Harvey Mudd 诊所 Team Designing First Nonprofit Solar Panel Factory

诊所项目, a pioneering program of collaboration between industry and Harvey Mudd College, has been a hallmark of this institution for more than 50 years. Juniors and seniors are engaged in the solution of real-world, technical problems for clients, most of them in industry. 诊所 teams also apply their academic experience to projects with nonprofit sponsors.

New for the 2018 academic year are three projects focused on issues of social justice, funded in part by an educational leadership grant to 总统 Maria Klawe from the Carnegie Corporation.

HMC’s social justice 诊所 project with Claremont Locally Grown Power (CLGP) has the potential to impact members of the local community. For their project “Local Factory Startup,” a team of five students is helping CLGP—a start-up that is creating replicable, non-profit solar panel factories—open a pilot factory in Pomona, 加州. CLGP aims to promote economic and environmental change by installing 6,000 solar systems on low- to mid-level-income households. 诊所 team members and seniors Nate Smith, 会Castleberg, 克里斯托弗·麦克尔罗伊, Priscilla Chu and Jacquelyn Aguilera (Pitzer) are designing a world-class solar panel factory by producing an optimal plant layout, outlining detailed workstations and determining specific machines, 工具设备.

“I am so glad to see our students making an impact on society while learning and applying their technical and professional skills. This aligns beautifully with the College’s mission 状态ment,Kash Gokli说, 项目顾问, professor of manufacturing practice and 工程 诊所 director.

Harvey Mudd College and its 钟中心 for Sustainable Environmental Design have partnered with Community 首页 Energy Retrofit Project (CHERP) and idealPV to teach students how to construct, test and ultimately distribute solar panels. 2016年10月至今, students have engaged with the project through paid internships via the Energize Colleges program and through additional opportunities, including the CLGP 诊所 project.

Read more about the “Local Factory Startup” 诊所 Project and the Harvey Mudd student team in the March 6 学生生活 article, “Harvey Mudd College students to design world’s first nonprofit solar panel factory” by Ben Reicher.