Art Schmidt from Civil and Environmental Engineering, reached out to faculty and students urging them to create a team made up of individuals from different disciplines/departments for the Rainworks Challenge. UIUC won this design competition in 2017 and Schmidt credits this success to the fact that the winning team was made up by many disciplines across campus. Schmidt explains that he is willing to serve as a faculty advisor for this challenge. 

Brent Lewis, Brian Chaille, CEE students and other individuals expressed great interest in creating this team. Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture, Mary Pat McGuire asked the following questions:

How can we use the competition to advance actual implementation of GSI here on campus? Do we need to identify funding to support implementation? Should we start a campaign for alum donations for implementation of projects? Can we revisit the 2015 2nd place winning master plan to explore the viability of that plan, and to add to it? Can we revisit the 2017 1st place winning design and explore the implementation of that proposal? What does a future 2022 winning proposal want to achieve for our campus that is new or different from those previous wins - and how can we get everyone on board with implementation?