We heard from Karina Jang about her research on air travel admissions, reviewed the data on the Transportation Survey, and talked about working for a SSC grant to install ebike chargers on campus. For a more detailed breakdown, the minutes are attached!

Agenda

• Michael's updates
  • Archived projects:
    • Added link to Archived Projects on Projects page
    • Hid archived projects from Theme page hierarchical listings
    • Left archived projects in Project Family sidebar section, for now - may revisit that decision in the future
  • Removed Project Status from hierarchical listing on theme pages and full project hierarchy listing
  • Expand/Collapse buttons added to Project Updates listings. See examples:
    • All Project Updates
    • Project Updates search results
    • Project Updates for collection: Monarch Butterfly projects
    • Projects Updates for Sustainability iCAP Portal
    • Projects Updates for key objective: 2.1 Energy Planning Document
    • Projects Updates for theme: Education
    • Projects Updates for place: Campus Instructional Facility
  • SSC Project embed code is working on SSC site!
  • Resolved an issue with some information connected to Projects (locations, funding info) and Metrics (targets, tracking) losing their connections to those projects.
    • Information still in database, so I was able to restore connections
    • It took some careful and tedious effort to track this down and restore the connections.
• Google Analytics numbers drop
  • Steeper than others have experienced
  • Probably some combination of less traffic and old analytics possibly not excluding bots/crawlers as effectively
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics (see notes from Sarthak & Michael's discussion)

Discussion

• Morgan went through full list of projects to find ones to archive
  • Need to have a larger conversation about what archiving does at some point
• Morgan's intern Zach is doing a couple things:
  • Filling in recent years of campus water data
  • Looking for duplicate metrics
  • Will mark duplicate metrics as duplicate, then work with Michael on deleting them
• Linking SSC Projects to iCAP Portal projects
  • Quinn and Helen working on making sure all connections between SSC Projects and iCAP Portal projects are included
  • What to do about SSC Projects without an existing iCAP Portal project?
  • Quinn: 70-80% of SSC Projects have a direct or indirect connection to an iCAP Portal project; a few are really hard to find a connection
  • Morgan: every SSC Project should be connected to an iCAP Portal project. Quinn will keep working on connections, then this summer we can figure out what to do about the outliers
  • Would be helpful to add column sorting to SSC Projects table
  • SSC Projects listing goes back to 2008; aren't there projects from earlier than 2008?
    • That's all Helen had access to in SSC's master spreadsheet
    • Didn't include cancelled projects
    • Morgan will look for info about projects before 2008
    • Sheri may also have info about those projects
    • Some info about older SSC projects may be available in Project Updates (e.g. Projects Updates for Wind Turbine Generator(s) on South Farms)
• Recommendations:
  • Morgan will have a student work on adding Recommendations
  • Once they're complete, we should remove the manually maintained recommendation links in Projects
  • Next step: show Recommendations & Recommendation Updates on Project pages; Michael will work on a draft version to share
• Going through project hierarchy: adding/updating information to descriptions for Header projects
• Google Analytics numbers drop
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics

TODOs

• ✅ SSC Projects:
  • ✅ Add column click sorting to SSC Projects table
  • ✅ Add ability to add/edit description to SSC Projects listing page
• ✅ Show Recommendations & Recommendation Updates on Project pages
• Investigate Google Analytics for April 3 - large spike in visits/users
• Investigate how to hide Project Status from certain projects which aren't actually projects - they're meant to act as parents for other projects (remaining from last meeting)
  • e.g. add a "Header" Project Status which hides the status

Check out  SmartWay — a program that supports clean air, energy efficiency, and a stronger, more sustainable supply chain.

This Earth Day, and every day, look for the SmartWay logo on trucks moving goods the fuel-efficient way.

Read this announcement online - 
 

Join the celebration of Earth Day on Tuesday, April 22, by biking around campus, grabbing a free set of lights, or registering your bicycle!
As part of the university’s Earth Month events, the first-ever Bike for Earth Day will feature three welcoming centers open from 3 to 7 p.m. at:

• Alma Mater Plaza 
• Hallene Gateway (intersection of Illinois Street and Lincoln Avenue)
• Activities & Recreation Center (east side driveway)

      🎉 Bike Light Giveaway included! 🎉

Check out the above link for more details

iSEE Sustainable Programs Coordinator Miriam Keep sent the draft iCAP 2025 objectives to the iCAP Working Group:

----------

Hi iCAP Working Group members,

I am sharing the compiled list of draft objectives for the iCAP 2025. Morgan, Jen, and I are asking you to share these to review with your respective campus units/constituencies, and to send me any questions or feedback by Friday, April 25. I will consolidate all feedback for discussion at our April 29 meeting.

Thank you and please let us know if you have any questions.

Have a great weekend!

Best,

Miriam

Sarthak asked campus communication officers to post digital signs about Bike for Earth Day 2025 on their departmental screens, to promote the event, until Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Attached is the promotional image.

The Sustainability Sub-Council met on April 10, 2025. The primary agenda items included: 

• Energy Performance Contract - College of ACES
• Targets for the next iCAP
• DIA-specific objectives for the next iCAP

The slide deck and meeting minutes are attached.

Making good progress on the four rows of solar at the Energy Farm.  Today, the AC power was officially turned on.  Nextracker is supposed to be onsite on Monday to commission the trackers.  That will allow Plant Science folks to till and plant crops.  After Monday, the next steps will be getting the DC wire management complete and connected to the inverters, so they can be inspected and then powered on.

March 2025 photos of the Florida Orchard Prairie have been added to the box folder.

The attached PDF contains performance metrics for ZipCar usage on campus for March 2025.

Karina Jang researched and conducted interviews with 7 universities, 5 from the US and 2 international, to understand their air travel emissions tracking and mitigation strategies. This report summarizes what she found and includes recommendations for the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign to start their air travel emission mitigation framework. 

On Thursday was another installment of our instructional class, which went well. Friday was our first Bike Center on the Quad event, which also went well. We also received our first end-of-semester/graduation donation.

We have a handful of bikes in the queue which we’ll finalize/safety check this week.

The numbers:

Visitors: 39
Sales: $327
Memberships: 6 for $180
Tires/tubes: 4 for $25

The iCAP Education Team met on Monday, April 7th from 4-5 pm via Teams. First we shared information about the upcoming events during Earth Month. Then we discussed project updates that team members had including AASHE stars data collection, sustainability language in course descriptions, progress towards a sustainability Gen-Ed requirement, a sustainability literacy assessment and outgoing survey, iSEE partnered internship opportunities, and sustainability integration into study abroad. We also discussed student team member ideas like the possibility of composting on campus. The meeting minutes are attached. 

This month, the Land and Water team had their monthly meeting on Friday, April 4, at 9:00 am on a Teams video call. Linked below is the meeting agenda with the meeting notes from what the team discussed. Additionally, a recording of the meeting is linked in the agenda. 

Sarthak notified Bird that leftover BikeShare bikes should be removed as soon as possible to avoid being impounded.

The Energy Team had their April meeting on Thursday, April 3rd, from 2:00 - 3:00 PM. The main discussion points included gathering contact information for building managers and finalizing interview questions for the Building Occupancy Pilot Program. The team also reviewed student availability and finalized email communications. Although the meeting was relatively short, significant progress was made. The meeting minutes are attached!

Attached is paper data from iBuy spanning FY15-24.

Here are the numbers for white paper that Central Stores has sold and the current price per ream (as of FY24). These ream numbers are from January 1 2022-December 31 2024:

0% - 25,858 reams $3.80 each

30% - 9,801 reams $6.98 each

100% - 389 reams $5.49 each (ream price cheaper than 30%, because the prices have not been updated in a few years as the 100% paper does not sell anymore)

Sarthak Prasad introduced Zach to the iCAP portal and showed him how to do project updates.

 iSEE seed-funded research project that uses robotics and artificial intelligence to autonomously manage “high tunnel” food production is entering its second year at the University of Illinois Sustainable Student Farm.