Workforce Training for the Electric Power Sector – Keystone Smart Grid Fellows Program

A partnership was established between Lehigh University and the University of Pittsburgh to help build a community of scholars to be trained to become trainers of the skilled workforce. This program was developed to recruit master's degree candidates and to modify existing master's programs to include a specialized concentration of Smart Grid courses. It also was aimed to increase recruitment of regional undergraduate students with an interest in electric power systems and Smart Grids as fields of study, in order to develop them as the next generation of industry leaders.

The Keystone Smart Grid Fellowship Program included three project objectives:

1. Identify and recruit Fellowship candidates from the targeted pool of community college professors, K-12 science and math teachers, recent B.S. graduates seeking careers in the electric power sector and engineering candidates. The range of targeted number is a total of sixteen to eighteen Fellows.
2. Provide partial financial support for three cohorts of engineering students in Lehigh's Energy Systems Engineering Institute and two cohorts of students in University of Pittsburgh's Power and Energy Initiative and train graduate students' skills in Smart Grid research and development.
3. Support development and delivery of Lehigh's Transmission and Distribution/Smart Grid core course to train utility workers at PPL.