CLEVELAND, Ohio, February 13th, 2026: On February 12th, Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council (NOPEC) employees along with Ohio Energy Project (OEP) Staff and NOPEC Board Member and Former Mayor of the Village of Woodmere, Ben Holbert worked with students at Campus International School on a STEM-focused, hands-on wind energy education project.
Through the MacGyver Wind Lift Design Challenge, Mr. (Jonathan) Miles Bubbett’s 6th grade Social Studies students built, tested, and improved on the design of a windmill. Using the energy created by the wind turbine, students could lift weights and calculate force. This design challenge is intended to spark curiosity about energy and promote creative problem solving and critical thinking skills.
“NOPEC/OEP's Wind Lift Challenge not only explores skills and techniques used in design thinking and problem solving, but it also allows us to explore economic elements of sustainability, opportunity costs, along with environmental science, and struggles around societal accessibility,” says Bubbett.
Students engage in wind turbine design.
Campus International School, now in its fourth year of participation, has joined OEP and NOPEC’s long-standing program to empower more than 80 students with hands-on energy education through this innovative collaboration. NOPEC, an energy aggregation serving almost 250 Ohio communities including the City of Cleveland, has been a proud sponsor of OEP since 2017. Through NOPEC’s sponsorship, 44 schools in 10 counties will be participating in the STEM Design Challenges, impacting over 4,000 students across Ohio during the 2025 – 2026 school year.
"As a NOPEC board member, it was exhilarating to watch firsthand how excited these students were to learn about wind, energy, and power resources,” says Holbert. “Seeing that level of enthusiasm for sustainable energy is exactly why these community programs are so vital."
For more information on NOPEC and the STEM Design Challenges, including a full list of participating schools, visit nopec.org/education.
