Energy Crisis Elective and CAL TECH

One of our first year staff members is quickly making an impact with our students, bringing her 'energy' and passion to a new elective at AGLA called "Energy Crisis".

In 'Energy Crisis' instructional aide Mackenzie Brown is helping students learn about the various sources of energy while working to understand where Aveson's electricity comes from. Their long term goal is to make recommendations on how to make their community more "green" and sustainable.

The elective spent the first half of their time focusing on different techniques for producing energy including solar, hydro, wind, geothermal, and more traditional oil/natural gas steam turbine plants. Students were tasked with designing the basics of how they might design energy alternatives.

Last month, they took a field trip to explore Caltech's energy technology and sustainability efforts. They were given a guided tour around campus by the Office of Sustainability. On the tour Aveson students experienced the recycling center, solar panels, fuel cells, the outside of a CoGeneration power plant, 3 LEED certified buildings, and passive/natural air conditioning alternatives. 

The tour ended with a conversation about problems of sustainability and potential solutions in general, at Caltech, and at Aveson. Students collaborated on a fact finding worksheet and developed questions of their own.

"We chose this experience because of my prior work with the Caltech Office of Sustainability", explains Ms. Mackenzie, "as well as their leadership nationally for the green schools movement." Seeing the scale of energy production at Caltech pushed the students to see how their small wind, water and solar experiments were similar/different to 'the real deal.' Students started to see the connection between energy production and conservation.

Highlights included touring the inside of Linde Robinson, the most energy efficient remodeled lab space in the country and seeing solar panels close up.

Ms. Mackenzie continued, "The goal of this field trip was for students to see the technologies that we have talked about and modeled on a larger scale. It will also help us begin to develop a proposal in order to make Aveson more sustainable. I hoped that students would see the real world need for better energy management. Caltech is the ideal research hub and a model of responsible energy use."

Here are a few student responses to the question: "The most awesome thing I've learned at Caltech is…"

- "there is a building that is in charge of finding artificial photosynthesis."

- "I like the natural gas idea. And that you can use it in so many different ways"

- "the live image of the sun!"

 

Ms. Mackenzie has a degree in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College. In addition, she studied abroad in  Iceland to learn about their industry-leading renewable energy production. She has also worked at a local small solar installation company and in the undergraduate admissions office at Caltech.