Rensselaer has received a gift of $1 million from the Grainger Foundation of Lake Forest, Ill., to endow the Grainger Electric Power Engineering Student Award Program for undergraduate and graduate students.

“This gift provides a welcome incentive to expose students to the discipline of electric power engineering, a field in which there is a great demand for young engineers yet too few applicants,” said J. Keith Nelson, the Philip Sporn Professor of Electric Power Engineering and director of the program. “The Grainger Foundation had been making an annual contribution to fund student awards for the past several years. This year, they took steps to make the program permanent.”

Grainger scholar, Stephanie Miller, works with Professor Keith Nelson on Rensselaer’s 2.3 MV pulse facility. Photo by Mark McCarty

The goal of the Grainger Electric Power Engineering Student Award Program is to continue to attract and reward well-qualified U.S. students into the power engineering profession. “Beginning the awards at the undergraduate level is important in attracting students into the profession, and for providing a pool of candidates for the Rensselaer master’s degree program in electric power engineering,” Nelson said. The award currently has a monetary value of $7,500 for undergraduates in their junior and senior years, and is renewable for one year. The one-year award at the graduate level is $10,000.

“The need for power engineering professionals with interdisciplinary backgrounds is greater than ever,” Nelson said.  “Our program at Rensselaer engages students in the study of practical problems and applications in the electric power field. Many of the faculty have had significant industrial experience with manufacturers, which gives the program an apparatus emphasis. This resonates with the interest that David Grainger, the foundation’s president, has for electric machines.”

Nelson noted that there is great potential in the field, whether it is in satellite relaying technology, computer-based control, alternative energy concepts, or other research areas, such as those based on recent advances in power electronics and superconductivity.

Today’s power engineer is not only involved in engineering, but in the business aspects of a power company as well, according to Nelson. He says there is a “sweet spot” in the field that Rensselaer, with an established reputation for the caliber of its graduates, is well positioned to fill: the nexus of power engineering, management, and marketing the power utility as a business in an increasingly open market. In recognition of this, the department now offers a course titled “The Utility as a Business, taught by adjunct Professor George Berry, the former president and chief operating officer of the New York Power Authority.

Published October 10, 2005