ARROW Holds Summer Education Accelerator at UMass Amherst

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From May 27 through 30, the Academic Center for Reliability and Resilience of Offshore Wind (ARROW) held a Summer Education Accelerator for faculty, lab staff, students, postdocs, and guest instructors from around the country to participate in an intensive course of study at the Integrative Learning Center on the UMass Amherst campus. The Summer Education Accelerator agenda can be found here.

ARROW is comprised of eight academic institutions, three national labs, and dozens of industry partners, led by UMass Amherst – taking advantage of more than 50 years of wind-energy research and education at the College of Engineering – and directed by Professor Sanjay Arwade of our Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. ARROW’s mission is to educate the next generation of professional offshore-wind workers and deliver innovations that reduce cost and increase benefits to consumers.

During the three-day event, some 90 participants from UMass Amherst and 12 other institutions convened to learn about different aspects of offshore-wind energy while building collaborations across the institutions. Some participants came to UMass Amherst from as far away as the California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez.

“With federal cuts to green-energy research, it is more important than ever that we band together and build strong, resilient collaboration networks across institutions,” explained Zoe Getman-Pickering, the ARROW program director and ELEVATE program coordinator.

“The Summer Education Accelerator was the first opportunity for the ARROW team to convene in person, with the goal of building collaborations across the partners and exposing the team to the core research topics within ARROW,” explained Professor Matthew Lackner of the UMass Amherst Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, the Endowed Chair in Renewable Energy for the College of Engineering, and the director of the Wind Energy Center at UMass Amherst.

Lackner added that “Students and faculty participated in sessions led by faculty and industry partners on four key topics: the electrical grid; wind-energy atmospheric science; monopile-support structures and reliability; and participatory modeling for ecosystem-based marine spatial planning. The engaging and interactive sessions highlighted the key methods used by researchers in these fields.”

The Summer Education Accelerator provided multiple tracks and funding for participants to ensure a diverse group of scholars and full participation. Along with the four topical sessions, participants also took tours at the New England grid operator (ISO-NE) and the Holyoke Gas and Electric hydroelectric-dam facility, and enjoyed an evening hike at Mt. Sugarloaf. 

ARROW was launched in 2024 with funding from U.S. Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the Maryland Energy Administration, and others. The five-year effort will advance offshore-wind energy, designed to be reliable and resilient, and produce a well-educated, domestic, offshore-wind workforce. (June 2025)