Courses - Graduate

The Institute has developed a series of graduate courses on the topics of sustainability and energy, with an expected audience spanning the whole university, from physical sciences and engineering to social science, business, communication, and law. 

ISEN 401 History and Politics of Resource Innovation

Course Overview: Development of primary energy sources throughout US history and consider the impact of current political and economic decisions around energy on the development of domestic infrastructure and institutions in the near future. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Mark Lillie and Mark Pruitt
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 402 Fundamentals of Natural Resources Distribution

Course Overview: Covers the engineering fundamentals of natural resource distribution systems, spanning both energy (electricity, hydrocarbon fuels) and water. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Mark Feasel
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 404 Resource Markets Design, Regulation, and Reform

Course Overview: Evolution of the natural resource markets in the United States through the lens of the regulatory and quasi-governing agencies that have shaped their structure. Focuses on electric power markets, but will compare these market structures with those that govern water and other relevant systems. Students will also study current state and federal policy innovation creating or slowing current market reform. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Mark Pruitt
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 405 Corporate Sustainability and Value Creation

Course Overview: This class will explore the emerging market for leveraging sustainability to drive value (reduced risk / increased innovation) in the corporate environment and will provide students with a primer on leading standards and sustainability reporting. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Klaus Weber
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 407 Energy and Sustainability Economics (0.5 credit)

Course Overview: Underlying economic theory driving core resource markets - including electricity, gas, water, and transportation. Includes a discussion of issues that are unique to energy generation and environmental impact, as well as a deep dive by resource type.  Students will pair ISEN 407 with EITHER ISEN 408 or ISEN 409. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Mark Witte
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 408 Energy and Sustainability Economics (0.5 credit)

Course Overview: Broad overview of basic concepts in corporate finance - time value of money, discounting techniques, stock and bond valuation, capital budgeting, firm valuation and decision making. Will incorporate key finance considerations in energy and sustainability markets.  Students will pair ISEN 407 with EITHER ISEN 408 or ISEN 409. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Joeseph Wemhoff
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 409 Energy and Sustainability Market Foundations (0.5 credit)

Course Overview: Exploration of how the tools of economic analysis apply to discrete decision-making in electricity, gas, water, and transportation.  Students will pair ISEN 407 with EITHER ISEN 408 or ISEN 409. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Lynne Kiesling
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 410 Topics in Contemporary Energy and Climate Change

Course Overview: The increasing worldwide demand for energy presents a number of complex interdisciplinary challenges, from resource depletion to climate change. This class will challenge students to answer the question, How shall we power the world in the 21st century? We will examine the history and geography of energy use; links between energy and climate change; and technological, economic and environmental benefits and drawbacks of various energy sources. Cross-listed as EARTH 342. Open to graduate students from all disciplines, senior undergraduates majoring in natural sciences or engineering, and other interested undergraduates by instructor consent.

Instructor: Yarrow Axford
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 411 ESG, Reporting and Tools for Energy & Sustainability 

Course Overview: This course aims to provide a broad overview of the widely used quantitative tools in energy and sustainability. Using a case-based and problem-set centered focus, this course will explore tools such as risk assessment and social justice metrics. Additionally, this course will delve into issues surrounding greenhouse gas quantification, discussing the core quantitative methods for measuring emissions while also touching on protocol and policy frameworks that enable the application and verification of these measurements. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: TBD
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 412 Understanding Global Energy and Sustainability Markets

Course Overview: This course will provide an international economics perspective on managing diminishing energy use and increasing sustainable value chains in a global context. Students will analyze how commodity flows are shaped by various countries’ factors of production, economic strengths and weaknesses, political priorities, governance systems, and incentive structures. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: TBD
Offered: Spring 2024

ISEN 420 NUvention: Energy

Course Overview: Over an intense quarter, graduate students from schools across campus come together in interdisciplinary teams to develop a product or service and a business in the burgeoning sustainable energy industry. By simulating the product/service and business development process, NUvention Energy helps students develop creative, interpersonal, business, and technical skills.  Teams are mentored by Trienens Institute board of energy industry professionals and cleantech entrepreneurs.  Course teams have been extremely competitive on the business plan competition circuit, and many have gone on to form successful companies, including SiNode, Metergenius, Ampy, INJoo, and Hazel Technologies.  NUvention: Energy is collaboratively offered by the Trienens Institute and the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Farley runs the NUvention program portfolio (which includes other offerings in medical, nano, web, social impact, etc).  Cross-listed as ENTREP 474.

Instructor: Mark Werwath
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 421 Scaling Sustainable Technology

Course Overview: Introduces concrete strategies that can be employed in taking new sustainable offerings to scale in the development life cycle. Focus is on expanding test products into larger volume market deployment strategies, modes of financing, testing, and future-proofing.

Instructors: Brian Tolliver
Offered: Spring 2024

ISEN 422 Electrify Everything: Beneficial Electrification, Electric Vehicles, and Beyond

Course Overview: Introduces the concept of beneficial electrification as a tool to dramatically increase grid flexibility, reduce total household and business energy costs, and reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Explores emerging state of electricity consumption and review how it relates to changing transportation markets.

Instructors: Holly Benz
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 431 Advanced Topics in Electric Technologies: Storage and Microgrids (0.5 credit) 

This course will cover the primary aspects of energy storage systems and microgrids. It will provide students with a high-level understanding of electrical storage technologies and microgrids and their key market applications.

Instructor: Said Al-Hallaj
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 434 Hydrogen in the Energy Transition (0.5 credit)

Course Overview: Hydrogen is becoming an increasingly viable option in the clean energy transition. This course will provide an overview of hydrogen as an energy source, end use applications for hydrogen, types of hydrogen and the trends and challenges in the marketplace for a hydrogen econonmy. The course will deep dive into hydrogen technologies (specifically renewable hydrogen and various hydrogen pilots), regulatory and policy processes and challenges, economics and financial considerations for investing in hydrogen infrastructure, and the future global outlook and trends for hydrogen.  

Instructor: Dan Hahn
Offered: Fall 20243

ISEN 440 Energy Project Finance and Development

Course Overview: Design, permitting, financing, and implementation process of large-scale energy infrastructure developments including solar, wind, electricity storage, natural gas and hydrogen facilities.

Instructor: Alison Gilbert, Tom O'Flynn 
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 450 Fundamentals of Energy Trading and Risk Management (0.5 credit) 

Course Overview: This course provides a broad overview of the nature of physical and paper trading energy markets (with a particular focus on energy) and the various strategies that can be employed by firms and investors in them. The course touches on issues relating to risk management and discusses the use of derivatives to combat risk in resource markets. Additionally, it will explore broad topics in the field of commodity futures such as backwardation and contango. 

Instructor: Chet White
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 452 Government Incentives (0.5 credit) 

Course Overview: This course will review the suite of incentive tools offered by the federal and state governments to encourage private actors to develop infrastructure, produce commodities, and tolerate risk inherent in commercial energy and sustainability enterprise, as well as incentivizing individuals to make decisions about personal property and behavior.

Instructors: Mark Lillie
Offered: Spring 2024

ISEN 461 Sustainable Branding

Course Overview: This course covers many of the fundamental topics in branding, particularly sustainable branding. Beginning with an exploration of brand strategy and motivations, the course progresses to an understanding of key themes such as brand design and brand architecture. It also discusses assorted topics such as brand auditing, transparency in sustainable practices and the key role of social media in branding today. All topics covered apply a unique sustainability-centered focus, with careful differentiation between B2C and B2B brands in the market. This course employs case studies as the primary mode of assessment in order to demonstrate the application of course learnings in the real world.

Instructor: Jessica C. Adelman and Adrian Gershom
Offered: Spring 2024

ISEN 462 Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Course Overview: Basic principles of supply chain management, evolving trends in sustainable supply chain, and the practical realities of driving sustainable practices into the supply chain operations.

Instructor: Ian Olson
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 463 Circular Economy

Course Overview: Use systems thinking to understand the technological, economic and policy implications of circular economies. Focus on real-world applications, testing the feasibility of circular systems and analyzing their design.

Instructor: Jenny Carney
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 470 Sustainability in Water and Wastewater (0.5 credit) 

Course Overview: Provides an introduction to the economics, technology and regulation that drive water and wastewater markets. Survey of the major issues that exist and a discussion of opportunities to drive to more sustainable water systems.

Instructor: Patrick Boyle
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 471 Sustainable Food (0.5 credit) 

Course Overview: Main sustainability topics related to the production, transportation, processing and consumption of food. Focus on tangible methods to promote sustainability in the food industry such as regenerative agriculture techniques, reducing GHG emissions throughout the supply chain and reduced food waste. Pre-requisite for ISEN 473 Future of Food and Agriculture.

Instructor: David Donnan
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 472 Climate Activism and Its Business Impacts (0.5 credit)

Course Overview: Offers an overview of climate activism and its business impacts over time. Analyzes the way in which consumer behavior and corporate policy are affected by activism.

Instructor: Sarene Marshall
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 473 The Future of Food and Agriculture (0.5 credit) 

Course Overview: Investigates the future of food systems including changes in production, transportation, processing and consumption of food. It will focus on upcoming challenges and opportunities in the world of food and agriculture and the role of economics, policy, technology and climate impact.

Instructor: David Donnan
Offered: Fall 2023

ISEN 490 Modern Techniques in Heterogeneous Catalysis Research

Course Overview: The purpose of this course is to provide students the necessary training to conduct independent research in heterogeneous catalysis. The course will not only touch on the elementary principles of common experimental methods, but also give the students hands-on experience operating necessary equipment for fundamental heterogeneous catalysis research. The course is designed for groups of students to undertake and complete a small catalysis research project. Starting with catalyst synthesis, students will spend several weeks learning practical aspects of instrumentation and catalyst testing/characterization techniques. At the end of the first quarter, students will plan and submit a research proposal based on questions raised from their own literature research and results from the first several weeks. The second quarter will be used to execute their own experiments. At the end of the second quarter, students will be expected to assemble a publication quality manuscript and present their work to a group of faculty advisors and industrial partners.

Instructor: Neil Schweitzer
Offered: TBD

ISEN 495 Special Topics in Energy and Sustainability: Industrial Energy Management and Utilization (Cross-listed as MECH_ENG 467)

Course Overview: As time permits, in this course the students will learn about historical energy usage; energy conservation vs. energy management; elements of an energy audit; data normalization of energy consumption using product-mix data or degree days etc.; utility rate structures and deregulation; energy economics; energy conservation opportunities in thermal-fluid Systems; combustion systems; steam and condensate Systems; energy recovery systems; industrial insulation; and electrical energy conservation.

Instructor: Manohar Kulkarni
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 497 Strategy & Project Management Fundamentals (for MSES Practicum)

Course Overview: Preparatory course to support experiential learning, centered around building a toolkit to allow MSES student teams to be successful on a 10-week, Spring quarter, team-based consulting project for a corporate, non-profit or government partner of Northwestern University. This course includes both lecture and workshop content to help with all aspects of project planning for the MSES practicum. Primary topics covered will include strategy and innovation theory, application of strategy frameworks to a project, scope management, project planning and team collaboration.. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Holly Benz
Offered: Winter 2024

ISEN 498 Energy and Sustainability Project Practicum

Course Overview: 10-week, team-based consulting project for a corporate, non-profit or government partner of Northwestern University. Student teams will be advised by the instructor but will work directly with the client organization. There will be limited traditional reading / lecture content and the topics covered will include project management and team collaboration. Part of the core curriculum within Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES).

Instructor: Holly Benz
Offered: Spring 2024