STUDENTS EXPLORE THE FUTURE WITH MEGA CITY 2070

Nock Awarded Sloan Foundation Grant

Assistant Professor Destenie Nock was recently awarded funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to conduct a multiyear project to examine how household energy insecurity is experienced by different demographic groups at the state and national levels. This grant funds a study by a multidisciplinary team of scholars, led by Nock, that will deploy various research methodologies to examine three aspects of household energy insecurity across multiple states.

The first aspect is to better understand the energy-limiting behavior often employed by marginalized and lowincome households to better afford energy services. By analyzing detailed household energy use data the team will further develop a new energy insecurity metric—called the “energy equity gap.”

Next, the team will undertake a case study examining the effectiveness of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the Weatherization Assistance Program, and other state-level programs designed to help low-income households pay their energy bills. Team members will analyze over a decade’s-worth of household data to identify the extent that eligible households do or do not take advantage of these programs.

Finally, the team will develop a publicly available dashboard of utility disconnection policies from across the country to enable researchers to begin to compare and analyze intra- and inter-state differences in such policies and their subsequent effects on energy insecurity.

This research hopes to strengthen utility decision-making and public policy around energy poverty and insecurity, particularly among underserved communities. The team’s householdlevel analysis can better help utilities forecast demand and the associated uncertainties due to disruptions such as COVID. Second, by working closely with an advisory board, Nock and her fellow researchers hope to positively impact policy for institutional reforms that can support reducing household energy insecurity during energy transition periods.

Ozis Helps to Organize ASEE’s Annual Conference

Assistant Teaching Professor Fethiye Ozis assisted in coordinating The American Society for Engineering Education’s annual conference. The event brought together engineering educators from across the globe in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Ozis serves as a division chair for the organization’s environmental engineering division and helped to oversee and facilitate the conference’s activities, technical sessions and business meetings. She says her goal was to “have a productive and engaging conference, reach a wider audience, and collaborate between divisions.”

Ozis adds that she has been interested in working with the conference for nearly a decade because it brings together “everybody who cares about how we are educating and turning people into engineers.” While Covid prevented the conference from happening in 2020 and 2021, this year had a large attendance and focused on Excellence Through Diversity.

The message flowed through each of the discussions, presentations, and roundtables, says Ozis.

Carnegie Mellon University also served as an event sponsor, shining a spotlight on the university’s dedication to integrating DEI into the classroom.

“We talked about how to be more accepting and how to become better at embracing diversity,” she mentions. Ozis also added to a “living wall” at the conference to further promote all that CMU is doing to acknowledge and embrace inclusivity both on and off of campus.