Like too many people these days with an advanced degree, Jason A. Slipp finds himself working at a local restaurant.
There is a difference between him and others struggling through the economic downturn, however. Mr. Slipp’s work with fryer grease in Bethlehem, Pa., is part of his training in a fast-growing field, one seen as critical to global economic and environmental health.
Mr. Slipp is at Lehigh University working on a master’s degree in environmental-policy design. (He already has an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s degree in instruction design.) He is collecting grease from local restaurants and converting it into automotive fuel.
Students with such skills “have no problem getting jobs,” said Sudhakar Neti, a professor of mechanical engineering at Lehigh whose new course on renewable energy has 38 students, or almost half of the department’s enrollment. “People are just hawking over them with two offers or three offers.”
That demand is nationwide. More U.S. college students are enrolling in powerand energy-engineering courses, but the increase is not enough to meet the need, says a new report by the IEEE, the professional association of electrical engineers.
About 45 percent of engineers at electric utilities are expected to retire or leave their jobs within five years, creating as many as 21,000 job openings, the IEEE said in the report, released in April.
Students such as Mr. Slipp want to fill that gap. The student Energy Club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has more than 1,000 members. And interest seems to be widening: Dormitory residents at the University of California at Davis compete to see which building uses the least energy.
Lehigh is among many universities trying to respond with course offerings. Working with the Electric Power Research Institute, the industry trade association, Lehigh’s engineering school plans to start offering a 10-month master’s program in July covering traditional and alternative energy sources, along with some elements of business, management, accounting, and finance. Each student will also participate in an industry-sponsored research project, involving work with members of the trade association.
The university expects 50 to 100 students a year to enroll, said S. David Wu, dean of engineering. If things go well, the trade association hopes to replicate the model nationwide, Mr. Wu said.
The push to develop new courses is not limited to research institutions. Across the country in Oregon, Lane Community College, in Eugene, has found it can create highly employable graduates by teaching them how to conduct energy audits. Demand for that skill is expected to grow after the federal economic-stimulus measure, enacted in February, set aside $6.2-billion to weatherize low-income homes.
The biggest problem for universities may be the lack of available professors. At Lehigh, Mr. Neti resumed offering a nuclear-engineering course that had been abandoned for lack of interest, and he has seen enrollment grow over three years from six students to 12 and now 19. But other faculty members with the necessary expertise need to be coaxed into applying their knowledge of turbines and chemistry to subjects such as wind and solar energy, he said. Plus, about 50 of the 170 full-time power-engineering faculty members nationwide are expected to retire from their colleges within five years, the IEEE report said.
“I really don’t think it needs a whole lot of retraining of faculty,” Mr. Neti said. “It does need some arm-twisting.”
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 55, Issue 35, Page A10