Peter Crabtree is the principal investigator (PI) for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Building Efficiency for a Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) Center. The center provides industry research, academic resources and professional development opportunities to college faculty in support of the education of the technical workforce in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC); building automation systems; and energy management and efficiency. The center is completing development of a national certification, aligned with the International Standards Organization (ISO), for high-performance building technicians, which will benchmark industry-validated knowledge and skills standards and help colleges align curriculum to the standards.
Crabtree serves on the board of directors for the Association of Controls Professionals, is a member of the leadership network for the NSF ATE Environmental and Natural Resources Technology (EARTh) Center, serves on the National Roundtable on the Workforce for a Green and Inclusive Economy, and is a member of the board of advisors for the Commercial Workforce Credentialing Council of the National Institute of Building Sciences.
With more than 35 years of experience in workforce development and community engagement, Crabtree has directed numerous research and workforce development projects including 18 years as an NSF PI with the BEST Center and its predecessor projects, as well as PI or project director for a wide range of other projects for the Department of Energy, the Department of Labor, the California Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs), the Bechtel Foundation and the Microsoft Foundation, among others. Crabtree’s ongoing research focuses on the specification of technical expertise in high-performance building operations, methods to develop adaptive expertise in building systems and building performance among faculty and students, and climate change mitigation strategies and policy development.
Crabtree is a dean emeritus at Laney College where he served as dean of career and technical education for 17 years. He has nearly completed a doctorate in political science, with an emphasis in environmental policy and political economics, from UC Riverside and holds an MA from UC Riverside in the same field. He was a Lincoln-Juarez Graduate Fellow at the Universidad Nacionál Autónoma de México.