NYSERDA 1st Quarterly Report Stacks+Joules
NYSERDA Energy Efficiency and Clean Technology Workforce Training
Quarterly Report
Report for Period October 1 to December 31 – Report due January 15
New Collar Careers in Building Automation
NYSERDA supported activities commenced on October 30, 2019, with three cohorts at two partner schools: Urban Assembly Maker Academy (UA Maker) & South Bronx Community Charter High School (SBC).
As of October 29, 2019, all three cohorts had completed Component 1: Coding and Controls Fundamentals: Module 1: Introduction to automation, electronics, and the programming interface and; Module 2: Mastering basic Python Code examples. They had also begun to explore Component 2: Professionalism, Critical Thinking, Resume Development, and Interviewing Skills: Strand 1: Workplace expectations Introductions & greetings Networking.
From October 30, 2019, through January 24, 2020, all three cohorts have completed all modules of Component 1 and have engaged in Component 2: Modules 1, 2, & 3.
Urban Assembly Maker Academy
UA Maker is hosting two cohorts totaling 36 students.
Cohort 1 with 22 students meets on Wednesdays from 1:00-4:00. The first hour is during the school day and is co-facilitated with the school’s computer science teacher as part of her regular Physical Computing class. The last 2 hours are after school and therefore participation is voluntary. Cohort 1 has maintained 84% attendance.
Cohort 2 with 14 students meets on Wednesday from 2:30-5:30. All three hours are after school with all students participating voluntarily. Cohort 2 has maintained a 75% attendance.
UA Maker Work-based Learning Activities:
Industry Mentor Thomas Quinn of Venco Sales has volunteered over 200 hours with both UA Maker cohorts, participating in almost all classes and activities and providing leadership on the lighting retrofit proposal presentation.
RAB Lighting’s Ravi Parikh, Business Development Manager, and Davis Rothenberg, Product Marketing Manager have volunteered for a combined total of approximately 120 hours, including career and company overviews, advanced lighting controls technical demonstrations and workshops, a full-day visit to company and manufacturing headquarters, and full lighting audit of the high school resulting in an inventory of existing lighting and proposal for LED and advanced controls upgrade.
Based on the depth of work-based learning and the robust support given by Tom, Ravi, and Davis, the NY DOE approved all after school program hours as a CTE internship, paid to each participant at $15 per hour. With these 36 internships, we are well ahead of our expected internship accomplishment timeline.
Most significantly, UA Maker students from both cohorts presented their LED lighting and advanced lighting controls proposal for their school to an audience of over 40 that included Emily Dean, NYSERDA Director of Market Development; Nan Eileen Mead, Member of NY Board of Regents; Matthew Washington, Manhattan Deputy Borough President; Susan Diaz, NYC DOE Director of Enrichment Programs; Tauris McBride, CEO Tauris Tech; principals from several NYC high schools; representatives from NYU Stern School of Business, SUNY Farmingdale, and Long Island University; and industry partners from RAB Lighting, Tridium, TEC Systems, Venco Sales, UEP Controls, and LumaNext; as well as representatives from Google and Amazon.
Here’s a link to the presentation slide deck the students created and delivered:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U3c0eEDOE-3deCItGjmNUIvclsbwbhOi/view
South Bronx Community Charter High School
SBC is hosting one cohort of 13 students.
The cohort meets on Mondays from 2:30 to-5:30. All three hours are after school with all students participating voluntarily. The cohort has maintained 64% attendance.
SBC Work-based Learning Activities:
Dual Fuel Corp, a Bronx based integrated service provider of cost savings and energy-efficient solutions, has “adopted” the SBC cohort. Joseph Bohm, President/CEO visited class and shared his career pathway story and an overview of his company. Alper Donmez, Controls Engineer, later visited class several times to share his story and lead technical workshops on commissioning sensors for a boiler system. Subsequently, in early December one student was hired as an intern working directly with Alper. The student has been putting in eight hours per week at $15 per hour in addition to the three-hour Stacks+Joules sessions. Dual Fuel is so impressed by their intern that they will take on 2 more starting February.
Students performed a lighting audit of the fourth floor of their school building. As a relatively new building, it did not warrant a retrofit proposal, although students were lead to explore opportunities for using control strategies to increase the quality of lighting the energy efficiency of the school’s lighting system.
Low attendance is an issue that we are working to address with close support from SBC staff. We attribute lower attendance in this program to a number of factors:
It is entirely after school. The hybrid model that starts during the last hour of school and extends into after school provides continuity and, more importantly, allows for extra support from the school’s staff. This is not to diminish the excellent support that SBC staff is giving us and our students.
Classes are on Mondays, which is the most common day for holidays and special schedules for events, testing, etc. Each missed Monday results in a gap of two weeks between sessions. This lack of continuity diminishes the perceived importance of the program.
Students have not been paid.
We are working closely with SBC staff to address the attendance issues:
1. Starting the second semester (February 3rd) class will begin during the last hour of the school day and Asia Cruz, SBC Internship Coordinator will be assigned as direct support.
2. While classes will continue on Mondays, there are fewer missed Mondays during the second semester. Additionally, we will be scheduling field trips to Tauris Tech and BAS job sites during school hours on days other than Monday, which will provide additional meetings for extended hours.
3. We would like to request using funds to pay stipends associated with accomplishing specific performance measures. This approach is a common strategy associated with modern apprentice programs. As the complexity and value of the performance measures increases, so does the stipend payment. We propose:
a. $100 for presenting a complete portfolio of functioning coding exercises, a light show choreographed to music and highlighting lighting control strategies, and passing the LCA Introduction to Lighting Controls Certificate exam.
b. $150 for passing the EPA 608 Refrigeration Handling exam.
c. $200 for completing all Niagara 4 training exercises and successfully check-testing a VAV box.
Request for NYSERDA assistance:
In addition to item #3 above (stipend structure) we would like to explore if NYSERDA might be able to offer guidance in the following areas:
· How we might move forward with the UA Maker students’ proposal
· Civic Hall, a non-profit devoted to expanding tech workforce opportunity to underrepresented communities, is building a new 8 story facility at Union Square. Civic Hall hosted the UA Maker student presentation. Emily Dean expressed interest in exploring opportunities for engaging industry partners and students towards using the new building itself as an advanced learning platform. We will be following up directly with Emily. Might there be professionals with organizational or technical expertise, knowledge of resources, or other special attributes that might be interested in exploring this opportunity?
· We want to become experts in the process of accessing reimbursements for on-the-job training and internships so that we can provide strong support as an incentive for our industry partners to take advantage of NYSERDA’s programs.