Valencia College Faculty Interview

Dr. Debbie Hall

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology

Deb Hall has been a faculty member at Valencia College since 2001, and became involved with Valencia’s Energy Management and Controls Technology (EMCT) program in 2016 when she took over as Principal Investigator for the NSF ATE grant that launched the program. She currently serves as the EMCT program’s Faculty Internship Supervisor, which allows her to work with students who are completing their required industry internship. She finds teaching and supervising students in this program to be very rewarding, as she gets to see their success transitioning from the program to well-paying careers in the Building Automation Systems (BAS) field.

Deb is passionate about working in the renewable energy field, and believes this work can proactively address the climate crisis. She first became interested in renewable energy while pursuing her master’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Central Florida. As a student, she attended an IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist conference where she met a researcher from England who inspired her with his passion for developing a method of fabricating thin film solar cells. His methodology used an inexpensive technique to manufacture solar panels which he felt developing countries could use to benefit their qualities of life. Deb was able to contribute to this project while conducting her master’s thesis research by creating the n-type layer of a thin film solar cell using this same solution growth technique.

Deb is especially proud to be involved in Valencia’s EMCT program because she knows the importance of preparing students for careers in Energy Management given the high energy consumption of commercial buildings. The program is tailored for working students, which is why all of the classes taking place within the EMCT Lab are offered from 5pm to 9pm. The well-equipped lab contains full sized commercial building equipment such as an air handler unit, a boiler, and fan coil units, which a Building Automation Systems Control Technician would encounter in the field. The lab is expressly designed to offer students multiple hands-on experiences that reinforce theories presented by professors in the classroom. Students are also required to do both a 240-hour industry internship and a final capstone research project presentation to BAS industry professionals in the last year of their program coursework. A recent intern learned that all this hands-on experience could be financially rewarding, as she found entry level salaries from $83,400 for a Controls Technician or $130,163 for a Field Service Manager.

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