2025 Sustainability Fellowship: Transit System Electrification

Transit System Electrification 

UNH Stewardship Office 

Durham, NH 

Position is in person

About the Sustainability Fellows Program: 

UNH Sustainability Fellowships pair exceptional students from UNH and across the U.S. with municipal, educational, corporate, and non-profit partners to work on transformative sustainability initiatives each summer.  Sustainability Fellows undertake challenging projects that are designed to create an immediate impact, offer a quality learning experience, and foster meaningful collaboration.  Fellows work on-site (or online) with their mentors at partner organizations during the summer, supported by a network of Fellows, partners, alumni, and the UNH Team.   

A detailed description of one Fellowship follows.  To learn more about the other Fellowships offered this year, and for application instructions, click here.  

Eligibility: 

Students and recent graduates who will have earned an undergraduate degree from ANY accredited college or university by May 2025 (current seniors, recent graduates, and graduate/PhD students). 

About the Host Organization: 

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) has a longstanding commitment to sustainable campus operations and is a nationally recognized leader in sustainability.  It is one of only eight colleges or universities in the country that attains the highest “Platinum” rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.  Its Durham  campus of more than 17,000 students, staff and faculty—the size of a small city— requires continual  evolution of its physical systems, services and infrastructure. Key aspects of this leadership are a focus on our transportation and energy systems. 

 In 2008, UNH publicly committed to a long-term goal of carbon neutrality, and to annual tracking of its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of the Climate Leadership Network—and is now deep in the difficult journey of decarbonization. The University has evolved with a traditional New England village pattern with compact, walkable and easily navigable campus built around a prominent natural ecosystem.    

As part of its balanced transportation system, UNH operates a transit system that serves not only the campus, but the surrounding communities. UNH Wildcat Transit operates a fleet of over 40 compressed natural gas (CNG) and biodiesel buses, with over 650,000 annual trips across five communities in seacoast New Hampshire.  Maintaining this system involves significant collaboration between a wide range of UNH units: its multiple colleges, Stewardship, Energy, Transportation Services, Sustainability as well as our outside funding partners – the New Hampshire Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration. Our decarbonization efforts will require us to focus those collaborations not only on maintenance, but on transitioning our transit fleet and its fueling infrastructure. 

About the Fellowship – Project Description: 

This fellow will advance UNH’s ongoing transit electrification efforts, through a combination of data analysis and synthesis, logistics planning, and stakeholder engagement. The fellow will assist UNH staff and its consultants in moving forward with funded plans for electric infrastructure, fleet procurement and facility upgrades. 

This transition has many facets: developing fleet specifications for new buses; designing, siting, and constructing  charging infrastructure to service new electric buses, working in the context of our net-metered campus energy generation systems as well as with our electric utility.  The project will also include transit route design and operations analyses to ensure that correct technologies are selected to maintain service levels.  Additionally, UNH hopes to utilize the electric vehicles for bi-directional charging and or energy storage – enhancing our microgrid resilience and peak load accommodation. 

UNH has a partnership with the Clean Bus Program of the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) to provide technical assistance in this endeavor.  In December 2024, they began a comprehensive analysis for UNH, with a scheduled six month completion timeline; their efforts will provide a foundational blueprint as the university moves forward with the existing $2.5M FTA funded grant to execute these transitions. 

The Fellow will assist UNH Energy, Facilities and Transportation Services staff in a myriad of ways: analyzing energy and financial data; helping to visualize and plan; and following up with a wide array of internal and external stakeholders as the consultants’ deliverables suggest.  

Outcomes 

The deliverables for the Fellow will vary depending on the analysis and recommendations of the NREL consultants, but may include: 

• transit route planning modeling, energy impact modeling and infrastructure site analyses and reports  
• Presentations on infrastructure and fleet specification recommendations 
• Data visualizations related to infrastructure installations, route maps, or other planning elements 
• Quantitative analysis templates or workbooks 
• Assistance to UNH staff in developing final vehicle specifications; design and engineering consultant selection(s) and final design/engineering/procurement of construction partners. 

This will be an exciting opportunity to build deep expertise and professional networks related to transit planning and operations, community and environmental planning, and transportation system decarbonization pathways and strategies. The Fellow will also learn how to work effectively to make change in complex, decentralized organizations and communities. 

Desired Qualifications: 

• An academic background in community and environmental planning, energy systems, sustainability, engineering or a related field 
• Quantitative analytical skills 
• GIS experience and proficiency 
• Familiarity with energy systems, transit systems and technologies, especially EV/fuel cell  infrastructure 
• This person should have an interest in solving systems-based challenges which   impact  environmental and mobility systems.  

 Location:  

UNH Campus, Durham NH 

Work will be performed: on site with hybrid opportunities 

Mentors:  Stephen Pesci, Special Projects Director, Campus Stewardship;  Beverly Cray, Operations Manager, UNH Transit; Matt L’Heureux, Campus Energy Manager

Compensation:  

$8,000 
(taxable and distributed on a two-week payroll cycle over the course of the fellowship) 

Expectations: 

Fellows are expected to be primarily dedicated to their assigned projects throughout the summer, and also participate in a variety of networking activities, professional development opportunities, and presentations coordinated by UNHSI.  Specifically, Fellows are expected to: 

Attend a mandatory virtual orientation prior to the start of the Fellowship term, May 27 & 28, 2025.   

Work full-time for the partner organization, May 27 - August 15, 2025  

Complete 400 hours of work, including project work with host organization as well as UNHSI activities, between May 27 - August 15, 2025.  

Complete a Fellowship project according to the work plan. 

Participate in weekly webinars and advisory group meetings. 

Present work at in person launch event on June 17 and 18, 2025 and virtual final presentation on August 7. 

Engage in additional professional development, networking, and advisory activities as offered. 

Provide and receive feedback at the end of the Fellowship. 

Apply by February 9 at  

https://www.unh.edu/sustainability/sustainability-fellowships