詹妮弗·k·森田著

2025年1月29日

囊状态 faculty from the arts, sciences and social sciences are teaming up to promote sustainable energy technologies in low-income neighborhoods and foster local high school students’ interest in STEM careers.

The project – a partnership between Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Sarvenaz Sobhan, Assistant Professor of Art Rey Jeong and Assistant Professor of Sociology Christopher Rogers – is funded by a one-year, $25,000 grant.

The grant is from the CSU’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network (STEM-NET), which funds collaborations between faculty from multiple academic disciplines.

“We … want to reach the kids, the new generation, and show them what careers in STEM look like.” -- Sarvenaz Sobhan, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering

萨克州立大学的项目采用了一种独特的方法，利用艺术、社会科学和硬科学领域的教师，向社区传授替代能源的选择，比如社区太阳能项目。

“One of the downsides of renewable energy technology such as solar panels is the cost, and people are often hesitant to invest in renewable energy solutions,” said Sobhan, the grant’s principal investigator. “For low-income households, it would be even worse.”

To assess the community’s energy needs, last summer Rogers surveyed families at Cordova High School in Rancho Cordova about their utility costs as well as what sustainable energy technologies they have and the reasons they don’t use others. 他还询问了家长和学生，他们对可再生能源的选择了解多少。

“We’re trying to gauge attitudes around renewable energy, in particular how disadvantaged neighborhoods understand renewable energy and their choices to engage in normal energy consumption compared to solar,” Rogers said.

“I will be doing data analysis to understand the ways in which people perceive renewable energy and a process in which we can demystify that.”

在这一年中，该小组将与学生及其家人举办可持续能源研讨会，分享有关收益和成本以及社区利用可再生能源的不同方式的信息。

去年12月，Sobhan和Jeong为Cordova High机器人课程主持了一个研讨会，展示了这个项目的跨学科性质。 此次访问从擅长社会参与艺术的郑某主导的艺术项目开始。

“Socially engaged art is collaborative, often participatory, and involves people as the medium or material of the work,” Jeong explained to students. “The artist’s aim is to help his community work towards a common goal, raise awareness and encourage conversation on issues. But it’s not just an artist helping some community.

“It’s about artists belonging to the community.”

郑女士给了学生们贴纸和笔，让他们装饰写有可持续能源知识的索引卡，然后把它挂在公告板上。 在项目后期，学生们将再次接受评估，以了解他们学到了什么。

她和Sobhan说，在可用的资源和技术与公众理解和利用的资源和技术之间往往存在差距。

“There’s this cool technology in sustainable energy, but it’s not very efficiently delivered to the people,” Jeong said. “Even for me, I had no idea until I participated in this cool project how easy it is to set up sustainable energy technologies so that my power consumption is more efficient and cheaper.”

（故事在图片下面继续。）

在艺术项目之后，Sobhan谈到了可再生能源技术，如光伏和太阳能热板，它们可以安装在家庭屋顶或后院。 Although these products are more readily available to property owners, Sobhan told students that families who rent can participate in California’s new community solar projects.

“Driving along I-5 you may see these large lands with panels that are called solar farms. Your household can purchase a small share of that solar farm and the amount of energy that your share produces during the day will be compared with the amount you used,” she said. “If your share produces more energy, you will get money. If it’s less, you will pay the difference.

“That’s how it saves you a lot of energy in a month as well as on your utility bill,” Sobhan said. “And moreover, it’s not always about the money. It’s also saving energy for our future generations, right?”

Sobhan和Jeong敦促学生让他们的家人完成调查，并提供了Sac州立大学的奖品作为抽奖奖品。

科尔多瓦高中二年级学生Xochitl Perez是对STEM职业和可持续能源有兴趣的学生之一。

“It’s not something we can just put on the next generation to do,” she said. “I want to learn everything I can to tell my parents what we can do to help our area. Gas prices are just going to keep going up, and so are electricity bills, and soon our bills will be higher than our rent.”

Sobhan’s engineering students will spend the next few months developing a decision-making tool to help Cordova families and students figure out which renewable energy solutions would work for their households or communities.

“We’ll be developing simulation software to show if there are a certain number of solar panels in a neighborhood with this type of typical weather, this is the power output we would expect,” said Sean Magee, a 囊状态 engineering senior who is concurrently taking classes for his master’s program.

“It’s very different than research my peers in engineering are doing. They don’t necessarily have the community outreach aspect, but I think that’s pretty interesting. It’s a lot more personal than some of the other research,” he said.

Sobhan希望在当地其他学校举办研讨会，并在年底邀请家庭到Sac州立大学使用模拟课程，参加STEM和社会参与的艺术活动。

“We … want to reach the kids, the new generation, and show them what careers in STEM look like.”