Before the start of the spring semester, students, faculty and staff from Pomona College and other Claremont Colleges were learning in new ways—wearing hard hats at the natural-gas fired Harbor Generating Station in the Port of Los Angeles; driving through Carrizo Plain National Monument to view a 500-megawatt solar facility; and touring the Diablo Canyon Nuclear facility, the only operating nuclear plant in the state.
The students represented a variety of majors and were participating in an Energy Field Study designed to consider the challenges California faces in reaching its goal of carbon neutrality by 2045.
Led by Professor of Politics Heather L. Williams, Tom McHenry, visiting professor of environmental analysis, and Marc Los Huertos, the Stephen M. Pauley M.D. ’62 Professor of Environmental Analysis, the field study was an example of the short-term, intensive study-away programs that the Center for Global Engagement (CGE) will support.
Another hallmark of the CGE will be bringing experts from a variety of fields together to work on a complex problem.
Williams says the site visits and discussions with experts on the ground during the Energy Field Study were combined with classroom learning about the regulatory, financial and technical aspects of the massive changes needed to reach California’s ambitious goals.
“It was really fascinating to take students into a plant and let them see and discuss and have conversations, and really hear them talking about what’s going to be their future,” Williams says. “The idea was to take us out of the normal format of classes—we took away the pressure of grading and the idea of the professor as the only authority and said, ‘Let’s learn together.’”
As part of the mutual learning environment, students prepared their own brief talks on energy sustainability issues and presented them to the group throughout the week.
Jaden Yang ’28, a physics and politics double major, delivered a talk on the potential impact of AI on energy and water use. Yang says experiencing professors as learners as well as teachers was inspiring.
“What I really appreciated about this trip was that it allowed students and professors to learn together,” Yang says. “The conversations that we had brought together the more informed views of professors with the unique experience of each student, which provided a diverse lens for everything we learned.”
Milo Slevin ’28, who plans to major in environmental analysis and politics, also valued the opportunity to learn side-by-side with faculty.
“We had a wide variety of faculty expertise on the trip, and many of those people were learning these things for the first time alongside students,” he says. “To go through that process with the knowledge and curiosity of faculty made this a unique experience.”
The trip was funded with generous support from Michael Rucker ’90 and Karen Lyon Gibbs ’91, a married couple who met at Pomona.
Rucker, founder and CEO of Scout Clean Energy, provided a day-long tour and seminar with his team at the Gonzaga Ridge Wind Farm in Pacheco State Park. Scout Clean Energy purchased the turbine array from its original owners and has redeveloped it so when the facility comes online it will provide 147.5 MW of power—seven times what the original wind farm produced—with the capability to store 50MW of power for four hours.
Yang says that the program also enabled them to think differently about how their career path could include energy sustainability.
“It has definitely made me more aware of factors I should be considering in my future studies and career plans,” they say. “This was great as a sampler of various different ways to get involved in renewable energy, and I have a better idea now of what I want or might not want to do in the future.”
To learn more about the Center for Global Engagement and its role in advancing Pomona’s global initiatives, visit the CGE website.