By Jennifer K. Morita

January 29, 2025

Sac State faculty from the arts, sciences and social sciences are teaming up to promote sustainable energy technologies in low-income neighborhoods and foster local high school students’ interest in STEM careers.

The project – a partnership between Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Sarvenaz Sobhan, Assistant Professor of Art Rey Jeong and Assistant Professor of Sociology Christopher Rogers – is funded by a one-year, $25,000 grant.

The grant is from the CSU’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network (STEM-NET), which funds collaborations between faculty from multiple academic disciplines.

“We … want to reach the kids, the new generation, and show them what careers in STEM look like.” -- Sarvenaz Sobhan, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering

The Sac State project takes a unique approach, drawing on faculty from art, social science and hard science to educate the community about alternative energy options such as community solar programs.

“One of the downsides of renewable energy technology such as solar panels is the cost, and people are often hesitant to invest in renewable energy solutions,” said Sobhan, the grant’s principal investigator. “For low-income households, it would be even worse.”

To assess the community’s energy needs, last summer Rogers surveyed families at Cordova High School in Rancho Cordova about their utility costs as well as what sustainable energy technologies they have and the reasons they don’t use others. He also asked parents and students what they know about available renewable energy options.

“We’re trying to gauge attitudes around renewable energy, in particular how disadvantaged neighborhoods understand renewable energy and their choices to engage in normal energy consumption compared to solar,” Rogers said.

“I will be doing data analysis to understand the ways in which people perceive renewable energy and a process in which we can demystify that.”

Throughout the year, the team will conduct sustainable energy workshops with students and their families to share information about benefits and costs as well as different ways communities can utilize renewable energy.

A workshop Sobhan and Jeong led in December for a Cordova High robotics class showcased the interdisciplinary nature of the project. The visit began with an art project led by Jeong, whose specialty is socially engaged art.

“Socially engaged art is collaborative, often participatory, and involves people as the medium or material of the work,” Jeong explained to students. “The artist’s aim is to help his community work towards a common goal, raise awareness and encourage conversation on issues. But it’s not just an artist helping some community.

“It’s about artists belonging to the community.”

Jeong gave students stickers and pens to decorate index cards expressing what they know about sustainable energy, which she later hung on a bulletin board. Students will again be assessed later in the project to find out what they have learned.

She and Sobhan said there is often a gap between what resources and technologies are available and what the public understands and utilizes.

“There’s this cool technology in sustainable energy, but it’s not very efficiently delivered to the people,” Jeong said. “Even for me, I had no idea until I participated in this cool project how easy it is to set up sustainable energy technologies so that my power consumption is more efficient and cheaper.”

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After the art project, Sobhan talked about renewable energy technologies such as photovoltaic and solar thermal panels, which can be installed on household rooftops or in backyards. Although these products are more readily available to property owners, Sobhan told students that families who rent can participate in California’s new community solar projects.

“Driving along I-5 you may see these large lands with panels that are called solar farms. Your household can purchase a small share of that solar farm and the amount of energy that your share produces during the day will be compared with the amount you used,” she said. “If your share produces more energy, you will get money. If it’s less, you will pay the difference.

“That’s how it saves you a lot of energy in a month as well as on your utility bill,” Sobhan said. “And moreover, it’s not always about the money. It’s also saving energy for our future generations, right?”

Sobhan and Jeong urged students to have their families complete the surveys, offering Sac State swag as raffle prizes.

Xochitl Perez, a Cordova High sophomore, was among those interested in learning more about STEM careers and sustainable energy.

“It’s not something we can just put on the next generation to do,” she said. “I want to learn everything I can to tell my parents what we can do to help our area. Gas prices are just going to keep going up, and so are electricity bills, and soon our bills will be higher than our rent.”

Sobhan’s engineering students will spend the next few months developing a decision-making tool to help Cordova families and students figure out which renewable energy solutions would work for their households or communities.

“We’ll be developing simulation software to show if there are a certain number of solar panels in a neighborhood with this type of typical weather, this is the power output we would expect,” said Sean Magee, a Sac State engineering senior who is concurrently taking classes for his master’s program.

“It’s very different than research my peers in engineering are doing. They don’t necessarily have the community outreach aspect, but I think that’s pretty interesting. It’s a lot more personal than some of the other research,” he said.

Sobhan hopes to hold workshops at other local schools and, at the end of the year, invite families to Sac State to use the simulation program and participate in STEM and socially engaged art activities.

“We … want to reach the kids, the new generation, and show them what careers in STEM look like.”