Business of Energy Curriculum

A curriculum is dependent on the teacher's ability to give context to the knowledge presented during class as well as a wealth of examples, whenever possible hands-on demonstrations or laboratories. When Professor Makanda and Dr. Mechtenberg have taught this course, they created a powerful interconnection to real life situations such that innovation and entrepernialship natural flow from class discourse and into the garage for building and onto the streets for selling these devices. The information presented here does not in any way give a true representation of what goes on in class. However, the accomplishments of the curriculum illustrate its power. In the upcoming months, we hope to have videos for future technical and polytechnic institutes can create themselves. We do believe and hope that even with the information presented here that other instructors can co-create solutions throughout Africa. Please feel free to contact us if you have more questions.

The beginning of our curriculum starts with a six tier-curriculum around the Physics of Energy. The curriculum ends with the Business of Energy aspect where we hope to spur innovation into entrepernurial endeavors. For example, the merry-go-round generator is a great innovation for (1) off-grid schools to generate electricity for the children and (2) for technical schools to create new economic opportunities. In this brief document, we present a curriculum outline with some supporting documents as well as the physics and business of energy supporting documents. These documents can be viewed with Adobe Flash or can be downloaded and read with Adobe Reader. Please feel free to contact us if you have more questions.

Business - Part 1: Calculating and Understanding Business Principles