Hi Ali,

Great to hear you are seeing milkweed emerging!  I walked the field a couple of weeks ago and at that time they were not coming up yet.  I was also looking to see if any of the milkweed seeds dispersed in January were coming up but again, I think I was too early.  I plan to get out there again soon to check those areas to see if any of the seeds are germinating.  Attached is the map, areas highlighted in red are where the milkweed seeds were added.

My direction to the Grounds mowing crew is not to mow the low mow field until late Nov-December at the earliest or in late February, early March of 2026.  If we happen to have a breakthrough of noxious weeds between now and then we will strategically spot treat or spot mow the outbreak area.  Moving forward, I instructed that before any such action is taken, I must approve it.  If I agree action needs to be taken, I will reach out to you to discuss what we are seeing and what measures we feel need to be taken.

I like the idea of registering the field as a Monarch Waystation but I will have to check to see if that is something we/you can pursue and let you know.

Thanks,

Ryan

From: Lewis, Ali 
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2025 11:47 AM
Subject: Low Mow Zone Field by CRC: Monarch Waystation

Dear Ryan and Grounds Crew,

There is milkweed emerging in the field south of the Children’s Research Field. Last summer, this low mow zone field was mowed twice, removing most of the milkweed for which the migrating Monarch Butterfly population relies. Of course, we study the monarch population and field each year and are eager to have the field grow over the summer and through the fall. We know you have noxious weeds/invasive species to contend with on your end.

What can we do to help the field grow over the summer/fall? How can we best communicate about it being mowed after the fall  Monarch Migration comes through?

Is it possible to pursue the field area as a registered Monarch Waystation? If so, we could take the lead on that, pending agreement from whomever we need to ask including Ryan? https://www.monarchwatch.org/waystations/

Thanks for thinking with the children/teachers at Uni Primary about this special area adjacent to the school. The field is a true source of delight and freedom for our small school, and we appreciate being in communication with you all about its care.

Sincerely,

Ali Lewis & Uni Primary School Community

-- 

Agenda

• Michael's updates
  • Archived projects:
    • Added link to Archived Projects on Projects page
    • Hid archived projects from Theme page hierarchical listings
    • Left archived projects in Project Family sidebar section, for now - may revisit that decision in the future
  • Removed Project Status from hierarchical listing on theme pages and full project hierarchy listing
  • Expand/Collapse buttons added to Project Updates listings. See examples:
    • All Project Updates
    • Project Updates search results
    • Project Updates for collection: Monarch Butterfly projects
    • Projects Updates for Sustainability iCAP Portal
    • Projects Updates for key objective: 2.1 Energy Planning Document
    • Projects Updates for theme: Education
    • Projects Updates for place: Campus Instructional Facility
  • SSC Project embed code is working on SSC site!
  • Resolved an issue with some information connected to Projects (locations, funding info) and Metrics (targets, tracking) losing their connections to those projects.
    • Information still in database, so I was able to restore connections
    • It took some careful and tedious effort to track this down and restore the connections.
• Google Analytics numbers drop
  • Steeper than others have experienced
  • Probably some combination of less traffic and old analytics possibly not excluding bots/crawlers as effectively
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics (see notes from Sarthak & Michael's discussion)

Discussion

• Morgan went through full list of projects to find ones to archive
  • Need to have a larger conversation about what archiving does at some point
• Morgan's intern Zach is doing a couple things:
  • Filling in recent years of campus water data
  • Looking for duplicate metrics
  • Will mark duplicate metrics as duplicate, then work with Michael on deleting them
• Linking SSC Projects to iCAP Portal projects
  • Quinn and Helen working on making sure all connections between SSC Projects and iCAP Portal projects are included
  • What to do about SSC Projects without an existing iCAP Portal project?
  • Quinn: 70-80% of SSC Projects have a direct or indirect connection to an iCAP Portal project; a few are really hard to find a connection
  • Morgan: every SSC Project should be connected to an iCAP Portal project. Quinn will keep working on connections, then this summer we can figure out what to do about the outliers
  • Would be helpful to add column sorting to SSC Projects table
  • SSC Projects listing goes back to 2008; aren't there projects from earlier than 2008?
    • That's all Helen had access to in SSC's master spreadsheet
    • Didn't include cancelled projects
    • Morgan will look for info about projects before 2008
    • Sheri may also have info about those projects
    • Some info about older SSC projects may be available in Project Updates (e.g. Projects Updates for Wind Turbine Generator(s) on South Farms)
• Recommendations:
  • Morgan will have a student work on adding Recommendations
  • Once they're complete, we should remove the manually maintained recommendation links in Projects
  • Next step: show Recommendations & Recommendation Updates on Project pages; Michael will work on a draft version to share
• Going through project hierarchy: adding/updating information to descriptions for Header projects
• Google Analytics numbers drop
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics

TODOs

• ✅ SSC Projects:
  • ✅ Add column click sorting to SSC Projects table
  • ✅ Add ability to add/edit description to SSC Projects listing page
• ✅ Show Recommendations & Recommendation Updates on Project pages
• Investigate Google Analytics for April 3 - large spike in visits/users
• Investigate how to hide Project Status from certain projects which aren't actually projects - they're meant to act as parents for other projects (remaining from last meeting)
  • e.g. add a "Header" Project Status which hides the status

The iCAP Education Team met on Monday, April 7th from 4-5 pm via Teams. First we shared information about the upcoming events during Earth Month. Then we discussed project updates that team members had including AASHE stars data collection, sustainability language in course descriptions, progress towards a sustainability Gen-Ed requirement, a sustainability literacy assessment and outgoing survey, iSEE partnered internship opportunities, and sustainability integration into study abroad. We also discussed student team member ideas like the possibility of composting on campus. The meeting minutes are attached. 

Sarthak Prasad introduced Zach to the iCAP portal and showed him how to do project updates.

RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the March 2025 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 3,443.1 Megawatt hours.The March 2025 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.

RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the February 2025 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 2,395.5 Megawatt hours.

The February 2025 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.

Safety and Efficiency in Fume Hood Selection

Laboratory fume hoods are critical in protecting laboratory personnel from chemical exposure; however, fume hoods may also be the largest energy consumers in a research university campus. The Grainger College of Engineering Office of Safety invites campus facilities, safety and laboratory personnel to an in-depth presentation on the latest developments in fume hood technologies, and how to leverage them to create the safest and most energy-efficient laboratories. More details and the registration link can be found at: https://emails.illinois.edu/newsletter/30/871793530.html

March 27, 12–1 pm • 3002 Electrical and Computer Engineering Building

Edward Chainani • Grainger College of Engineering

The Land and Water team met on March 7th, 2025, at 9 am on Teams this month. In this week's meeting, the team discussed prairie strips, sustainable water usage on campus, milkweed plantings for pollinators, and activities to participate in this coming Arbor Day. The agenda and notes from the meeting are linked below.