"As director and education manager for the Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Energy (CASE), I am responsible for delivering education materials to students and teachers around the state of Virginia. I recieved a $5000 Faculty Senate Mini-grant in 2018 to grow our renewable energy classroom kit library network to include one additional satellite kit location in the Abingdon area (potentially the Southwest Virginia 4-H Educational Center) and providing each current kit location with additional kits to include solar energy education resources."

"After an extensive inquiry I ended up talking with the Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) about housing the kits at the 4H centers across the state.  The VCE was very excited about the prospects and I presented at the VCE conference at Natural Bridge in 2018 to the STEM subgroup and worked on an Action Plan that agents could buy into.  In February 2019, I co-presented a webinar at the Winter Conference for VCE about the Action Plan and the kits. We surveyed the 4H directors about which kits they would like and then we scheduled a training workshop for agents in Charlottesville at the offices of Apex Clean Energy in March.  Trainers got hands-on experience with the kits and got a tour of the Apex Remote Operations Control Center where they are actively monitoring their wind and solar projects all over the US.  Some agents even took some kits back to their region."

"The CASE is now in the midst of distributing the remaining kits to the 4H centers, scheduling training for their staff, local agents, and local teachers, and scheduling a wind or solar Challenge at each Center in the Spring.  We had an intern over the summer that helped to get all the kits completed and also out together the lesson plans and SOL correlations for each kit.  The Madison Vision Fund dollars that support the Faculty Senate Mini-Grant program supported my project and led to an amazing partnership with VCE that we hope will extend for years to come." 

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Remy Pangle ('99)

"Recieving this mini-grant initiated discussions with the current satellite kit locations that resulted in a new understanding that better locations to promote the kit loans were needed. My work resulted in increased collaboration with our wind and solar energy partners to support the staff and teachers using the wind kits across Virginia."