Funding was approved for several pavement improvements on campus streets.  These improvements will reduce gas consumption and corresponding emissions for vehicle traffic; restripe the bike lanes on a portion of Gregory Drive; extend the bike lanes on Fourth Street south to Kirby Avenue; add pedestrian countdown traffic signals at two signalized intersections; implement traffic calming measures, such as curb bump outs for increased pedestrian safety in key locations; and improve one block of the Illinois Marathon route on First Street, between Peabody Drive and Kirby Avenue.

Staff are participating in weekly conference calls with Zipcar to encourage the use of car sharing and active transportation on campus. A Zipcar winter welcome special offer was shared in the OS newsletter and through the OS twitter account.

The firm that was hired last fall to complete the Compost Feasibility Study, Foth, submitted a draft of their study to the University in early January for comments.  Immediately following, F&S applied for $250,000 from the F-SCRAP Grant from DCEO, for equipment and site improvements for the Large-Scale Food Waste Composting Facility.  In order to apply for the grant, the University was required to commit to funding the remaining portion of the facility’s proposed budget, and an emergency phone meeting was called by the Student Sustainability Committee to assign funding toward this. The committee voted in favor and granted $250,000 toward the project.  A draft plan for the compost facility was also developed and distributed to key stakeholders in mid-January for feedback. 

The Florida and Orchard Prairie has new leadership through the student group Red Bison and their advisor, John Marlin.  Red Bison will be meeting with F&S to set next steps for the site, including going through the process of naming the site and implementing the concept design.

Engineering 315, Learning in the Community (LINC), has a number of course sections dedicated to sustainability this semester, including UI Bikes (UIB), for which Facilities & Services is serving as the Project Partner. The UIB section has two student project managers and 13 undergraduate students, who will be focusing on three bicycle-related projects this semester: A. the continuation of the bike sharing market analysis started last semester, including a campus-wide survey and targeted focus groups; B. the development of a campus bicycle parking map; and C. testing various marketing tactics to try to encourage students to park their bikes legally at designated bike parking, rather than on trees, signs, ramps, or fences.

F&S and the Campus Bike Project (CBP) met with an MBA class who agreed to help the CBP become fiscally self-supporting through improved marketing. There are two student teams who will review this topic in the context of all bicycle-related topics for campus.

Logistics are underway for the Spring, 2012 offering of the Teaching Sustainability Workshop (previously the Prairie Project).  There will be an opening reception and keynote speaker on Friday, April 13 at Levis Center and the workshop will be held on April 14, 2012 at the Japan House.  The call for applications went out on January 25 with applications due by March 9.  In two days, we had already received 11 applications and are now up to 15.  This is the quickest response we have had to date.

The Scholarship of Sustainability Series is currently being offered for the third year.  The series is connected with 4 courses from 3 different colleges in addition to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.  Attendance each Thursday is expected to be around 100 people as the enrollment in the 4 courses are full (and the series will not be videotaped.)

Last fall, the SSC suggested an MOU with the Office of Sustainability regarding the hiring of a curriculum specialist to work one-on-one with faculty to integrate sustainability into the curriculum.  The OS submitted a letter of inquiry for committee response on January 27, 2012.

The Krannert Center for Performing Arts is seeking funding from the SSC for solar installations on their building.  They will be submitting a full proposal to SSC in March, and they will work with sustainability staff to submit a DCEO grant application under the Program Year 2013 Renewable Energy Production Program.

Office of Sustainability staff spent some time reviewing recruiting materials that is sent out by admissions.  Efforts are underway to determine the best place to highlight sustainability in these publications.

ECI (Environmental Change Institute) provided Facilities and Services with a list of 25 potential buildings for real-time meter upgrades.

SSC allocated $100,000 to the Illini Union Revolving Loan Pool.

From: Thomas Ferrarell [mailto:tjferrarell@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2012 10:27 PM
To: Allen, Amy E; Beverage, McKenzie; Johnston, Morgan B
Subject: Re: Weatherization

I met with Dean, and I e-mailed all the groups, I'll send Julie a copy. I'll need to stop by McKenzie's office early this week to get their documents back so they can begin working on their lists. I'll also touch base with the additional buildings tomorrow morning before giving the teams their next assignments.

Dean gave me a new timeline. He would like the recommendation lists by February 1st. He'll give the lists to people that will find the money values for the line items. He estimates that will take roughly 2 weeks. Once that is done, we will meet with all the team leaders and have a conversation about how to best use the $50,000. We were going to set that meeting somewhere in the ball park of February 20th. So right around then is when we'll be done.

-Thomas Ferrarell

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Amy Allen <allen16@illinois.edu> wrote:

Hey Tom,
       Were you able to get in touch w the teams about doing more buildings & presentations to Dean? Just an FYI, SECS' temporary weatherization group leader is Julie Fry(<fry6@illinois.edu>).
Best,
Amy