Hello Education and Resilience teams,

It was great to see many of you at the “Sustainability team open house”. We will plan another event next month so we can continue to connect and get to know each other! I am reaching out to revisit a recommendation submitted last spring by the Education team: Edu002 Internship Coordinator. When the iWG deliberated the next steps of this recommendation, it was discussed that there could be value in collaboratively discussing this idea to hear the perspectives from both the Education and Resilience teams.  

I am writing to ask if you are interested in joining this discussion, please complete this Doodle Poll by 2/2. A summary of the recommendation is below and the full recommendation template is linked on the iCAP Portal:

The Education team recommends developing a sustainable communities paid internship program in partnership with local businesses, non-profits, local government agencies, community-based agencies and cultural institutions in Central Illinois. 

The internship program will be designed to build organizational capacity in the Champaign-Urbana / Central Illinois with regard to sustainability and resilience efforts to advance sustainable development and/or climate action goals. This program aims to allow students the flexibility to devise an internship experience that aligns with their specific interests within sustainability. Collaborations between the University and Champaign-Urbana community can be taken advantage of as projects where internships can be generated.

The student interns will be involved in sustainability and community resilience efforts with directed emphasis toward sustainable development goals. Interns will gain real-world, project-based, and pre-professional experience in a workplace setting anywhere from 3 months (summer intern) to 1 year. 

The intern program will also be tasked to provide leadership training as a foundation for real-world, project-based, and pre-professional experiences. Existing campus resources such as leadership development training modules available through Student Union programming should be utilized.

I hope many of you are interested and willing to join the discussion! Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions.

Meredith

Mohamed Attalla, the Executive Director of Facilities and Services, has officially signed the charge letter outlining goals for the 2021 Tree Campus Advisory Committee. These goals, along with the expectations of the committee can be found in the attached pdf.

Check out the 2021 iSEE New Years Resolution Sustainability Guide, full of actions to consider and resources to help! Stay mindful of the environment when setting goals in 2021. 

All, Not a whole lot to report: The Bike Center Fix It pump is operational and I’ll be meeting this week about marketing to get the word out. I got an email not 12 hours after visiting the new Flagg Hall covered bike parking asking if it was operational, funnily enough. Parking tagged the bike that was locked up out front of the Bike Center. It was probably a donation but doing our due diligence on that.

This week student staff will start and we’ll work through some more bike builds.

The numbers:

Visitors: 6
Sales: $59
Memberships: 1 for $30
Misc: $29

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager

All, Slow week, of course. An uptick in donations of parts/bikes. Got a nice hybrid Giant bike that is already fixed up and ready to sell.

We are almost totally and completely moved out of our former garage home. It’s actually a lot of square footage in there once you remove all the stuff accumulated over the last 11 years or so!

This week will be scheduling, semester prep, and more work to get the outdoor bike pump fixed up and operational for the few hearty winter cyclists.  

The numbers:
Visitors: 10
Sales: $196
Memberships: 2 for $60
Bike (refurb): 1 for $120
Misc: $16

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager

On Wednesday 01/13/2021, at 1:00 pm, Andrew Stumpf, Clarence Odom, and their team will conduct geothermal DTS measurements during a site visit.