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Project Updates for collection: Student Sustainability Committee Funded Projects

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  2. Green Jobs Introduction and Background Meeting

    Associated Project(s): 
    Build Resilience with Our Local Community
    Green Jobs

    10/5/2021

    Present: Stacy Gloss and Eric Green

    Background:

    8.5 [iSEE] By FY23, collaborate with colleges and community groups to inventory existing certification opportunities for green jobs and identify gaps.

      • Review findings from student research about green job opportunities
      • Assist iSEE staff to complete this inventory
        • Deliverable: provide inventory content to iSEE communications team by 1/31/22
        • Deliverable: update iCAP Portal inventory page with link to iSEE page by 3/15/22

    Meeting Notes:

    Stacy and Eric discussed a wide range of topics related to green jobs including the background and tasks related to iSEE 8.5.  Connection was made that Objective 8.5 is linked by category of “green jobs” to:

    iCAP Objective 6.4 - “Develop a sustainability internship program through partnering with businesses, nonprofits, local government, and cultural institutions in Central Illinois. The total number of internships awarded will be reported each year.” The responsible campus unit for championing this objective is iSEE. Progress is tracked in the iCAP Portal project page for the Sustainability Internship Program

    iCAP Objective 6.5 ““Partner with The Career Center and potentially other career offices in FY22 to help students explore and discover career opportunities that are connected to professional interests and goals related to sustainability. Incorporate a sustainability component at a minimum of two events beginning in FY22.” The responsible campus unit for championing this objective is Career Center with the support of iSEE. Progress is tracked in the iCAP Portal project page for Sustainability at Career Fairs.”

    In Spring 2021, Carissa Mysliwiec was as ENVS 491: Campus Sustainability Intern who worked with instructor Eric Green to focus on designing a sustainability internship program as part of Objective 6.4.

    In our discussion we talked about high-level barriers to internship programs:

    • Interns need significant guidance
    • Pay is an issue, who will pay $3,000 - $4,000 for a summer intern?
    • Businesses don’t always identify sustainability needs 

    We also discussed the challenges of identifying green jobs for the purposes of a creating a green-jobs fair or a sustainable jobs fair. What identifies green jobs? This topic should be explored further.  Talk to SECS, perhaps? How are students defining green jobs today?

    During the conversation Stacy pitched an entry-level paid program (post-graduation internship?) to be staffed for 1-2 years by recent graduates to help organizations build capacity, set targets and meet goals. This would be full-time work in lower-level/entry-level positions that serve as a spring board to sustainability careers.

    Stacy presented a Green Certifications Excel document she started working on.  Next steps would be to ask for campus & community input to answer questions such as:  Are these certifications offered here @UIUC or locally?  Who from campus is involved, can be a contact, or serve as a resource? What kind of jobs do people get with the certifications? Who hires locally? How do we prevent locally trained folks from leaving, what incentives are there to stay once advanced certifications are achieved?

    Eric will see if there are any students that might want to do some of the legwork involved in bolstering the green certifications list.

    We'll stay in touch and set up a meeting for about a month from now.

  3. Weekly Update: Bike Center tours; Green Quad Day

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, Starting to slow down a bit. This week’ll be absolutely perfect riding weather: cool but not cold. Still get folks asking for bikes every day—yet to get any 4’ 11” folks or 6’ 3” racing folks for the tall and small bikes we have, though. We’ve got 3 more that should be for sale this week sometime. Soon, we’ll be having the “it’s too cold to ride” conversation with people. No bad weather, just bad gear and so on.

    Had a class come by on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to tour the Bike Center and I talked about our operations, history of CBC, and the like. Always nice to get people into our space who might not otherwise have reason to visit.

    Last week I talked with Parking about the remainder of the bikes at the warehouse. I’ll make a trip out there this week to see if there’s anything worth our trouble.

    A gentleman came in looking for a small pin for his vintage brake levers and was able to find a workable solution in our used parts bins. He generously donated $10 for his 10 minutes of digging while bemoaning that regular bike shops could only offer to replace the brake levers outright. A happy customer who understands and appreciates our value and services—always a good interaction!

    This Thursday is the Green Quad Day event, from 10  - 4p. Will be good to get our name out there with other environmental/sustainability efforts on campus.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 64
    Sales: $1,052.60
    Bikes (refurb): 2 for $440
    Memberships: 8 for $240
    Tires/tubes: 10 for $76

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Coordinator

  4. Student Partner Meeting for EJ Plan

    Associated Project(s): 
    Build Resilience with Our Local Community
    Environmental Justice Plan

    Student Meeting: Design for America Team Meeting  10/1/2021

    Present: Pooja Tetali, Ananya Barman, Kosh Raghavarapu, Anisha Narain, Meredith Moore, Eric Greene, Stacy Gloss

    About DFA:

    Design for America is national nonprofit and a campus RSO that meets on Sundays to talk about Design Thinking principals. This is one DFA Team out of 5 Teams part of the RSO.  There are 30-ish people w/ a 6 person exec board locally. Exec board helps keep track and teaches design thinking. Interviewing skills. Ideation.  One project was: Racism Un-taught, working with professor to interview RSOs about a standard/playbook/rule book to minimize racism within RSOs. Another was working with Illinois Department of Health App for breastfeeding people. Projects vary between technical and research.

    This team meets once a week. They are happy to meet once a week or every 2 weeks. They have a couple hours to respond to emails and put together documents, so a few hours a week each. DFA projects typically last 1 year, academic year through May.

    The topics they are interested in are environmental racism, campus/community relations, campus/university effect/impact on communities, environmental science, collection action & collaboration. Two members worked on transportation system mapping in US previously and had been connected to iCAP goals / campus transportation goals.

    Potential Project Opportunities:

    Initial Research for Environmental Justice Planning.

    The initial research will help to inform the planning that goes into developing an Environmental Justice Plan. The project will eventually lead to a road map or planning document to guide the campus EJP.

    1. Funding for EJPlans and Implementation
    2. What Universities have Environmental Justice Plans?
    3. What community EJP’s exist that would be a resource or model for a campus-lead EJP?
    4. What Universities initiated Environmental Justice Plans in or for their communities? What are or were the barriers and opportunities for collaboration with their communities?

    Green Infrastructure Mapping:

    1. Green infrastructure mapping as part of the Green Infrastructure Resilience Goal

    Tasks:

    Schedule a follow-up meeting and communicate via email between meetings. Students will need to select the project they are interested in and report how they feel they can best contribute to the project(s).

  6. SSC Semesterly Report: Preventing Window Strike Bird Fatalities with Energy Efficient Window Decals

    Associated Project(s): 
    Bird Safety
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)

    SSC received semester report for Spring 2021 for Preventing Window Strike Bird Fatalities with Energy Efficient Window Decals on 9/9/2021. Please see attached. 

    Attached Files: 

  7. SSC Semesterly: Diversion of Non-Recyclable Plastic using Pyrolysis Process to Produce Fuels for Camps

    Associated Project(s): 
    Diversion of Non-Recyclable Plastic using Pyrolysis Process to Produce Fuels for Campus
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)

    SSC received semester report for Spring 2021 for Diversion of Non-Recyclable Plastic using Pyrolysis Process to Produce Fuels for Camps project on 9/3/2021. Please see attached. 

    Attached Files: 

  9. Weekly check-in resilience work

    Associated Project(s): 
    Build Resilience with Our Local Community

    Meredith Moore, Morgan White and Stacy Gloss met for the weekly check-in on resilience work.

    Agenda:

    • Review iCAP goals 8.5 & 8.7
    • Discuss iCAP objective assessment powerpoints
    • Schedule October meetings 

    Notes:

    • iCAP goal 8.5 – Stacy should reach out to Eric Green and Lana Holden about how students find out about green jobs; what green certifications are known.
    • iCAP goal 8.7 –Stacy should reach out to Eric Green to find out about student work on carbon off-sets. Ideas: Consider a white paper/literature review on “local” carbon offsets , or host round table/presentation / symposium with “experts” on local offsets
      • Stacy will read more on Second Nature off-sets / campus carbon calculations
      • 1 MW = 1 REC,  1 off set = 1 ton of CO2e reduced or kept out of atmosphere
      • Read status of the voluntary carbon markets 2021 pdf doc shared from Morgan
    • Stacy will post previous meeting notes from Resilience Objective meetings on Sustainability, Vision Zero, and Green Infrastructure
    • Cancel the 10/7/2021 meeting due to Green Quad Day, next weekly check-in on 10/14

  10. Native Shrub Planting in the Southern Arboretum Woodlands

    Associated Project(s): 
    Native Plants at Arboretum

    From: McSweeney, Kevin

    To: Reicherts, Jack; Marsaglia, Julia Raine

    Cc: Lee, Iris; Lynch, Lauren Rae; White, Morgan

    Recipients: ientsjackhr2 at illinois.edu; juliarm2 at illinois.edu; irislee3 at illinois.edu; lrlynch2 at illinois.edu; mbwhite at illinois.edu

     

    Hi Jack & Julia,

     

    Thank you for agreeing to follow up on the student-led planting of native shrubs in the Southern Arboretum Woodlands. This will be a valuable addition to the Campus Tree Committees report that will used in support of our application for renewal of our Tree Campus USA designation.

     

    I suggest you contact:

     

    1. Lauren Lynch (copied above) to get info about Prof. Jim Miller’s Restoration Ecology class that assisted with the shrub planting as part of the field component of the class. Lauren served as TA for the class.

     

    2. Iris Lee (Arboretum Staff) who compiled the list of native shrubs and supervised the operation and subsequently supervised Arboretum interns who watered and weeded around the plantings during the summer months.

     

    Funding from SSC helped support these project activities.

     

    Let me know if I can provide additional information.

     

    Best wishes,

     

    Kevin


    Kevin McSweeney
    Director, University of Illinois Arboretum
    ++608 712 4101 (‘phone, messages, WhatsApp)

  12. Weekly check-in resilience work

    Associated Project(s): 
    Build Resilience with Our Local Community
    Resilience iCAP Team

    Resilience Work Weekly Check-In

    09/23/2021, 2:00 PM

    Attendees: Morgan White, Meredith Moore, Stacy Gloss

    Updates

    Stacy provided an overview of her activities for the previous week including

    • reviewing the Resilience page and project histories
    • beginning work (by contacting key stakeholders and setting up meetings) on Vision Zero, Green Infrastructure, and Taking Leadership on Sustainability objectives.

    iCAP Portal

    In this meeting we discussed additional functionality, the strategy and rationale on Resilience web page organization. Morgan provided insights on using the iCAP portal such as accessing projects through a table by using the Project Page and searching Projects by Status.  Projects can be added to the iCAP portal by sending a proposal to add a project to Morgan and Meredith.  There is an iCAP Portal Content template that should be used.

    Community resilience and sustainability projects

    We reflected that there are many community projects and programs related to sustainability and resilience that do not appear anywhere in the iCAP such as MTD projects, Sanitary District work, Stormwater partnerships, Recycling projects and programs, certain solar projects.  We discussed that having a website or webpage dedicated to community partnerships, programs, and outreach about sustainability, environment, resilience, water, energy, land-use etc could be an excellent community resource. The idea bubbled to have a Community Supported Resilience Portal in parallel to the iCAP portal for tracking programs, resources, and projects. This could be a recommendation for meeting one or more of the iCAP objectives.  

  13. iCAP Energy Team September Meeting

    Associated Project(s): 
    Clean Energy Plan
    Building Envelope Pilot Project
    Energy Conservation Efforts
    Energy iCAP Team

    The iCAP Energy team had its first meeting of the 2021-22 Academic Year at 9:00 A.M. on September 24th. This meeting was used to evaluate where our team stands in achieving its goals and to determine a path forward for the year. The agenda, presentation, and minutes from the meeting are attached for a better understanding of the meeting.

    Attached Files: 

  19. Sustainable Design Opportunity: Upcycling Clothing with Project Phoenix!

    Associated Project(s): 
    Support Youth Sustainability
    Independent Student Projects

    Project Phoenix is an Illinois student initiative to give high school students a platform to highlight their fashion design interests and create their own upcycled clothing brands! The group offers one- to two-hour weekend workshops to teach Champaign-Urbana high school students applicable fashion and graphic design skills and provide opportunities in business and enterpreneurship. U of I students can sign up now to be a Project Fellow! The deadline for applications is Oct. 1.

     

    For more details about the Project Fellow position, read Phoenix's Fall 2021 project description document.

  20. Community Solar Status Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Build Resilience with Our Local Community

    Community Solar

    "What is the status of the city of Urbana’s community solar array at the old city landfill known as Solar Star Urbana Landfill LLC affiliated with Nexamp? Will the subscription to the community solar project begin this year?"

    The project, which will generate approximately 5.2 MW of clean energy for the Ameren grid, is scheduled to be completed around the middle of next month, said Keith Hevenor, communications manager for Nexamp, a firm that has developed community solar energy projects in Illinois, Maine, New York, Maryland, Georgia and Massachusetts.

    "At that point, the final landscaping, which includes a native pollinator seed mix for vegetation, will be applied," said Hevenor. "As soon as final testing and utility interconnection are completed, subscribers will begin seeing the credits on their Ameren bills, likely before the end of the year.

    "The Solar Star Urbana Landfill project is part of the Illinois Solar for All program, so participation in the program is reserved for qualified low and moderate income (LMI) residents. In the program, there are no enrollment fees, no credit checks and no cancellation fees. We still have space available for the project and individuals can visit https://ilsfa.nexamp.com/ameren to learn more and see if they qualify."

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