The interdisciplinary study of energy production and use presents important opportunities to combine technical and liberal arts education in the undergraduate curriculum. In particular, the recognition of energy conservation as a policy option and the rise of an associated engineering subfield has raised a new range of locally relevant questions for scientific, engineering, political, and humanistic study and has also generated technical means for investigating them inexpensively in real-world situations. The faculty responsible for energy studies at the college is acquiring the capability for monitoring thermal and electric energy flows in typical commercial and institutional rooms to support (1) undergraduate study of basic physics and engineering related to energy production and use, (2) student experience with design of field investigations and deployment of instrumentation, and (3) energy-related field projects for upper-level undergraduates.
