Program Overview

Community Energy Engineering is an after-school education program for middle and high school students in Alhambra village of Phoenix, Arizona.

What is Community Energy Engineering (CEE)?

CEE organizes youth-led, interest-driven programming and projects that explores what communities can do to engineer energy transitions locally. The project is part of an ongoing partnership between STEM educators in Phoenix Union High School, Alhambra Elementary School Districts, and STEM education researchers at Arizona State University. CEE positions students to identify, problematize, and pursue community projects that are, themselves, opportunities to learn and grow. Through CEE, youth develop collaborative projects in, with, and for their local neighborhoods through consultations with local professionals as well as STEM disciplinary experts. CEE convenes weekly meetings on participating school campuses and hosts monthly cross-age gatherings.

What is the goal of Community Energy Engineering (CEE)?

The goal of CEE programming is broadening participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). To do so, CEE inspires and enables youth to enlist assets circulating in their communities. They develop ingenious insights with potential to create value in relation to energy transitions (i.e.g, energy science & engineering). Energy in its many forms remains a longstanding tool for navigating opportunities and challenges. As communities begin a transition to carbon neutrality, CEE projects involve next-generation leaders with energy engineering in productive and consequential ways. Examples of the value that projects create include:

• documenting a neighborhood’s energy past and present while also engaging in futures thinking to imagine equitable futures for all;

• designing, prototyping, and testing socio-technical solutions to community problems; and

• making consequential contributions to community well-being through pro-social engagement with citizens and leaders.