Mission critical power needs are not only the domain of military bases and health care facilities. College campuses, traditional home to conventional power plants and combined heat and power generation, are increasingly embracing renewable and hybrid microgrids for sustainability and energy security. One of those is at Gallaudet University in Washington DC. One of the world’s premier institutions of higher learning for the deaf and hard of hearing students, it has partnered with Scale Microgrids and Urban Ingenuity to build a clean energy microgrid on campus. The Gallaudet University microgrid can work in parallel with the district’s local utility grid or, the event of outage, provide campus energy needs for a time with minimal disruption. This session will also detail the work of the microgrid at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and that school’s Center for Microgrid Research. The prospects of microgrids for backing up mission critical research and development work will be highlighted in ways that help other universities decide what kind of microgrid might be best for their campus.