2025 Growing Global Energy Leaders

In summer 2025, a summer Growing Global Energy Leaders (GGEL) Graduate Certificate Program was offered to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who were working with faculty who are part of a National Science Foundation Center-to-Center (C2C) research grant across three energy centers

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Instructors

The program instructors were:
  • Dr. Denise Driscoll (CISTAR's Director of Access and Societal Impact; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University)
  • Dr. Jennifer Cole (Assistant Chair and Associate Professor of Instruction in Chemical and Biological Engineering in the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University; Director at Northwestern Center for Engineering Education Research).

GGEL Program's Purpose

The purpose of the program was to address the intercultural and teaming goals outlined in the C2C grant that was awarded to CISTAR (U.S.), RCGI (Brazil), and CINE (Brazil) to engage in research and professional development together across the energy centers in different countries. 
The goals were to:
·      Help them to think about being a future intercultural global energy leader; and,
·      Help them, in future, to have a more enjoyable and productive future international research collaborations and interactions.  
 
The 7-week program focused on getting graduate students to think about how intercultural development can affect thoughts and actions toward 1. collaboration, 2. research, and 3. the future of energy.  
There was also an emphasis on teaching self-discovery (i.e., learning to be more interculturally savvy, building better intercultural skills with “active listening” and “building empathy” techniques), all in the context of understanding why these skills are critical to being a global energy leader. 
 
Finally, there was an emphasis on graduate students learning how: 
    1. To connect future energy technologies to societal impact, 
    2. To make sense of their research in the context of a global energy landscape, and, 
    3. To be a future energy transition leader.  

Program Outcomes

Evaluation of the course is in progress.  Main findings will be added to this site once the external evaluator reports on the findings.