FREEDM Systems Center<\/a>, another power electronics and power systems engineering research center research institute based at N.C. State (PowerAmerica and FREEDM merged their Education and Workforce programs in 2017).<\/span><\/p>\nUndergraduate classes are often heavy on theory – \u00a0which is a critical component to any discipline – but adding the research experience helps students apply the theory in a research environment. \u00a0said Carpenter, the EWD program director. Participating in hands-on research with a team \u2013 including the project principal investigator, a graduate mentor and other students \u2013 helps the students learn skills like collaboration, teamwork, leadership and project management. It also gives them a frame of reference for other skills they learn in the program, like communicating their subject matter.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cResearch is often messy and ill-defined, so having a support system in place \u2013 like the type offered by our summer program \u2013 is significant to setting the student up for success,\u201d Carpenter said. What she means is that the research process can involve multiple failures and lots of experimentation, with a good bit of problem solving and critical thinking along the way \u2013 challenges that the students learn to confront effectively by learning from a more experienced team, as well as each other.<\/span><\/p>\nCristian Melara, a student in N.C. State\u2019s College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, studied more affordable ways to manufacture silicon carbide. He teamed up with PowerAmerica researcher Dr. Jay Baliga, a professor at N.C. State who has designed a silicon carbide wafer production process being utilized at the X-FAB Foundry in Lubbock, Texas. Over the summer, Melara tested the wafers being manufactured at X-FAB to see how well the process is working, cataloguing data to help with future wafer production. Working with a researcher who is pioneering the next generation of power electronics, and actually having a hand in testing his product, was invaluable, Melara said.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe more I went through this program, the more I really came to believe and understand that silicon carbide has the ability to revolutionize power electronics, and technology across the board. It\u2019s been a great experience,\u201d Melara said.<\/span><\/p>\nGregorio Sanford, a military veteran and former commercial diver who learned about the REU program when Dr. Carpenter, the program director, came to his class at Wake Tech Community College to encourage students to apply. He gained opportunities from the program that will be a valuable asset to his career down the road, namely the chance to submit a paper to the Advanced Power Electronics Power Conference on his project, dynamic wireless power transfer for industrial applications.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not every day that an undergraduate student gets an opportunity to submit, and be the lead author on, a scholarly article,\u201d Sanford said.<\/span><\/p>\nProviding new opportunities for students that they can\u2019t get elsewhere is a major goal of the program, said Megan Morin, Carpenter\u2019s graduate assistant. \u201cAt the end, students will have built something, worked with something or done something they\u2019ve never done before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nSummer program student Gregorio Sanford stands in front of his poster explaining his research on a dynamic wireless power transfer system.<\/p><\/div>\n
Program Successes + Looking Ahead<\/b><\/p>\n
Students leave the programs with a heightened understanding of power electronics, which is documented in exit surveys conducted by Carpenter and her team. For example, they saw a 30% improvement in the scores of students \u2013 both undergraduate and high school, as well as teachers – who were asked, \u201cWhat is a wide bandgap semiconductor?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMorin is able to point to other program successes, too. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing students transfer in from community college to a four-year school, as well as a higher interest in graduate school after this program. We\u2019re seeing increased confidence, and the ability to speak effectively about their research.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBack in the early \u201800s, the National Academy of Engineering defined the skills that would be needed for an engineer in 2020 to be successful. These include thinking outside the box, being creative, knowing how to communicate their work, and being able to adapt to the unexpected.<\/span><\/p>\nCarpenter cites this standard when she talks about the goals for PowerAmerica\u2019s education and workforce program, and the importance of offering something students can\u2019t get elsewhere to equip them for jobs in power electronics and other advanced manufacturing fields. \u201cIt\u2019s important for our program to have the best, emerging practices for students preparing to be engineers,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s also important to include everyone, Carpenter said. A quarter of this year\u2019s summer program students came from community colleges, and nearly half were from underrepresented populations. Carpenter would like to increase those numbers.<\/span><\/p>\nIn addition, Carpenter sees the programs as a way to introduce students to a career path in manufacturing they may not have seriously considered before.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cInterest in advanced manufacturing is an issue nationally, because the manufacturing that these students\u2019 parents and grandparents knew went away. So it\u2019s about changing the equation and building awareness and knowledge about the opportunities that are out there now,\u201d Carpenter said.<\/span><\/p>\nPam Carpenter (front middle, left) and Megan Morin (front middle, right) with their class of summer program students. <\/em><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of students huddled around tables in a lab at N.C. State University one hot summer day in late July, peering through plastic goggles as they soldered components onto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"news-category":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/7073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/7073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7128,"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/7073\/revisions\/7128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7073"},{"taxonomy":"news-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poweramericainstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-category?post=7073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}