Susan Powers | Clarkson University (original) (raw)
Papers by Susan Powers
Sustainability
Engineers must take a leading role in addressing the challenges of mitigating climate change and ... more Engineers must take a leading role in addressing the challenges of mitigating climate change and adapting to the inevitable changes that our world is facing. To improve climate literacy, technical education must include problem formulation and solutions that consider complex interactions between engineered, Earth, and societal systems, including trade-offs among benefits, costs, and risks. Improving engineering students’ climate literacy must also inspire students’ motivation to work toward climate solutions. This paper highlights the content and pedagogical approach used in a class for engineering students that helped contribute to significant gains in engineering students’ climate literacy and critical thinking competencies. A total of 89 students fully participated in a pre/post climate literacy questionnaire over four years of study. As a whole, students demonstrated significant gains in climate-related content knowledge, affect, and behavior. Substantial differences were observ...
Sustainability
We use circuit-level granular electricity measurements from student housing and statistical analy... more We use circuit-level granular electricity measurements from student housing and statistical analysis to better understand individuals’ electricity consumption. Two key patterns emerged—individuals varied systematically in their magnitude of electricity use as well as in their variability of usage at the hourly and daily level. A cluster analysis of electricity consumption in individual bedrooms shows that 18% of students consume 48% of total electricity use at a median of 2.17 kWh/d/person. These few energy hogs have a disproportionate impact on electricity consumption. In contrast, the misers (22% of students) consume only 4% of the electricity (0.18 kWh/d/person). Mini-refrigerators in bedrooms contributed substantially to the total electricity use of the moderate users. In contrast, mini-refrigerators were less influential for energy hogs, suggesting that these residents may draw power in others ways, such as by using powerful computing or gaming systems for hours each day. A sub...
A project-based energy module has been taught for five consecutive years in a high school environ... more A project-based energy module has been taught for five consecutive years in a high school environmental science class as part of an NSF GK-12 outreach program. The module brings students through an exploration of problems and potential solutions related to automotive transportation, a relevant topic for the average American teenager. Students investigate problems related to our current fossil fuel based transportation system including environmental impacts and limited fuel supplies, and explore potential solutions that include alternative modes of transportation and fuels as well as lifestyle changes. Changes in students’ energy literacy, a broad term that includes a citizenship understanding of energy issues as well as attitude and behavioral aspects, have been assessed over the last three program years using a quasiexperimental, mixed methods approach that includes both quantitative and qualitative measures. The quantitative measure consists of a written Energy Literacy Survey tha...
As part of an extensive University K-12 partnership program in STEM (science, technology, enginee... more As part of an extensive University K-12 partnership program in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines, more than 20 faculty members at Clarkson University have developed and taught summer institutes and workshops for area middle and high school teachers. The goals of these interventions are to provide rigorous and state-of-the-art STEM content knowledge, to model effective and active teaching strategies, and to prepare the teachers to bring the new STEM content into their classrooms. The 5-day summer institutes provide rigorous content and hands-on activities for the teachers. The objective of this paper is to describe the development and assessment of the institutes. The design of the institutes was based on educational research that has documented key features of professional development and careful evaluation of prior professional development activities in the region. The optimal partnership was defined as one where teachers partner with working scientists, ...
Recent studies have found that substances in the environment can disturb the operation of the end... more Recent studies have found that substances in the environment can disturb the operation of the endocrine system. These endocrine disrupters may cause severe effects on human health such as breast and testicular cancer. The severe environmental contaminants act as hormone mimics and they dramatically alter the pattern of gene expression, which may result in a decrease in the average age of puberty in young girls. Unfortunately, there are no known ways that can detect whether or not samples from the environment contain small amounts of xenobiotics, which are substances that are foreign to the biological system. Xenobiotics are found in pesticides, herbicides, food/beverage additives, and industrial chemicals and pollutants. These compounds may have severe effects on humans and wildlife.
This dataset is from a 3-year study that looked at gains in climate literacy among a undergraduat... more This dataset is from a 3-year study that looked at gains in climate literacy among a undergraduate students enrolled in a climate science course. The questionnaire, which includes questions related to climate-related knowledge, affect, self-efficacy, and behavior, is also included. Our findings indicate significant improvements in students' understanding of climate science and climate change after taking the course.
2006 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Environmental Science and Engineering at Clarkson Universit... more is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Environmental Science and Engineering at Clarkson University, with a focus on energy and environmental education. She has several years of experience as the curriculum coordinator for Clarkson's Project-Based Learning Partnership Program and is director of the Partners in Engineering Program that provides mentoring and engineering activities for eighth grade girls.
Sustainability, 2021
Engineering graduates must be prepared to support our world’s need for a clean and sustainable en... more Engineering graduates must be prepared to support our world’s need for a clean and sustainable energy future. Complex problems related to energy and sustainability require engineers to consider the broad spectrum of interrelated consequences including human and environmental health, sociopolitical, and economic factors. Teaching engineering students about energy within a societal context, simultaneous with developing technical knowledge and skills, will better prepare them to solve real-world problems. Yet few energy courses that approach energy topics from a human-centered perspective exist within engineering programs. Engineering students enrolled in energy programs often take such courses as supplemental to their course of study. This paper presents an engineering course that approaches energy education from a socio-technical perspective, emphasizing the complex interactions of energy technologies with sustainability dimensions. Course content and learning activities are structur...
Energy and Buildings, 2021
Data in Brief, 2021
Building energy simulation (BES) tools fail to capture diversity among occupants’ consumption beh... more Building energy simulation (BES) tools fail to capture diversity among occupants’ consumption behaviors by using simple and generic occupancy and load profiles, causing uncertainties in simulation predictions. Thus, generating actual occupancy profiles can lead to more accurate and reliable BES predictions. In this article, occupancy profiles for apartment-style student housing are presented from high-resolution monitored occupancy data. A geo-fencing app was designed and installed on the cellphones of 41 volunteer students living in student housing buildings on Clarkson University's campus. Occupants’ entering and exiting activities were recorded every minute from February 4 to May 10, 2018. Recorded events were sorted out for each individual by the date and time of day considering 1 for ‘entered’ events and 0 for ‘exited’ events to show the probability of presence at each time of day. Accounting for excluded days (234 days with errors and uncertainties), 1,096 daily occupancy observations were retained in the dataset. Two methods were used to analyze the dataset and derive weekday and weekend occupancy schedules. A simple averaging method and K-means clustering techniques were performed [1]. This article provides the input datasets that were used for analysis as well as the outputs of both methods. Occupancy schedules are presented separately for each day of a week, weekdays, and weekend days. To show differences in students’ occupancy patterns, occupancy schedules in 7 clusters for weekdays and 3 clusters for weekend days are provided. These datasets can be beneficial for modelers and researchers for either using provided occupancy schedules in BES tools or understanding occupant behaviors in student housing.
2007 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Her research interests include gender-related employment discrimination.
2006 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
The Partners in Engineering (PIE) program brings together 8 th grade girls and female engineering... more The Partners in Engineering (PIE) program brings together 8 th grade girls and female engineering students from Clarkson University to experience mentoring, leadership, and real-life engineering problem solving. The program aims to empower young women to make informed and educated choices for advanced coursework and careers in engineering and technology-related fields. A team of female engineering student mentors teaches a three-week long engineering problem solving unit to 8 th grade technology classes, in which students apply an engineering problem solving process to address and solve an issue that is relevant to their school or community. Students are exposed to the creative side of engineering problem solving and the breadth of the engineering disciplines. The holistic nature of the problem solving activity emphasizes the relevance of engineering problem solving to community, society, humanity, and the environment. Extracurricular mentoring activities provide participants with opportunities to interact more closely and to develop stronger personal relationships. Evaluations have consistently shown that the mentoring/role model component is the most widely appreciated aspect of the program, valued highly by the college mentors, the 8 th grade girls, and their parents. While the overall assessment plan includes a combination of quantitative and qualitative instruments to provide an in-depth understanding of the program's impacts, this paper reports findings from the qualitative aspects of the program evaluation. The assessment has shown that the program improves participants' understanding and appreciation of engineering problem solving, increases the younger girls' general understanding of engineering and the potential role of women in engineering careers, provides leadership opportunities and opportunities for increasing self confidence and self-efficacy, and provides positive role model and mentoring experiences. Positive feedback from teachers and parents supports these findings. Comments indicate that the 8 th grade girls benefit from their participation in the PIE program-through their contact with the women engineering students, the breath of exposure to professional women in general, and the experience of using math and science to solve a meaningful problem.
2008 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
He has lead First Robotics efforts at the University for several years and has spearheaded the in... more He has lead First Robotics efforts at the University for several years and has spearheaded the introduction of Lego and Vex robotics competitions for younger students.
2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Dr. Powers is using her current academic position to promote project-based learning experiences t... more Dr. Powers is using her current academic position to promote project-based learning experiences to promote sustainability for college students. She is working with several student groups to analyze and improve existing campus operations and design and innovate new facilities to reduce our campus' impact on the environment and society. The goal in all of these projects is to provide real-world, messy and open ended projects to students to enhance their education both in technical aspects as well as team work, communication and integrating sustainability as a critical project criterion.
2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Her education and scholarly work are integrated through research on sustainability in engineering... more Her education and scholarly work are integrated through research on sustainability in engineering and broader STEM fields. She has had several education oriented research grants, including the NSF Director's Award as a Distinguished Teaching Scholar. Among these efforts, she has promoted and assessed the value of utilizing relevant project-based experiences to improve energy and climate change literacy of middle school, high school and college students.
2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
A new course was developed to improve engineering students' understanding of the earth science as... more A new course was developed to improve engineering students' understanding of the earth science associated with global climate change, human interactions with climate, mitigation technologies and policies, and adaption strategies. The three-credit course, entitled Global Climate Change: Science, Engineering, and Policy, is highly quantitative and taught through an inquiry-based pedagogical approach. Every student is required to address questions about climate change phenomenon and investigate the historical data, related model predictions for future scenarios, and potential for mitigation and adaption. Students use multiple sources for energy and climate data (DOE, NASA, NOAA, etc.), simulation results from global climate models, and results from their own simulations utilizing climate models (EdGCM). Extensive use of MS Excel and Matlab are required for processing and analysis of the large data sets. The impacts of the course on the students were assessed with a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Substantial quantitative gains were made in the students' climate literacy, especially in knowledge areas. Students also showed gains in their self-reported feelings that they could solve a new problem or tackle a challenge, were good at interpreting charts and graphs and manipulating databases, and were interested in pursuing a career in science or engineering that would contribute to solving global climate problems. Qualitative assessment results indicated that students felt more confident in their ability to contribute to climate change mitigation through both their personal knowledge and professional career options.
Sustainability
Engineers must take a leading role in addressing the challenges of mitigating climate change and ... more Engineers must take a leading role in addressing the challenges of mitigating climate change and adapting to the inevitable changes that our world is facing. To improve climate literacy, technical education must include problem formulation and solutions that consider complex interactions between engineered, Earth, and societal systems, including trade-offs among benefits, costs, and risks. Improving engineering students’ climate literacy must also inspire students’ motivation to work toward climate solutions. This paper highlights the content and pedagogical approach used in a class for engineering students that helped contribute to significant gains in engineering students’ climate literacy and critical thinking competencies. A total of 89 students fully participated in a pre/post climate literacy questionnaire over four years of study. As a whole, students demonstrated significant gains in climate-related content knowledge, affect, and behavior. Substantial differences were observ...
Sustainability
We use circuit-level granular electricity measurements from student housing and statistical analy... more We use circuit-level granular electricity measurements from student housing and statistical analysis to better understand individuals’ electricity consumption. Two key patterns emerged—individuals varied systematically in their magnitude of electricity use as well as in their variability of usage at the hourly and daily level. A cluster analysis of electricity consumption in individual bedrooms shows that 18% of students consume 48% of total electricity use at a median of 2.17 kWh/d/person. These few energy hogs have a disproportionate impact on electricity consumption. In contrast, the misers (22% of students) consume only 4% of the electricity (0.18 kWh/d/person). Mini-refrigerators in bedrooms contributed substantially to the total electricity use of the moderate users. In contrast, mini-refrigerators were less influential for energy hogs, suggesting that these residents may draw power in others ways, such as by using powerful computing or gaming systems for hours each day. A sub...
A project-based energy module has been taught for five consecutive years in a high school environ... more A project-based energy module has been taught for five consecutive years in a high school environmental science class as part of an NSF GK-12 outreach program. The module brings students through an exploration of problems and potential solutions related to automotive transportation, a relevant topic for the average American teenager. Students investigate problems related to our current fossil fuel based transportation system including environmental impacts and limited fuel supplies, and explore potential solutions that include alternative modes of transportation and fuels as well as lifestyle changes. Changes in students’ energy literacy, a broad term that includes a citizenship understanding of energy issues as well as attitude and behavioral aspects, have been assessed over the last three program years using a quasiexperimental, mixed methods approach that includes both quantitative and qualitative measures. The quantitative measure consists of a written Energy Literacy Survey tha...
As part of an extensive University K-12 partnership program in STEM (science, technology, enginee... more As part of an extensive University K-12 partnership program in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines, more than 20 faculty members at Clarkson University have developed and taught summer institutes and workshops for area middle and high school teachers. The goals of these interventions are to provide rigorous and state-of-the-art STEM content knowledge, to model effective and active teaching strategies, and to prepare the teachers to bring the new STEM content into their classrooms. The 5-day summer institutes provide rigorous content and hands-on activities for the teachers. The objective of this paper is to describe the development and assessment of the institutes. The design of the institutes was based on educational research that has documented key features of professional development and careful evaluation of prior professional development activities in the region. The optimal partnership was defined as one where teachers partner with working scientists, ...
Recent studies have found that substances in the environment can disturb the operation of the end... more Recent studies have found that substances in the environment can disturb the operation of the endocrine system. These endocrine disrupters may cause severe effects on human health such as breast and testicular cancer. The severe environmental contaminants act as hormone mimics and they dramatically alter the pattern of gene expression, which may result in a decrease in the average age of puberty in young girls. Unfortunately, there are no known ways that can detect whether or not samples from the environment contain small amounts of xenobiotics, which are substances that are foreign to the biological system. Xenobiotics are found in pesticides, herbicides, food/beverage additives, and industrial chemicals and pollutants. These compounds may have severe effects on humans and wildlife.
This dataset is from a 3-year study that looked at gains in climate literacy among a undergraduat... more This dataset is from a 3-year study that looked at gains in climate literacy among a undergraduate students enrolled in a climate science course. The questionnaire, which includes questions related to climate-related knowledge, affect, self-efficacy, and behavior, is also included. Our findings indicate significant improvements in students' understanding of climate science and climate change after taking the course.
2006 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Environmental Science and Engineering at Clarkson Universit... more is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Environmental Science and Engineering at Clarkson University, with a focus on energy and environmental education. She has several years of experience as the curriculum coordinator for Clarkson's Project-Based Learning Partnership Program and is director of the Partners in Engineering Program that provides mentoring and engineering activities for eighth grade girls.
Sustainability, 2021
Engineering graduates must be prepared to support our world’s need for a clean and sustainable en... more Engineering graduates must be prepared to support our world’s need for a clean and sustainable energy future. Complex problems related to energy and sustainability require engineers to consider the broad spectrum of interrelated consequences including human and environmental health, sociopolitical, and economic factors. Teaching engineering students about energy within a societal context, simultaneous with developing technical knowledge and skills, will better prepare them to solve real-world problems. Yet few energy courses that approach energy topics from a human-centered perspective exist within engineering programs. Engineering students enrolled in energy programs often take such courses as supplemental to their course of study. This paper presents an engineering course that approaches energy education from a socio-technical perspective, emphasizing the complex interactions of energy technologies with sustainability dimensions. Course content and learning activities are structur...
Energy and Buildings, 2021
Data in Brief, 2021
Building energy simulation (BES) tools fail to capture diversity among occupants’ consumption beh... more Building energy simulation (BES) tools fail to capture diversity among occupants’ consumption behaviors by using simple and generic occupancy and load profiles, causing uncertainties in simulation predictions. Thus, generating actual occupancy profiles can lead to more accurate and reliable BES predictions. In this article, occupancy profiles for apartment-style student housing are presented from high-resolution monitored occupancy data. A geo-fencing app was designed and installed on the cellphones of 41 volunteer students living in student housing buildings on Clarkson University's campus. Occupants’ entering and exiting activities were recorded every minute from February 4 to May 10, 2018. Recorded events were sorted out for each individual by the date and time of day considering 1 for ‘entered’ events and 0 for ‘exited’ events to show the probability of presence at each time of day. Accounting for excluded days (234 days with errors and uncertainties), 1,096 daily occupancy observations were retained in the dataset. Two methods were used to analyze the dataset and derive weekday and weekend occupancy schedules. A simple averaging method and K-means clustering techniques were performed [1]. This article provides the input datasets that were used for analysis as well as the outputs of both methods. Occupancy schedules are presented separately for each day of a week, weekdays, and weekend days. To show differences in students’ occupancy patterns, occupancy schedules in 7 clusters for weekdays and 3 clusters for weekend days are provided. These datasets can be beneficial for modelers and researchers for either using provided occupancy schedules in BES tools or understanding occupant behaviors in student housing.
2007 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Her research interests include gender-related employment discrimination.
2006 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
The Partners in Engineering (PIE) program brings together 8 th grade girls and female engineering... more The Partners in Engineering (PIE) program brings together 8 th grade girls and female engineering students from Clarkson University to experience mentoring, leadership, and real-life engineering problem solving. The program aims to empower young women to make informed and educated choices for advanced coursework and careers in engineering and technology-related fields. A team of female engineering student mentors teaches a three-week long engineering problem solving unit to 8 th grade technology classes, in which students apply an engineering problem solving process to address and solve an issue that is relevant to their school or community. Students are exposed to the creative side of engineering problem solving and the breadth of the engineering disciplines. The holistic nature of the problem solving activity emphasizes the relevance of engineering problem solving to community, society, humanity, and the environment. Extracurricular mentoring activities provide participants with opportunities to interact more closely and to develop stronger personal relationships. Evaluations have consistently shown that the mentoring/role model component is the most widely appreciated aspect of the program, valued highly by the college mentors, the 8 th grade girls, and their parents. While the overall assessment plan includes a combination of quantitative and qualitative instruments to provide an in-depth understanding of the program's impacts, this paper reports findings from the qualitative aspects of the program evaluation. The assessment has shown that the program improves participants' understanding and appreciation of engineering problem solving, increases the younger girls' general understanding of engineering and the potential role of women in engineering careers, provides leadership opportunities and opportunities for increasing self confidence and self-efficacy, and provides positive role model and mentoring experiences. Positive feedback from teachers and parents supports these findings. Comments indicate that the 8 th grade girls benefit from their participation in the PIE program-through their contact with the women engineering students, the breath of exposure to professional women in general, and the experience of using math and science to solve a meaningful problem.
2008 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
He has lead First Robotics efforts at the University for several years and has spearheaded the in... more He has lead First Robotics efforts at the University for several years and has spearheaded the introduction of Lego and Vex robotics competitions for younger students.
2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Dr. Powers is using her current academic position to promote project-based learning experiences t... more Dr. Powers is using her current academic position to promote project-based learning experiences to promote sustainability for college students. She is working with several student groups to analyze and improve existing campus operations and design and innovate new facilities to reduce our campus' impact on the environment and society. The goal in all of these projects is to provide real-world, messy and open ended projects to students to enhance their education both in technical aspects as well as team work, communication and integrating sustainability as a critical project criterion.
2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Her education and scholarly work are integrated through research on sustainability in engineering... more Her education and scholarly work are integrated through research on sustainability in engineering and broader STEM fields. She has had several education oriented research grants, including the NSF Director's Award as a Distinguished Teaching Scholar. Among these efforts, she has promoted and assessed the value of utilizing relevant project-based experiences to improve energy and climate change literacy of middle school, high school and college students.
2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
A new course was developed to improve engineering students' understanding of the earth science as... more A new course was developed to improve engineering students' understanding of the earth science associated with global climate change, human interactions with climate, mitigation technologies and policies, and adaption strategies. The three-credit course, entitled Global Climate Change: Science, Engineering, and Policy, is highly quantitative and taught through an inquiry-based pedagogical approach. Every student is required to address questions about climate change phenomenon and investigate the historical data, related model predictions for future scenarios, and potential for mitigation and adaption. Students use multiple sources for energy and climate data (DOE, NASA, NOAA, etc.), simulation results from global climate models, and results from their own simulations utilizing climate models (EdGCM). Extensive use of MS Excel and Matlab are required for processing and analysis of the large data sets. The impacts of the course on the students were assessed with a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Substantial quantitative gains were made in the students' climate literacy, especially in knowledge areas. Students also showed gains in their self-reported feelings that they could solve a new problem or tackle a challenge, were good at interpreting charts and graphs and manipulating databases, and were interested in pursuing a career in science or engineering that would contribute to solving global climate problems. Qualitative assessment results indicated that students felt more confident in their ability to contribute to climate change mitigation through both their personal knowledge and professional career options.