It's Elementary: Promoting the Benefits of Hydropower via Early STEM Education

Presented by Jessica McGinley at HydroVision International 2019 in Portland, OR

Despite its unique status as the only dispatchable renewable energy resource, hydropower suffers from an image problem. When thinking of renewable energy, the general public may conjure images of solar and wind power leading the U.S. to a carbon-free future. When these same people think of hydropower, they may remember the New Deal of the 1930s or a news reports of declining fish populations and may view hydropower as old-fashioned or harmful.

From a marketing viewpoint, building awareness and affinity can be built at a young age. The author proposes an interdisciplinary, project-based elementary, middle, and high school curricula to establish recognition and acceptance of hydropower as a clean, reliable energy source in students’ formative years.
The current trend in education is a push toward integrated, project-based STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning, taking concepts from science and math classes and reinforcing them in language arts and social studies classes. Integrated learning reinforces lessons and challenges students to thoroughly examine and think critically. Project-based learning can increase student interest in STEM because it encourages students to solve authentic problems, work with others, and create real solutions.

When students are exposed early-on to new ideas, opportunities, and possibilities, they being to imagine how it might relate to their future careers. By developing hydropower-inclusive interdisciplinary curricula for elementary, middle, and high school students, we promote and create awareness of the importance of hydropower and offer students the opportunity to see a future for themselves in the industry. Through an integrated, project-based approach to STEM education, a consequential focus on vocation can be achieved by utilizing connections with engineering, information processing, and other technical facets related to the hydro industry.