Dude, What's Your Major? The Smart Grid

I never did major in anything particularly "cool" in college. I have an AA in liberal arts, a BA in English and an MFA in poetry writing. No one ever confused my love of Mark Twain's essay and the one-two literary poet punch of Keats and Yeats with anything remotely close to "cool." The closest I ever got to a "with-it" sort of major was time spent with a close friend who was studying film. And, in the 1990s, film studies was the ultimate example of a "cool" major.

Even film studies might be eclipsed by Cincinnati State's new autumn 2010 offering: a major in smart grid.

Just today the Ohio Board of Regents, which governs the state's school system, gave the thumbs-up to Cincinnati State to offer that unique major as part of the college's power systems engineering technology program.

According to Larry Feist, chairman of the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Major at Cincinnati State, the program is "designed to capitalize on both the short term demand for technicians to install new generations of electric and gas meters and on the longer-range need for specialists who will be able to maintain the new systems and work on the distribution and transmission aspects of the electrical grid." (At least, that's how he was paraphrased in the article about this announcement on the college's website.)

So, they're going to teach people to install smart grid stuff and then teach people to go back and fix those problematic bits of installed smart grid stuff. Fair enough. We're definitely going to need bringers and fixers in the smart grid mix. But, what exactly does this smart grid major require? What classes does a burgeoning, passionate smart grid college student take?

The college's website notes that this major will build on traditional power engineering classes. So, before you get to "What Smart Grid Represents in Modern Metaphysical American Culture" you will have to take those hard courses like physics, algebra, calculus, direct/alternating current labs, examinations of national electric codes and, of course, power system design.

On top of that basic power engineering stuff, Cincinnati State will layer the exciting smart grid classes on instrumentation, control systems and communication. No, there won't really be one on what smart grid stuff represents in American culture—although, to be honest, that would be the one smart grid class that even a poet like me would be interested in.

So, I'm calling the official death of film studies as the "cool" major. It shall be replaced by degrees in the smart grid. Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi! (The King is dead. Long live the King.)

Yes, I know. Too poetic of an ending. You'll just have to forgive me. Poetry was my major, after all. I went to college before I could get a degree in the practical awesomeness of the smart grid.