Thank you for your interest in applying to CE’s Pacific Northwest Clean Energy Fellows Program. We are thrilled to be able to offer this opportunity to teachers across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana located in customer-owned utility territory. See this map to determine eligibility. Note: teachers located in Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, Avista, and Puget Sound Energy are not eligible as these are not consumer-owned utilities.

This application will take approximately 30-60 minutes to complete. We strongly recommend you have reviewed the application pdf and pre-written answers to the long-form questions in order to more easily complete the application.

Note: Applications must be submitted by June 12 at 7pm.

Clean Energy Fellows

 
Working as part of a regional Clean Energy Talent Development Hub, a project facilitated in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and National Renewable Energy Lab, this cohort will operate as national K-12 leaders in building the water power talent ecosystem. These Clean Energy Fellows will focus on aggregating and updating curriculum, increasing avenues for engagement in activities, and collaborating with industry voices to jumpstart access to this particular career sector.  An emphasis on blending history, future grid challenges, and the inclusion of voices from all impacted populations in the region will shape this project.

Regional Collaboration and Partnership Development 

Water Power Clean Energy Fellows will meet consistently with the Fellows cohort to provide peer-to-peer feedback, build content knowledge, and identify equitable pedagogy to guide the development of their new programming. Beginning with the August Leadership Institute, this collaborative approach continues throughout the rest of the cohort’s first year and beyond, through follow-up consultation and participation in a Fellows Leadership Network. Throughout this process, CE will recruit regional industry and community partners to provide expertise on specific topic areas and support Fellows in their delivery. This partnership development will also take place at a community level, with supports in place to build relationships between Fellows and their local utilities, energy-adjacent industries, educational networks, and other community partners. 

Throughout this process, CE will recruit regional industry and community partners to provide expertise on specific topic areas and support Fellows in their delivery. This partnership development will also take place at a community level, with supports in place to build relationships between Fellows and their local utilities, energy-adjacent industries, educational networks, and other community partners.

Curriculum Development and Thought Leadership

Water Power Fellows will develop a toolkit of curricular resources for their grade level.  This NGSS strand aligned toolkit will meet the needs of their geography, and be replicable within other communities.  Working together to identify and share materials within the cohort, Fellows will identify gaps in the coherent learning progressions over the K-12 storyline and collaborate with CE and industry partners to identify and develop tools to fill those gaps.  With a focus on inquiry through engineering design models and STEM, CE will work with Fellows to create student-centered phenomenon-based solutions to promote sensemaking in the classroom.  

 For an example of curriculum from our Renewable Gas cohort, see this link. 

 Please review CE's Statement on Justice before continuing. 

Clean Energy Fellows:  Water Power Cohort

Curriculum Development Question on Application - these questions are to gauge interest and to provide you with space to share your ideas with the CE team.  We will not be using a point system to evaluate your application.  

CE would love to get a sense of what your individual strategies would be for collaborating on a team of teacher leaders to accomplish the goals of this cohort. Part of our approach to learning and teaching about emerging technologies is assemblance of an implementation toolkit, or a resource bank for educators to use to explore clean transportation/marine renewables in their classrooms. 

Were you to work within this small professional learning community, how would you approach developing a platform of tools that could be used by teachers through the region, and more broadly, to engage students with place-based, career-connected learning that deals with clean transportation/water power topics? Please describe in the space the pieces of this project you would find most important in building these resources. Consider including the following:

• Collaboration strategies and techniques to work collaboratively
• How you could ensure career connections were made throughout
• Best practices in building equity and justice throughout the curriculum
• Ideas for allowing the curriculum to be place-based and aligned with local student needs depending on a teacher’s location
• Pieces you would look for and find valuable as a teacher seeking ready-to-use materials in the classroom

Personal Statement (up to 500 words)

We'd like to learn more about you, your career journey, and your motivations for becoming a Fellow. Please include:

• Individual aspirations and professional development goals
• How your participation in this program is beneficial to your broader educational community and students
• Why you are interested in developing curriculum around water power topics?
• Demonstration of past leadership in district/career, past curriculum development efforts

Personal Equity Statement (up to 250 words)

Fellows will be asked to create curriculum that reflects best practices in culturally-sustaining education, especially for those students with minoritized identities (girls, Black, Indigenous, LatinX, LGBTQ+, rural youth, etc.).

The curriculum will be an example to other educators as to how to build equity in the classroom by meaningfully elevating student expertise and assets, especially those that are derived from their identities.

To that end, please craft a personal equity statement that:

Focuses on you:

• your equity journey
• your learnings
• what you are working on right now to continue on the journey
• your understanding of your identities within a context of power
• Addresses how you understand your role as an educator in either reinforcing or addressing systems of power in the classroom
• Demonstrates steps you have take in your personal and professional life to address issues of equity for your students and community

Note: CE is not in a position to assess your credibility when it comes to equity-rather we seek an authentic expression of where you are in your journey and how you see this playing out in your classroom context.

This statement may be anonymously shared with other Fellows as part of the cohort process to facilitate discussion and learning across Fellows. CE staff will also share their equity statements.

Timing for Full Cohort Check Ins 

Estimated 90 minutes, with about 3 total during cohort year

Timing for Long Sessions

Estimated 3 hours long, with about 3-4 sessions during cohort year

Long Sessions Content

Please rank the following in terms of what you would like to do during the long sessions.

CE Staff support

How could CE staff best support you as you develop and implement your plan? 

THANK YOU FOR APPLYING!!!

We will notify you of receipt of your application. We will notify you of our decision on your application by June 21.

In case you are selected, please save Aug 8-9, 15-16 for the four-day Leadership Institute to kick off the Fellows cohort year.