Feminist Anti-Colonial STEAM
I serve as faculty lead and creative director of the Solar Collaborative at Penn State. The Solar Collaborative is a large team of staff and students addressing the supply chain and policy needs to deploy large solar photovoltaic farms at grid-scale (e.g. 25-500 acre farms), and moderately sized community-led solar farms (generally <10 acres). I center my research on stakeholder engagement and community-led planning, then intergenerational practices that sustain our land/water/food systems, and then on the global commodity technologies of photovoltaics and power management systems. I seek to affect social discourse and jointly intentional group planning using solar energy conversion systems as a common foil for inquiry and repeated workshops or social events. My research framework is solar ecology https://solarecology.psu.edu. My work leading the Collaborative has been marked with material outcomes now integral to the physical infrastructure of Penn State, as well as scholarly contributions that lead the field of solar research internationally.
On Sept. 6, 2019, I attended the groundbreaking of Penn State’s 70 MW solar photovoltaic farm, joined by four female students of our Solar Collaborative. The celebratory event included comments from Governor Tom Wolf and President Eric Barron. The 500 acre solar farm will be the largest in PA to date, contributing at least $14m energy savings for the University, along with years of educational and research opportunities. This physically significant project is a direct outcome of my research practices, solar teaching, and collective action services with Penn State and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
DMC calls out Professor Frey
Our Big Fab Solar Collab is the BEST
Room of Zoom Zoom
Solar Ecology Matters to the Weeds
Solar Ecology matters to the weeds – opportunity + animacy in the wasteland. Weeds trace an ecosystem shifting: values, measures, agency growing in the burn zone