Training Leaders to Facilitate an Energy Transition: Retrospective Evaluation of Course Design

Abstract

While there is a widely shared sense that policy action is required for the electricity system in the United States to decarbonize, most climate policy courses focus only on a handful of federal and state policies. In reality, however, there is a web of state- and local-government-level policy choices that can serve to facilitate or hinder an energy transition, which is less discussed and researched in higher education. A new graduate course, first taught in Winter 2019 at the University of Michigan in the Ford School of Public Policy, employs a range of unique course design elements to introduce the idea of a complex web of policies and actors in the energy transition, and to provide students with practical skills to prepare them to be leaders in the transition. By interviewing students 18 months after finishing the Winter 2019 iteration of the course, in addition to surveying students enrolled in the second interaction of the course in the Fall 2020 semester, this study finds that student experiential learning and applied projects, in tandem with the instructor’s focus on local, real-world implications, was found to be effective in preparing students to be climate leaders.

1. Introduction

A keystone of any comprehensive plan to combat global climate change is the transition away from carbon-generating energy sources to clean and renewable sources of energy. Studies at the international [1], national [2], and state [3] levels have all found that the only realistic way to limit global warming is to quickly transition the electricity sector to zero-carbon generation sources such as wind and solar energy and electrifying as many other emissions sectors as possible. Climate change leadership requires individual leaders with the expertise, skills, and drive to shape a clean energy transition. Higher education institutions serve an essential role in educating, training, and preparing such leaders, particularly in the classroom. Which aspects, however, of course content, design, and delivery are most effective at preparing students to be leaders in the energy transition?

This study evaluates the course design and pedagogy of a new graduate course at the University of Michigan in the Ford School of Public Policy taught by Dr. Sarah Mills (this paper’s second author) and of which Jonathan Newman (this paper’s first author) was a student in the inaugural class. The course, the State and Local Renewable Energy Policy Course, focuses on local and state renewable energy policy and regulation. Although not strictly focused on climate change, the course is designed to prepare students with applied knowledge to lead the energy transition, a subset of climate action.

With a unique focus on the web of complex policies influencing renewable energy development at the state and local levels, the course design consists of a number of elements incorporated into the classroom in an effort to better prepare students for on-the-ground leadership in policies that impact everyday life. The course content consists of modules on state and local renewable energy policy topics, including zoning policy, tax implication, renewable portfolio standards, and broader climate policies. Through a combination of lectures, guest speakers, and open discussion, the course seeks to evaluate the complexities of siting and constructing large-scale renewable energy technologies, namely wind and solar energy.

The course incorporates strategies to bring experiential learning into the classroom through including interviews with professionals in the field, the instructor’s applied research, and a final project focused on real complexities and stakeholders in state policy. The objective of this study was to determine the extent to which aspects of a graduate-level course aimed at understanding state and local energy policy were effective or not in preparing students to take on climate action leadership, and if this model could be scaled across the University of Michigan in other disciplines. Thus, our research question is: Which aspects of course content, design, and delivery are most effective at preparing students to take on climate action leadership?

2. Literature Review

Within academia, there is no shortage of research—or teaching—on energy policy [4,5]. Most of the focus, however, has been paid to a handful of international- and federal-level policies that either put a price on carbon [6] (e.g., carbon tax or cap-and-trade) or require utilities to meet renewable energy or improved energy efficiency targets [7]. Under the radar, however, are state- and local-government-level policy choices—on tax policy [8], land use regulation [9], infrastructure investment [10], and the use of public land [11]—that facilitate or hinder an energy transition. Finite peer-reviewed scholarship on the local context requires robust content knowledge to be delivered by examples from practice (in the form of newspaper articles, guest speakers, and assignments based on studying on-going cases) in the classroom.

Renewable energy is not the only aspect, however, of climate action that faces this challenge. Climate change is inherently a challenging subject for classrooms given its often remote impact, long-term horizon, and complex set of global stakeholders, impacts, and causes [8]. As a result, instructors face tension between theoretical and applied learning. In an effort to bridge the gap, educational strategies have focused on either developing personal relevance or employing engaging teaching methods [12].

To increase the personal salience of climate change to students, instructors have focused on efforts to localize the impacts of global climate change, connecting the dots between global impacts and everyday observations [13]. Drawing local knowledge and content into the classroom grounds students on the impacts and importance of climate change. Pedagogy strategies range from increasing engagement with the local community [14] to discussions on personal experiences with environmental issues [15].

Experiential learning is a pedagogy focused on active, action-based learning with constant engagement and reflection [16]. Community projects and hands-on learning are recognized as key features of sustainability leadership programs to develop real-world knowledge [17,18]. Coupling personal salience with experiential learning creates a sense of connectedness for learners, driving a deeper absorption of knowledge.

However, to date, relatively little research has focused directly on strategies to leverage personal relevance and engaging teaching methods in climate education with the goal of developing future leaders in higher educational settings. Furthermore, there is a gap in research on how to bring localized, applied learning into the classroom to achieve these goals. This gap is the area of research this study seeks to explore and begin to address, because it is a responsibility of higher education programs to prepare students with the necessary skills to be successful in their future careers. Sustainability leadership is especially important given the widespread impacts of a rapidly changing climate. In this study, the elements of a specific course designed to focus on applied localized clean energy (a subsect of climate change education) were examined to determine which were most effective at preparing graduate-level students for climate change leadership positions.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Site and Sample

This research was conducted among two cohorts of students in Dr. Sarah Mills’ State and Local Renewable Energy Policy Course (“the course”). The course is a graduate-level class in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. It is an elective course open to all graduate students on campus. Students must opt in to the course, which, as its title suggests, focuses on local policies that impact the development, placement, and perception of renewable energy (i.e., wind and solar energy). As such, the majority of students who have chosen to take the course enter the classroom with a vested interest in fighting climate change—or at least in advancing the deployment of renewable energy. Additionally, as graduate students, the majority have significant experience in educational settings and often have some relevant education on climate-related issues (although many do not have direct experience with renewable energy). The course has been taught twice, once during the Winter 2019 semester (first cohort) and again during the Fall 2020 (second cohort) semester (concurrently with data collection for this research). It is important to highlight that the second offering of this course in Fall 2020 was conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The course was designed to be relatively small (23 students in the first cohort and 25 students in the second) to foster rich discussion and dialogue.

The course itself consists of several modules that focus on specific policies at the state and local level. For example, modules cover siting policies (where and under what restrictions infrastructure can be built), tax impacts, state Public Utilities Commission policies, carbon taxes, and renewable energy goals. Throughout the course, these modules paint a picture of how a range of federal, state, and local policies work together (or not) to enable renewable energy projects to be built. The majority of the course focuses on how these policies are implemented and how they impact communities that host utility-scale renewable energy projects, with minimal coverage of the political theory behind the policies themselves.

In the first cohort (face-to-face), class time was structured such that the beginning half of class was lecture-based with continuous Q&A, and the second half was structured to encourage more open discussion. Students were required to complete three assignments: an Op-Ed covering a local policy, an interview with a professional in the field, and a group paper covering the broad spectrum of renewable energy policies in a single state. Students worked on various components of the paper and received feedback throughout the semester. Interviews were conducted with 17 former students from the first cohort (74%). Participants consisted of recently graduated professionals and some students who were still at the university, finishing their graduate degrees. All interviews were conducted by Jonathan Newman (first author) over Zoom, with transcripts automatically generated by Zoom.

During the second cohort of the course, online lectures were pre-recorded, and class time was wholly reserved for discussion and questions, including guest speakers from practice (i.e., renewable energy development companies, state/local government, or NGOs). This course design maximized the synchronous time during meetings for interactions and discussion. The remote structure enabled visitors from diverse locations to easily join the course. The students were not required to complete the Op-Ed, but were still required to complete the interview with a professional in the field and a group research paper on either the web of policies in a single state or a 50-state canvas of a particular policy (e.g., legislation related to community solar, income taxes for renewables).

3.2. Data Collection

Data were collected from alumni of both the first and second cohorts of the course (Spring 2019: in-person and pre-COVID; Fall 2020: all remote instruction). It was important for the study to evaluate the impact of the course immediately and after students became practitioners in the field. This enabled more robust data analysis and insight to assess the effectiveness of the course design. First, for alumni of the course, a cross-sectional study of semi-structured interviews was conducted. Semi-structured interviews gave the participants freedom to provide a fuller picture of how the course impacted their ability to be a climate leader in their work. These interviews focused on the impact of the course pedagogy and design elements since taking the course. This research design allowed us to gain insights into which aspects of the course influenced students after they’d had time for greater reflection and potentially were applying insights in other courses, co-curricular activities, and/or work. Second, for students in the second cohort, a survey consisting of two open-ended, qualitative questions was administered during the course evaluation process at the end of the semester (mimicking a subset of the interview-based questions from the first cohort interviews). Course evaluations were used in place of interviews to create validity of the data gathered, so that the instructors would not alter their instruction or impact student grades. Course evaluations are also a standard practice of the feedback structure of courses at the University of Michigan that fill the role of feedback about how a course and instructor performed, removing additional work from the student’s workload during a difficult remote instruction semester during the early pandemic. This research design allowed us to focus on the subset of questions that were most informative from course alumni and capture students’ immediate reactions to the class. Together, the interviews and surveys allowed us to gain insight to students’ experiences related to how the course had developed relevant skills for climate leadership.

Given that enrollment for the course has been small, quantitative measures were not included since non-response among the small population size could easily skew quantitative analysis [19]. Furthermore, although quantitative methods allow for identifying significance across the broader population of interest, they rarely allow researchers to identify nuances in the experiences of individual students. Given our interest in understanding how the applied pedagogies impacted student readiness for leadership in a field of wicked problems, the qualitative approach developed a robust picture of student and alumni lived experiences. We also triangulated between the author’s different expertise. Jonathan Newman’s (the first author) and Dr. Sarah Mills’s (the second author) familiarity with the course, as a former student and current instructor, respectively, allowed us to identify not only themes that emerged from our research participants, but also those that did not emerge but were present in the course. Sara Soderstrom’s (the third author) expertise in qualitative research methods and lack of role in the class helped us check potential biases in data collection and analyses.

3.2.1. Course Alumni Interviews

For the course alumni, the 30 min semi-structured interviews were conducted by Jonathan Newman (first author), with a focus across three major topic areas: background information, effectiveness of the class pedagogy, and climate education more broadly. We used semi-structured interviews so that we could ensure we asked each participant about the same major topic areas, but had flexibility to adapt the interview to each student’s specific experiences and stories shared. Interviewees were promised anonymity to the other researchers—including Dr. Sarah Mills (second author)—and were reminded of this when specifically probed for any critical feedback. Furthermore, Mr. Newman’s experience as a former student on this course aided in directing the interview to distinguish between particular course elements.

Interview data collection consisted of first developing an understanding of each student’s background, including their current professional roles and/or leadership experiences since they took the course. Then, the bulk of the interview session was focused on the effectiveness of the class pedagogy and design elements. The participant was prompted to discuss their recall of generalized components of the course (e.g., assignments, lectures, course content, etc.), and then given space to broadly identify the extent to which components of the course were effective, without prompts or reminders. This allowed the study to identify what components of the course remained most salient after one and a half years. Following the open-ended discussion, the interviewer provided specific prompts to the participant to address key design elements of the course that were implemented. These included: a discussion of renewable energy absent direct links to climate change; the format of the course lecture period; the make-up of student backgrounds in the course, particularly with respect to their degree programs and previous work experience; and the structure and focus of the final group project. The final section of the interview focused on the participant’s perception of climate-related education beyond the course discussed in this study. Participants were asked what other courses perhaps better prepared them for their careers fighting climate change, and where their graduate educations were deficient. This helped highlight any shared characteristics of impactful courses.

3.2.2. Current Student Surveys

In addition to the semi-structured interview with the first cohort alumni, this research was conducted concurrently with the second cohort. Using the existing end-of-term course evaluation process to survey the second cohort helped ensure anonymity and provide students with additional space to be critical since course evaluations were not given to instructors (i.e., second author Dr. Mills) until after grades are submitted. However, it also posed significant limitations because we could only add two open-ended questions onto the survey.

Only the two open-ended questions, and the qualitative data associated with them, were used to inform this study. Students were asked to answer questions about the course and questions about climate leadership that were designed to parallel questions in the semi-structured interviews related to student perceptions of the course. Students were asked what they were enjoying from the course and what worked well, or what they wished the course had included. Survey responses, while less substantive and in-depth, were used to supplement the interview findings.

3.3. Data Analysis

Upon completion of the interview and survey data collection, we cleaned interview transcripts for readability, being careful not to alter content or meaning. Interview transcripts and qualitative survey responses were then uploaded to NVivo, which is qualitative data analysis software. NVivo was selected for qualitative analysis given its rapid coding capabilities, enabling efficient sorting through transcripts. While information in the student responses was coded according to the element of course design/delivery probed for in the semi-structured interview, any new themes that emerged were assigned a new code. Student responses were also coded for the relevant experience level of the student and their graduation status. NVivo was used to analyze the frequency of specific responses and commonality of topics raised across all interviews and surveys. Specific quotes that capture common themes and sentiments have been used in the Results section to highlight the findings. Additionally, the responses of each cohort were compared with identify potential differences due to remote learning and the additional time to reflect on the course as an alumnus. Interviewee responses are referred to as Students 1–17, while survey respondents are referred to as Students 18–26.

4. Results

Broadly, the findings of this survey support that experiential pedagogies centered on real-world examples lead to effective preparation for climate leadership. Our research question sought to discover which components of the course design were the most effective in developing climate leadership skills. First, the student interviews and surveys consistently show that this course distinguished itself from other courses by integrating student desire for practical experience (experiential/hands-on survey) within the course. Both cohorts reported that this course provides those practical experiences through both the course content and assignments. The first cohort noted that the diverse interests and experiences of those who enrolled in the class provided a rich learning experience. This was not mentioned by those in the second cohort who took the course remotely. This finding suggests that in-person learning is more effective at developing climate leaders than remote learning. A comment from Student 26, for example, suggests that alumni putting a greater value to student disciplinary diversity might not be so much a function of time, but one of the online experience being different from that in a physical classroom. Furthermore, our research revealed an unexpected finding: many students attributed the instructor’s experience outside of academia as an important feature to prepare them for climate leadership roles outside academia.

Table 1. The number of times a topic was discussed during the semi-structured interviews.

	Number of Total References across Interviews
Course content
Link to practice/practitioners	24
Local scope	19
Pedagogy
Assignments	46
Class time	10
Speakers	4
Readings	2
Diversity of Student Experience	22
Instructor Experience	10

shows the frequency of references for the most important codes.

4.1. Course Content

A direct result of the course’s subject matter was that the course provided an opportunity for students to focus on local policies and politics often overlooked for broader contexts in higher education. In 11 out of the 17 interviews, students directly discussed the benefits of the course’s localized content in preparing them to lead on climate issues. As Student 15, a recent 2020 School for Environment and Sustainability graduate, described:

Getting into some of the really nitty gritty local policy stuff… around renewable energy that can be sometimes overlooked because it’s less sexy, for lack of a better word, I think… was helpful.

Topics covered in the course, such as tax and siting policy and farmland preservation, were often new topics for students. However, the first cohort identified these topics as particularly important to renewable energy deployment. On tax policy in the classroom, Student 1, a current graduate student going into climate finance, stated:

That was just an area where I felt like okay this is like getting down to the minutia like something that maybe you wouldn’t ever come across in any other class, but actually can have a big impact on renewable energy.

For the second cohort students learning in a remote setting, the same impact of the course’s localized content was felt. Five out of nine students mentioned the benefits of the course content in their surveys. Beyond the course at the center of this research, students were asked what classes were most beneficial in preparing them to be climate leaders. Of the 11 students who directly responded to this interview questions, 9 responses focused on the skillsets needed in practice, learned in other courses from economics to finance to negotiations.

This suggests that students are seeking out content that impacts their everyday lives and helps them tangibly drive forward their careers, an opportunity found in this course as a result of the local content.

4.2. Course Assignments

The students in the first cohort overwhelmingly noted the value of the semester-long project and its accompanying assignments. The semester-long project required groups of students to analyze the full landscape of renewable-energy-related policies in a particular state. The project was broken down into multiple components throughout the semester that were pieced together to form the final paper. In addition, students were required to write an Op-Ed on a specific policy topic in their state and to interview a professional working within their state on renewable energy. Fifteen of the seventeen students interviewed saw the final project as a productive and beneficial aspect of their education for various reasons including the scope, content, and piecemeal structure. Of the two students who did not find the project valuable, one found the breakdown of components to be confusing, while another did not enjoy working with their group.

The value of focusing on existing policies (synergy and trade-offs between them) was emphasized by seven interviewees. Students noted that the project gave them space to focus on content that felt “more applied”, “to apply the various concepts that we learned in class”, and to get “the full picture” (Students 1, 10, and 12).

Student 22 from the Fall 2020 course stated:

I loved the opportunity to work on a state paper, it’s been so interesting to see how all the policies impact renewable energy deployment statewide and I feel like I have the skills to do this work professionally now.

In addition to the main project, students found that the interview (7 of 17) and Op-Ed (8 of 17) presented opportunities to gain real-world experience that directly related to the work they currently do or expect to do after graduation. Student 12, who now works on federal legislation, highlighted that the interview:

… was really useful. And that’s something that now I’m in a position where, actually, a lot of what we do well basically what we do is the two things that we did the class which is reading and research on your own and then going out and talking to stakeholders about it.

Student 15 noted the benefit of the interview, simply:

An opportunity to connect with someone and get a little bit of a sense of what people are doing with this stuff professionally.

In parallel, the Op-Ed was seen to provide an opportunity to learn a new writing style that is commonly used in professional settings to communicate and advocate. Many non-policy students, in particular, conveyed that they had not had similar experiences previously. As a corollary to their comments, three students noted that they struggled with the Op-Ed style writing or were unable to see how it benefited their education. They suggested that it would be important for the class to spend more time teaching the skill set required for the assignment and highlighting how the Op-Ed style of writing ties to their careers.

Overall, students from both cohorts consistently highlighted the practical effectiveness of multiple course elements in preparing them to be climate leaders, including the class content, student body make-up, instructor experience, and course assignments. Student 20 from the Fall class summed up the sentiment of many students, stating:

This is a practical course in a way that most courses are not. You learn a lot of details about how things work and happen.

4.3. Students’ Disciplinary Diversity and Experience

The course is a graduate-level course open to students from all colleges on campus. Designed to interest students from many disciplinary backgrounds, the student population consisted of business students (MBA), students from the School for Environment and Sustainability (MS), policy students (MPP), doctoral candidates in engineering (PhD), and others. Alumni of the first cohort highlighted the benefits of the broad cohort of students and the opportunity to engage in discourse levering their own experiences in the professional world and those experiences of their fellow students.

Eleven of the seventeen students interviewed directly identified the benefits of learning from their classmates’ professional and academic experiences. Many students highlighted the wide range of not only academic programs, but past work experiences, which allowed students to bring real-world examples into the classroom even beyond the capacity of the instructor. When asked about the diversity of students in class, Student 11, who now works at the intersection of natural resource stewardship and economic rural economic development, added:

… we had engineers, people from the Ford [Public Policy] School, SEAS [School for Environment and Sustainability] students, some Erb [MBA/MS Dual Degree program] people… I thought that enriched the discussion.

Student 2, who interned in natural gas the summer after taking the course, also noted that the discussion led to healthy debates in class:

They didn’t always agree with each other, but they were often really well informed based on personal experience or other outside research.

A subset of students, 8 of 17, also highlighted the challenges a diverse set of student experiences can create. Eight students interviewed noted that teaching and conducting a discussion across a classroom with some students new to energy and others with extensive backgrounds can be challenging. At times, students noted that the conversation was dominated by a small group of students, while others noted they simply stopped paying attention when the discussion became too detailed and complex. Of those highlighting this challenge, half entered the classroom with previous relevant experience, and half considered themselves new to the topic.

It is interesting to note that, while no question in the current student surveys directly asked about student body make-up, no students noted the benefits of a disciplinarily diverse classroom, although by all accounts the roster was similarly diverse. Student 26, however, may have identified the reason, by specifically calling out that “discussion-based courses are more effective in the same room”, presumably contrasting the Zoom-based semester to previous semesters which were “in the same room”.

5. Limitations

This study’s primary limitation is the sample size of students, due to the course only having been taught twice. As a result, the pool of students to interview and survey was limited. Even if all participated, the total sample would only be 48 (we captured data from 54% of the total maximum sample. Secondly, while studying the course as it was being taught to the second cohort provided additional data, the researchers had limited access to students taking the course concurrently with the research period, given the potential conflicts of interest with the ongoing course. As such, research was conducted at arms-length through anonymous surveys, where we were limited to only two open-ended questions, providing no opportunity for further probing. Furthermore, the response rate to the course evaluation was particularly low; just 11 students (44%) completed the survey, with only 9 answering any open-ended questions. As a result, the data to analyze from all 9 surveys were roughly equivalent to half of the dataset produced from 1 of the 17 interviews.

This limitation could be overcome with time, both by more students completing surveys at the end of future iterations of the course and with interviews performed later after alumni’s graduation. Replicating this research over time has the added benefit of also allowing alumni to gain more professional experience. Of the interviewees, most had been in the workforce for no more than 18 months when we interviewed them. Thus, from this research, we can examine climate leadership from the student’s perceived perspective, but we cannot draw conclusions based on who ultimately lands in leadership positions in the professional world. By continuing this work with both surveys and interviews, we could address potential memory recall bias within alumni interviews through the surveys, and address a lack of actual leadership experience as students through the alumni interviews.

Additionally, the course was an elective graduate-level course. Thus, the students in the course entered with interest in and, often, experience with climate change or clean energy. The findings of this study should not be considered applicable to students who are preconditioned to have no interest in climate action.

Finally, while this study initially set out to understand how perspectives of the course change over time, the differences in course delivery—as a result of COVID-19—make comparing the student experiences challenging.

6. Discussion

Consistent with prior research [12], this study found that a focus on content with personal relevance and engaging teaching methods enhanced the student experience, including student knowledge and enjoyment, and supported the development of leadership capabilities for students in the course. Students consistently highlighted the practicality of the course across four major topics: the class content and scope, the student disciplinary diversity, the instructor’s experience outside the classroom, and the structure and topic of class assignments. While many studies have highlighted the need to make education personal and engaging to overcome this challenge, few studies have focused on exploring the importance of the class content on directly achieving these ends [9]. This study strengthens prior findings that bringing real case studies into the classroom increases educational applicability to future careers and better prepares students to be future leaders, by providing more specifics of which the course contributed most to their perception of the practical experience.

With an overemphasis on international and national climate policies, such as carbon taxes, climate change is often seen to be distant, remote, and removed from everyday life. As such, research has found it to be a challenging topic to teach and make relevant for students [8]. As highlighted, there is a significant gap in academic research on state and local climate policy, including the complex web of policies and regulations from taxes to zoning. Subsequently, higher education has a dearth of courses and educators focused on local and state climate policy, despite the fact that many of the decisions impacting climate action are made at the local level and that many leaders on climate work on state and local initiatives. This study focused on a class that sought to do so intrinsically by focusing on an underserved topic—local climate policy. To best prepare students to be climate leaders and influential in the transition to a carbon-free economy, the course in this study sought to fill that gap by focusing strictly on state and local policies impacting renewable energy (a subset of climate policy).

This course’s focus on localized issues directly and indirectly unlocked several methods for ensuring that the content was personal and engaging, and in turn, allowed the course to effectively prepare students to be climate leaders. First, the content directly ensured that students could relate to and see the relevance of their education. Students emphasized the unique practicality of the course content, as they learned how things actually worked in an applied manner, preparing them to lead in a way that other courses did not.

Indirectly, the course content allowed the practical examples to enter the classroom through the students, the instructor, and the assignments. Unlike courses focused on climate fundamentals or international policy, this course benefited from students with direct experience on these topics gained from previous professional work. In line with prior research, students’ ability to discuss their personal experiences with local energy policy, whether in a previous job or from their personal background, increased the personal relevance of the course [12]. Additionally, students in the course pursuing a variety of graduate programs brought interdisciplinary perspectives to classroom discussions. Furthermore, the professional experience of the instructor was tied into course content, demonstrating leadership to students beyond the classroom. Many students highlighted the instructor’s ongoing work with stakeholders in the field as an important feature of the classroom.

Access to this knowledge from students and the instructor enhanced the course’s depth and breadth. This ensured that the practical examples naturally entered the classroom and created a hands-on atmosphere, highlighted in research as an essential ingredient to building successful leaders [14,15]. The course also created hands-on experiences through the assigned final paper and subcomponents. By compelling students to think through the web of policies in an individual state, the students were able to develop a deeper understanding of the stakeholders, influencers, and policies that were most important for the energy transition. It also presented a unique opportunity for students to speak directly with the individuals advocating or enacting these policies, once again creating personal relevance and connections and engaging classroom content.

Drawing direct connections between education and future leadership is well known to be important to enhance student learning experiences. This study further demonstrates that a focus on local content allows greater access to personal experiences and stakeholders, creating a context ripe for preparing students who have the skills to be leaders.

7. Implications

Our research asserts that being prepared to lead on climate change means not just knowing why the climate is changing, but having an in-depth understanding of the nuanced and effective skillsets to address it in the types of leadership roles that graduates are likely to take. Although expanding clean energy is paramount to addressing climate change, most courses discuss the sector conceptually, rather than in detail. However, those who can discuss the nuances will be better positioned to lead. Getting into the “nitty-gritties”, in Student 15’s words, should apply not just to energy policy, but to other aspects of climate action as well.

Our research also suggests that a shift in teaching, from knowledge-based to action-based assignments, is a key way to engage students in learning this content. While many professional degree programs include capstone projects that aim to do this, the lack of experiential projects within courses creates a disconnect for students about how the course material might be applied in practice. Student 1, recounting that the practitioner they interviewed was interested in the final report, noted, “This work could actually have an impact...It’s not just busy work. It’s actually good content”. Thus, our research suggests that academic programs may better train students to be effective climate leaders by bringing the professional world into each class, in each assignment, so every topic is clearly tied to its leadership impact and role.

Creating climate change leaders, however, appears also to transcend thinking about the content and pedagogy of their courses, and also in the make-up of the students and instructors in those classrooms. Even within a multi-disciplinary school such as the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, students value taking courses with others from outside of their program, who bring different assumptions and professional experiences to the classroom. Additionally, instructors with non-academic professional experience and continued engagement with the community and professional world provide students with a greater sense that course content will be applicable to their future careers. Even if missing lead instructors with this practical experience, more courses could build on this expertise by being co-created with practitioners (perhaps alumni), or through regular engagement with speakers from practice.

8. Conclusions

Findings from this study identify the importance of making the classroom an easier gateway to future leadership positions by making topics local, relevant, and engaging. In line with previous research, students’ perceptions of the course were enhanced by centering the content and structure on applied learning. These findings can inform the University of Michigan’s and higher education institutions’ approaches to preparing climate leaders, including clean energy leaders. This research finds that courses based on local content and professors with professional experience can help prepare students to be leaders in their communities on climate change.

Consistent with prior studies, we found that making the classroom content personally relevant and engaging is a key ingredient to academic and professional preparedness. This study specifically found that localized content can unlock these benefits and enhance the ability to bring practical examples into the classroom. In particular, students in this study identified the class scope, student disciplinary diversity, instructor experience, and course assignments as effective components of preparing them to be climate leaders.

As the need for action on climate change becomes more urgent, higher education has an increasing need to prepare the next generation of leaders. Research on pedagogies in this field is relatively limited. This study is based on an elective course with self-selecting students. Future research should ask questions around how to train climate change leaders in classrooms with mixed student interests and preconceived notions on climate change. Additionally, as noted in this study, students entered the class with varying levels of background knowledge creating challenges at times in the classroom. Further research should focus on how to engage and teach these diverse groups of students in a single classroom. Finally, additional research is needed to expand the solution set of methods to bring the local community into the classroom. Universities have the opportunity to collaborate with their local communities to help train leaders to fight climate change. This research found successful tactics to bring real world content into the classroom, but additional methods to further that effort are needed.