he Renewable Energy undergraduate major is a broad-based program addressing the social, economic, and technical issues that graduates will encounter in the emerging field of renewable energy.

Students will be able to choose between two tracks – a technology track or an economics/public policy track. Graduates will be prepared for jobs in the fields of biofuels, wind and solar energy, or regulatory and governmental agencies.

All majors at Illinois State are built upon a General Education foundation that equips students with communication and critical thinking skills in the context of a global perspective. The Technology Department provides a basic technical core of five courses and include the topics of electronics, electrical circuits and machines, SCADA (information gathering systems), and project management. Core courses in other departments, such as Energy and Society (Physics) and Weather (Geography), are also included in the core requirements.

The program is designed to prepare students to enter an emerging field with employment opportunities across a variety of industries including biofuels, solar, wind, regulatory and government agencies. Graduates are expected to be conversant in diverse disciplines, including technical, managerial, political, and economic issues important to renewable energy.

Upon completion of this program the student will be able to:

describe the physical laws and resources that constrain our energy systems
define the operation of RE systems in terms of basic electrical and physical principles
apply basic business, economic, and technical management principles in a variety of technical and non-technical contexts
explain and defend their positions on energy/political/social issues
write and debug programs for control networks (technical track)
analyze wind data using professional software (technical track)
optimize business decision-making using maximization techniques (economics/public policy track)
develop a business case for a commercial RE project (economics/public policy track)
to achieve the multi-disciplinary objectives outlined above, students will take a diverse set of courses. These include courses in such areas as physical sciences, mathematics, technology, economics, safety and management. Students are encouraged to complete two internships in their field of study. A required capstone course is designed to help students synthesize their learning experiences in these diverse subjects.

For undergraduate advisement plese see Cathy McKay, Phone: (309) 438-2665, Location: Williams Hall 310, Email: