Wind Energy in the Curriculum

Several things help bring wind energy into the curriculum at the College of St. Benedict (CSB) and St. John's University (SJU).

First, public meetings were held.

A workshop was held at CSB in the fall of 1995 to introduce wind energy and the wind testing project (replete with explanations and models of the technology used) to anyone interested. Several faculty members expressed interest in talking about wind energy in their classes.

In the spring of 1996, John Dunlop, Midwestern Representative of the American Wind Energy Association, gave a talk to about 150 faculty and students about wind energy. His talk was followed by a presentation by our wind energy project team that detailed what data we have collected, how we did it, and how others can access those data.

Jamie Partridge gave a presentation on Wind Power at St. Cloud State and presented the co-written case at a conference in Chicago in the fall of 1996.

Finally, Phil Durkee organized a trip to NSP's Lake Benton wind farm for interested faculty in July 1996.

Second, a web page was constructed to make data public.

Rob Culligan and Roger Sorensen have put together a webpage to allow anybody access to the wind data we have thus far collected.

Third, some faculty regularly include wind energy topics in their classes.

Phil Durkee focuses on the science of wind energy in his Peace Study classes, Ernie Diedrich highlights wind energy in his module on clean technologies in his Environmental Economics and Sustainable Societies classes, and Jamie Partridge presents a case study (co-written with Ernie Diedrich) on wind energy investment in her Management class (fall, 1996 and spring,1997). Attempts to have data used in Statistics and Physics classes are underway.

In addition to wind energy, there is a general push to introduce renewables into the curriculum (as well as into campus operation).

Of course, if both schools decide to invest in wind power, the curricular connections would be increased dramatically.