Last week, Greenway began partnering with local renewable energy investing firm, Greenbacker Renewable Energy Company, to educate the next generation of renewable energy engineers. Students had the opportunity to present their recent wind project prototypes to wind experts at Greenbacker, and received a lot of helpful feedback.
The Greenbacker team also took the students to Georgia Mountain Community Wind in Milton, Vermont.
Students were shown the insides of a wind turbine and talked about what it takes to be a good neighbor as owners of the power generation site.
Greenbacker and Greenway are aligned in their vision of a sustainable future and know that it takes empowered individuals to build it. We look forward to continuing to learn and grow with our neighbor on Main Street, Greenbacker.
Halloween At Greenway
Students and Greenway staff got into the Halloween spirit! We celebrated at the end of day with a spooky hike to a nearby quarry.
Greenway On: Goals, Constraints & Scaffolding
Written by: Mark Somerville
Projects are a core component of the Greenway student experience, which is to say students will develop their abilities and their identities as engineers in large part by engaging with authentic and complex challenges, as opposed to primarily through working on problem sets and studying for examinations. This approach to an engineering education makes sense for many reasons: projects can mirror practice (engineers do lots of projects, but they don’t do many problem sets in the real world); they can ignite students’ intrinsic motivation (“I can’t wait to get back to the shop” versus “I can’t wait to get back to cramming for my exam”); they provide an environment in which students can make mistakes and then learn from them; and they enable students to see and internalize connections between subjects. And of course, projects are simply fun.
Mark Somerville is an engineer, physicist, educator, and academic leader. He began his career as a professor of physics at Vassar College, and joined the founding team of faculty at Olin College in 2001. During his time at Olin College, Mark has played pivotal roles in many aspects of building the college, ranging from the design of the college’s curriculum to the creation of Olin’s internationally-known Summer Institute and Collaboratory to the development of partnerships with different schools around the world. He is currently on sabbatical and is working with Greenway Institute during this time.
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