On February 23rd, 10 Students from Seton La Salle High School and a pair of their teachers visited a wind farm located in the heart of Patton Township. They stepped from the bus into driving rain and a wind that blew against them stinging their faces. They met, huddled together among the cold and rain, with Michael Hoffman the Highland Assistant Site Manager for Everpower Wind Holdings.
The students were able to see firsthand the real physical reality of renewable wind energy. Towering 300 meters overhead the wind turbine stood cutting through the morning fog, rotating and continuously generating power. We were’t allowed to get too close, as the ice warnings from recent snow and rain made it unsafe. The low hum of the the power substation was not audible over the driving wind which made the location perfect for harnessing of wind power.
While it was unfortunate that weather conditions, specifically the ice danger warning, prevented the students from being able to get right next to the turbine, the sense of scale was not lost on them. Many of the students were surprised by just how large the wind turbine actually stood. After a few minutes in the cold, everyone retreated back onto the bus for a brief explanation of the day to day operation of a wind farm from our guide for the outing.
We could see the substation from our bus windows. It was built to collect all the energy generated by the turbines and received through the Medium Voltage cables, transformers and a high voltage system to release the electricity into the grid. Every megawatt of installed energy capacity create $1 Million in economic development according to the AWWI. The short stop was well worth the time as we prepared for more time with Wind Power experts at St. Francis Institute for Energy and the Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh. The students are working hard on their children’s book about Wind Energy due for release soon!
On November 17, The Students of Mrs. Steiniger’s Biology class from Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic arrived at the brand new Pittsburgh office of Bohler Engineering for a STEM Career tour all about sustainability. Bohler has been consulting on land development projects for a few decades now, and while not always demanded, they do consistently attempt to add as many green touches as possible to their projects.
Mr. Takacs was also able to share knowledge of other sustainable projects of note and interest within the city, including a recently constructed building that can be opened up and cooled passively with natural air currents.
ovember 17th Mrs. Steiniger’s Biology class from Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School toured the Center For Sustainable Landscapes at Phipps Conservatory, as part of Sustainability Stem Career Tour. The Center For Sustainable Landscapes is one of the greenest buildings in the world, meeting the requirements of the Living Building Challenge the strictest classification for a green building project.
My name is Tim Roos, I’m a sophomore at North Catholic, and I recently went on the sustainability field trip at North. On the field trip, we stopped at the Oasis Farm Fishery in Homewood. The main topic of the tour as sustainability, and how Oasis has incorporated it into its function. Homewood is what is considered a food desert, which is an area that has no access to fresh fruits or vegetables.
ed sustainable agricultural practices such as aquaponics, but I know so much more now that I went to Oasis Farm Fishery. For instance, I didn’t know that you want the roots of plants to be white, which shows that there is a good amount of oxygen present. Oasis Fishery is using the most with what they’ve got. If the temperature becomes too hot in the greenhouse, they cover the sides with a metal-mesh cover, that reflects 50% of the sunlight and warmth, so the vegetables don’t fry to death. Every so often insects enter the greenhouse and eat away at the crops. Once Casey notices the insect problem, he will introduce a predator to the greenhouse. For example, if aphids are the problem, he would introduce ladybugs.
Fifteen students from Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic got the incredible opportunity to travel around the Pittsburgh area and learn first-hand about sustainability and engineering. We heard from many great minds in the fields of engineering and conservation. I was one of these students, and the whole day was eye-opening and I learned an incredible amount of important information. One of our stops involved going to Carnegie Mellon University in North Oakland to learn about what CMU does to be sustainable. Another purpose was to be educated on their engineering major, and how that class involves a lot of environmental engineering and learning about sustainable engineering.
First, we heard from Gwen Dipietro, the instructor of Introduction to Sustainable Engineering at Carnegie Mellon. She talked about her course and what the experiments her students due to preserve biodiversity and remain sustainability. She also talked about her research she completed in Pittsburgh. She researched the tugboats that move coal through the locks and dams of Pittsburgh. Her goal was to see how much coal went through these locks and dams as well as how often these transports occurred. Her teaching assistant, Genna Waldvogel, also spoke about her life as an engineer and how sustainability plays a large part in it. She discussed her research project to get her Masters Degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering. It involved the chemicals in the rivers of Pittsburgh and their possible toxicity. These instructors are great examples of sustainability in engineering and making a choice to try to be as sustainable as possible.
Andrea Rooney, the director of undergraduate programs in the department then spoke. She talked about a variety of topics, one of which being a project that her classes completed. It was all about exploring where each part of a product came from. She used the example of a water bottle and spoke about how the cap, wrapper and, even the ink all come from different places, increasing the carbon footprint needed to make the bottle. In her study, it was found that about six times the amount of water in a water bottle is needed to produce that water bottle. It was very interesting to hear all the seemingly nonexistent things that go into making a water bottle.
Discovering more about reproduction patterns. That’s what the students of the STEM Career Tour learned when they visited the Magee Women’s Research Institute. There, we were met by Dr. Judith Yanowitz who gave us a presentation on meiosis, and how our chromosomes are bonded during reproduction. Part of what Dr. Yanowitz studies is the reproduction and meiosis in microscopic worms, which so happen to have a very similar reproduction cycle that happens in humans. During our time there, Dr. Yanowitz took us to a lab and gave the students the opportunity to look under the microscopes and see the worms that she works with. Dr. Yanowitz also put some of the worms under an Ultraviolet light, which when exposed to the light, the worms move around quickly and you can see them moving under the microscope. 
Creating green everlasting power to sustain our future. That is the main goal of EverPower in their quest to create safer and cleaner energy through wind power. The STEM Career Tour recently took a visit to the Pittsburgh office of Everpower to see how wind energy works and how it can be used as alternative energy. The students were amazed to see how much information was presented on the 6 screens that were constantly gaining data from active wind turbines all throughout the country. There was also an active weather report on one screen that is used to see where winds will be heading and see where lightning is currently striking. Lightning is very important to the workers of EverPower because they need to notify their field crews when lightning is within in the area so they can evacuate working on their turbines and find a safe place to wait until the storm has passed.
