"You are looking outside just building the robot," Granholm said to the high school-age students, part of a robot-building team at the APS Academy in downtown Aurora.
The students had just told her that in addition to their robot, they were designing an app to help people find places to recycle batteries. It even included incentives to get people to recycle alkaline batteries, and get lifetime lithium batteries instead.
The effort came from the students realizing how many batteries it takes in building and operating electronic devices.
"They seemed to have a universal outlook," Granholm said.
It was the kind of outlook Granholm saw throughout her tour of the APS Academy Monday, part of a two-day trip to northern Illinois that included looking in on students focused on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM).
Her visit to the region also includes a roundtable discussion about the future of the automotive industry at a manufacturing facility for hydrogen-powered vehicles, and a roundtable with Illinois Deputy Gov. Christian Mitchell, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Director John Kim, and other local officials and leaders.
One of those officials was U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, who accompanied Granholm to Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont and to the academy in Aurora.
Part of the reason for Granholm's visit to Aurora was to underscore the Energy Department's support for the next generation of science and technology leaders that are needed to keep the country moving toward a clean energy future.
That potential was certainly on display at the APS Academy.
"We're trying to push for more (STEAM) education and programs," she said. "We hope to promote scientists and artists of all kinds. I wish these were available when my kids were growing up — when I was growing up."
Granholm met students that ran the gamut from first- and second-graders to high schoolers at the academy. They are working on programs that include designing their own concepts to print out on a 3D printer, designing and building robot cars, building robotics that perform tasks for competitions and designing and programming drones.
When students realized they had federal officials among them, their questions were about electric cars — their future, and what the government is doing to make them more available and affordable.
Granholm pointed out that Congress, including Foster, voted to appropriate money for more EV charging stations across the country for people who buy electric cars. Illinois alone received $150 million toward that effort.
She also said that President Biden has asked Congress to pass tax credits of up to $10,000 for people who buy electric cars.
"We want to make them more affordable," she said in response to a student's question.
The display of high level education at the APS Academy extended to some of the teachers too, who are students themselves at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, or IMSA, on Aurora's West Side.
Foster was a physicist at Fermilab in Batavia when the lab assisted in establishing IMSA.
"It was nice to see the collaboration with IMSA," Foster said.
Before leaving Illinois on Tuesday, Granholm will participate in the fourth meeting of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board to discuss recent announcements and initiatives being led by the U.S. Department of Energy.
©2022 The Beacon-News (Aurora, Ill.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
