Geothermal energy foundations will be installed this summer as part of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s (CEE) Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory addition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Substantial completion of the renovation is expected in Summer 2020.
When built, the University of Illinois Campus Instructional Facility (CIF) will be a four-story building dedicated to academic and classroom use. CIF will serve 31,000 students daily and will leverage sustainable design to decrease its carbon emissions. The ground source heat exchange system will consist of approximately 60 wells arrayed under the John Bardeen Quad. It will be designed to be expandable, with the ability to be connected to other buildings, allowing for multiple phases.
This garden engagea and traina undergraduates in carbon reduction measures, as it is maintained by undergraduate students in the Brinkworth lab and in the Department of Anthropology. These efforts include composting lab members’ food waste and developing a "Carbon Garden" on campus. The students placed two large no-till, pollinator garden plots on the Southeast side of Davenport Hall in the disused space between the building and the adjacent parking lot.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign took on a leadership role to more actively respond to global climate change when Interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson signed Second Nature’s Climate Resilience Commitment in February 2016.
The goal of this student-led project is to create a zero-waste woodshop. A significant amount of material flows through the shop at the School of Architecture and most students waste more than they use. By acquiring a few tools to separate synthetic (plastics, EPS, polyurethane foam, etc.) from natural (wood & wood products) materials, the woodshop can drastically minimize waste to the university landfill and use the recaptured material for a multitude of other uses.
Before 2016, the area near the College of Veterinary Medicine was often a victim of flooding. Beginning in May of that year and reaching completion in August, construction of the rain garden reduced the concern of flooding. Prairie Restoration, Inc. provided planting and initial watering. Although not as many of the seeds established themselves as expected due to heavy rain, the garden has been successful in preventing flooding. A surface incline leads to the garden, whose soil allows for the infiltration of rainwater.
This project upgrades general assignment classroom lighting campus-wide. The existing lamps in these fixtures are typically incandescent, which burnout quickly and are energy inefficient. When completed, this project provides new fixture-compatible LED lamps in all general assignment classrooms across campus, reducing electricity costs, improving board visibility, and improving student learning environments.
In April 2017 three faculty members received $14,522 from the University Research Board to conduct preliminary investigations surrounding
"The International Laboratory Freezer Challenge promotes sample accessibility, sample integrity, reduced costs, and energy efficiency by harnessing a spirit of competition within and between laboratories. Challenge participants use well-evidenced criteria and best practices that support science quality and resilience while minimizing total costs and environmental impacts of sample storage."
click the link for more information and to REGISTER: https://www.freezerchallenge.org/
A student research team, under Dr.
