part of what we were hoping to achieve with this was to have biology, physical sciences chemistries, general math instructors that will see far more students than us and technology per se, would ever be able to reach and explain that what you're learning, say in a trig function is the same application that we would need to use when we're dealing with solar installation. And so the hope is, when a math instructor, for example, is explaining the Pythagorean theorem, and going into the angles can explain that at latitude, we are going to want to make our solar cells point to the south. And if we keep it at the same angle as latitude, so for us, it's about 40 degrees, that would give us the best year round production, when the hope then would be that if a student heard that, oh, wait a minute. So there's a reason an application more so than just the sake of knowledge that those instructors are working hard on at the high school level, but to realize there's an application to it. And that maybe that would help facilitate Hey, you know, there's other careers in this and that maybe Heartland at the Renewable Energy Department or wherever they end up at will help benefit us improving our community and the nation and the world as a whole.
Yeah, it gets back to that age old question that students ask all the time in math classes, how am I ever going to use this in real life? And then that answers it, you have a practical example of the application of that theory.
I'll give a quick side story to this so many years ago, 2009 2010, I'm going through a certification process myself to become a solar installer. And one of the exam questions dealt with the height of a tree and the shadow that it casts and it's a traditional trick question. And I just remember thinking way back to when I was in school, thinking, Where am I going to need to know this stuff, and then coming to the conclusion, like I probably never need to know it. And now, I've installed a few solar installs on my own. And I helped students install solar for one example and it's amazing that now Oh, when I look at a site and perform just as a cursory audit, I have to look at those trees and determine if they're going to eventually cause a shadowing a shading issue with the solar install. But what's also interesting is now I'm looking at the trees to tell what type of tree it is to determine what kind of growth that tree will have. So it's really interesting is I guess we all figure, the older you get, the more you realize the less and less, you know, and it seems to be the case, it's like, I never thought I would need to be an arborist to go okay, this is this type of tree, this is the growth it's going to have, it's going to catch this mound of shadow hears this is really interesting, and I hope. And I think the feedback from this Renewable Energy Institute we had with our 16 local teachers, were able to get some lessons and activities and take them away and improve their students.
So tell me a little bit about the feedback you received and what the teachers had to say, what did they say that would be very beneficial to take back to their classrooms? And what were they still looking for? What were the big problems that those teachers see that they need some support?
So let me illustrate the answer with an actual example that just happened at the end of that Institute, the local you, hi, teacher. She has a girl's stem club. And she asked if she could utilize the same tools that we had. And I said, Absolutely. So she borrowed our solar Pathfinders and our solar irradiance meters to determine the angle of the sun throughout the year and the intensity that the sun is and she gave the same activity that we had done together in that three day Institute. So when she had her 45 girls doing the stem girls meet, she had them perform the same audit, determine the shadow effects of the sun at a particular location, and determine the best fit. So the feedback that we received at the end of that three day session was really beneficial, what kind of activities they wanted to do. And then how could they implement those and they gave a variety of answers. Obviously, there was about six different unique schools that were involved from. As far away as Hartsburg. I think we had an El Paso Gridley, we've had the normal community West and normal community, Bloomington. So we had a variety of schools. And it was really good that the best feedback was that they wanted to use the materials implemented. And we actually were successful and having additional people get exposed to that
what types of students are going to benefit from these materials, I would imagine that even though there are very specific examples, as you mentioned, with figuring out how to apply trigonometry to a practical application, there's probably still a variety of STEM fields and STEM classes that can apply to some of these renewable energy studies. And eventually careers.
One activity that I had done was reading an electric bill. And from a purely economic standpoint, not even technology related. It's amazing how few people in our community actually know how to read their electric bill, they just get that bill, they cut a check, pay it direct deposit, never even think about it. And yet, if you were to take the same example that I did, of reading the electric bill and extrapolate it to a much larger scale, a student could be able to read his or her electric bill at home, and then realize that if we truly want to get into sustainable and renewable energy, wide pathways to get into it. So you know, some of the bigger takeaways are, well, we're in the technology. And that's sort of the area that I focus on. There's a lot of economics, there's a lot of soft skills that go with it that we hope a student will be able to understand that they need to know about be able to implement, do technical sales, service, installation, helping a customer identify best use, how to limit their electrical usage, for example, because for every dollar that you save, from electrical costs, it would take you, you're gonna make a number up here by roughly about $2, to build a solar system to save you $1. Whereas if you were to just conserve it upfront, make your house more energy efficient. Utilize all those other skills that you've learned in your general studies throughout your high school career. For example, you could implement those and be far better ahead than just doing solar. So it's not that I want to cut her nose off, say, Oh, don't do solar. But why do the most expensive thing when there's far more reasonable aspects that need to be done first before you get to that part?
So part of the overall picture is to be thinking about the most efficient way to achieve your end goal, not just the most impressive or new technology?
Yeah, that's right. Just because it's shiny does not necessarily mean that's what we need to be getting into. But on the other hand, I think this institute really helped us at School showcase what we are producing in the way of student preparedness and what kind of activities that the student would do. But then how do those relate to those bigger skills and the economic side, the job market, the soft skills, the technical side, the all of that. So it was, I don't know how to to wrap it all into a nice little pretty package. But really, that's what we were shooting for. And I think we did a pretty good job getting that across. And I know this, the response from all 16, where, if we run this, again, they would be definitely interested in doing it again,
have there been any industry partnerships that you've been engaging with in this endeavor? Because obviously, you have you see the fruits, I guess, of industry being involved in renewable energy, those companies aren't always local. But have we heard from the private side of things.
So that is a little more challenging to answer. And there's a few reasons for that one, for example, renewable energy in the state of Illinois is surprisingly robust in the solar install side, I can tell you right now that there are three companies, both locally in our district and just slightly outside of our district that are actively looking for some technical skilled folks to do some installation, but they are busy right now doing and installing that they don't really, it's not that they don't want to partner. In fact, one company did partner with my class to help do an install, but they're knee deep and alligators actually doing the wind turbine industry. Right now they're growing in certain areas. That seems to be a slightly more stable environment when it comes to that. But they're always in need of the more of the larger scale technician for a large wind turbine, but also in the economic side of things and growth. As far as the manufacturing side and the renewable energy that it market locally is starting to take off, though, it's going to take some time, like all major investments for them to really get up and off the ground and going so we want to be ready for that. So if a student were to come through our program, or even through the local pipe of local educators coming to us, we want them to be as prepared as possible, then they will be able to adjust, learn, grow and adapt to those emerging technologies as they come available to us.
Not only do you have things at the manufacturing or installation, and but eventually all these different technologies, whether it be the maintenance of a solar installation, or an electric car, they're going to need service as well.
Obviously, as our economy has gone to a more service based industry, I am certainly very similar to many of our previous students that have been displaced, I worked in the automotive industry in the 90s. And the firm that I was with that built as a original equipment manufacturer to the Big Three auto industry, we were downsized and moved over to overseas operations. And so as I have taken my technical skills, and now in education, I realize that our main focus, at least for me, in my little realm of technology is to prepare our students to be as well versed in many different areas as possible. So that it's not just technology, it's all those other skills that wrap up into one nice package that a candidate can come to do, and be able to say, I know how to do that I'm going to be successful. So I think part of what makes us good or better, I'd like to think, than other institutions is that we are really trying our best to serve all the students and preparing them for those various areas. No matter where they come from, or where they're going in, you know, locally, we're not going to be fine. We've got great skills. We've got a great education workforce, we got a great workforce, great businesses, you know, we can make this happen in our community is a strong community make everything possible. I'm pretty happy with being here. And I'm not just drinking the Kool Aid, I firmly believe that that should be the case that we all believe in.
So is this partnership likely to continue? Are we going to see more high school educators come back again next year.
So I was surprised that at the end of this, there was such positive feedback for doing it that the Create center actually asked us to run it again, it looks like that indeed, will happen. And we're going to try to run this again, to hit more students, meaning teachers that are local, to come and see this and even throughout the state to try to build a bigger understanding of it and our focus this time will be specifically on win.
Well, obviously anybody that's been to Heartland knows that we do have one pretty unique element to the college, which is our 1.65 megawatt wind turbine. So that also provides some opportunities for me Renewable Energy Education.
We're very fortunate to have that large wind turbine. And we're hoping that we might be able to utilize that wind turbine and offer some labs and activities, develop materials that we can give to the local teachers and to other teachers and say, well, here's a large scale wind turbine. Here's maybe an economic based figure that use here's maybe a technical reading of data sheets blueprints of what a large scale wind turbine is, and help generate some more interest into our program and deliver some really good activities that they can take away with them and help their students out. And Chris, thanks
so much for coming in to talk about this pretty exciting development.
It is and I really appreciate you having me on. I thank you a lot and really, this is a great dream job of mine.
