University Outreach Initiative Overview The GridWise® Architecture Council (GWAC) is a team of experts with diverse, relevant industry backgrounds that has documented the guiding principles for the architecture and interoperability of a future, intelligent, transactive, energy system. One of GWAC’s goals includes sharing information about their work broadly with industry and other communities that have a need to understand smart grid architecture and interoperability. The concept of a University Outreach Initiative was developed in the spring of 2011 as a set of market research and outreach activities. These activities were developed to identify opportunities for the dissemination of information about GWAC to academic and workforce development communities. Grant recipients of the Smart Grid Workforce Training Program, funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), were identified as initial outreach recipients. This community consists of academic and workforce program managers involved in the development of electrical power engineering or other closely related smart grid technology and business programs at two and four-year institutions, via private sector curriculum development companies, and governmental or collaborate workforce development agencies. The Outreach Initiative started with the development of the Landscape Database and Contact Directory. These documents provide descriptive project and contact information for the Smart Grid Workforce Training Program recipients. Contact information was gathered through telephone calls and Internet research. Contacts identified by telephone were introduced in conversation to the project and were asked if they wished to participate. Their knowledge of GWAC was assessed. Contacts we could not reach by phone received introductory emails explaining the Outreach Initiative and providing links to important GWAC documents for background. A survey to identify contact interest in the initiative was circulated to all contacts several weeks later.