Michael McKelvey, Miriam Keep, and Sarthak Prasad met to discuss modifications to how projects are associated with recommendations and whether there are any modifications we'd like to make to the current setup.

Discussion/Decisions

• Recommendations:
  • Leave Associated Project(s) field as is - optional, allowing multiple projects to be associated
  • Add new field linked to a project where future updates can be found (naming it is tricky - "Further updates"? "See further updates"? "See additional updates"? "See ongoing updates"?) - optional, allows only 1 project
• iCAP Teams:
  • Add Associated Project(s) field - optional, allows multiple project to be associated
  • On any projects associated with an iCAP Team, show all the recommendations for that team (will be used on iCAP Team projects)

TODOs

• ✔️ Add new Further Updates field to Recommendation content type
• ✔️ Add new Associated Project(s) field to iCAP Team content type
• ✔️ Add new Recommendations listing to projects associated with an iCAP Team

Agenda

• SSC project embedding
  • Discussions since our last meeting:
    • Discussion about reporting Bike Fee funding - April 15, 2024 (Sarthak, Michael)
    • Discussion about SSC projects in iCAP Portal - May 3, 2024 (Miriam, Codie, Michael)
• Recommendations
  • Discussions since our last meeting:
    • Discussion about iCAP recommendations - April 15, 2024 (Miriam, Sarthak, Michael)
• Power Search: Projects
  • Add CSV download option
• Archiving projects

Discussion/Decisions

• The idea of Power Searches is popular - will add additional content types and filters. Suggestions welcome!
• Archiving projects
  • Decided to start with a simple Archived/Not Archived checkbox or dropdown list (do we have better terminology than "Not Archived"? Public and Visible are already used in other contexts). Michael will try it out on a dev site and report back next meeting.
  • Rejected ideas:
    • Add "Archived" to Visibility options - seems distinct from Public/Private, plus we want the option to still show projects publicly, just default to hiding them in most listings.
    • Add "Archived" to Project Status options - this mixes the status of the project itself with whether we still want it to show up on the site; e.g., cannot represent both "Cancelled" and "Archived" simultaneously
• The Phantom Menace is in theaters this weekend in honor of Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you) and Codie's birthday (5/5)! See it, you will.

Agenda

• Project Updates tasks
  • New "To Do Item(s)" field - is this single field what you were thinking? Would a set of multiple one-line fields be better? Or something else?
    • Q: Show field in Pending Tasks listing?
    • Q: Who should be able to view the content of this field? Other task-related fields are restricted to iCAP Admins & iCAP Moderators, but if you want to assign a task to a non-admin or non-moderator, they'll need to be able to view this task field (and the other fields) in order to view the task. Should we expand the scope of who can view task-related fields? At least add iCAP Clerks, or perhaps even all logged in users?
  • Q: Also add field for tagging iCAP Portal user(s) as responsible party for tracking tasks and updating when they're completed? (note: separate from "Assigned To" field which allows free editing and doesn't associate with user accounts
    • Q: What should this field be called?
    • Q: Should it allow multiple people to be entered?
    • Q: Add a My Tasks page where logged in users can view all tasks assigned to them?
• Recommendations
  • Discussions since our last meeting:
    • Discussion about iCAP recommendations - March 13, 2024 (Michael, Miriam)
    • Discussion about SSC projects in iCAP Portal - March 22, 2024 (Michael, Miriam, Morgan)
  • Test drive new feature on dev site before porting to live:
    • All Recommendations
    • All Recommendation Updates
    • Add a Recommendation
    • Add a Recommendation Update
• SSC Projects
  • Discussions since our last meeting:
    • Discussion about SSC projects in iCAP Portal - March 13, 2024 (Miriam, Codie, Michael)
    • Discussion about SSC projects in iCAP Portal - March 22, 2024 (Miriam, Codie, Michael)
  • Demo of SSC project embedding (TEST site) which includes a map which responds to filters
  • Questions:
    • We've tweaked how we're planning to represent SSC Projects using the iCAP Portal a bit:
      • Allow multiple semesters of funding info to be entered on a project (collections of fields, rather than fields directly associated with a project)
        • Pros: SSC-specific solution; minimal complexity; fairly straightforward way people entering the information would think of it
        • Cons: SSC-specific solution, so not easily generalizable if we want to use it for something else in the future; requires each of SSC's funding projects to be associated with exactly one iCAP Portal Project - is that a concern?
    • How do we handle multiple locations for a project? Show the SSC project at all of them? Just the first one? Have a way to specify? (could this get difficult for projects with SSC funding multiple times, if the locations are different each time?)
• Archiving projects - deferred to next meeting

Discussion/Decisions

• SSC Projects:
  • There was general agreement that the recommended approach will work. Reed affirmed based on his knowledge of the SSC projects, he didn't see a problem with mapping each SSC project to a single iCAP Portal project
  • Miriam encouraged documentation of clear guidelines for handling special cases
  • Locations: don't use all project locations, that will be too many and overwhelm the map. Codie suggested adding a new location field for SSC to specify location(s), typically just the location of the organization receiving the funding
  • Funding: Sarthak reiterated interest in using the funding feature for the Bike Fee. Michael will schedule a meeting with Sarthak to discuss further details.
    • See meeting notes: Discussion about reporting Bike Fee funding - April 15, 2024
  • Michael will schedule a meeting with Codie and Miriam to discuss further details regarding locations and funding.
    • See meeting notes: Discussion about SSC projects in iCAP Portal - May 3, 2024
• Recommendations:
  • The group generally liked the direction things were headed
  • Need to resolve a question about the difference between project(s) that a recommendation is linked to initially (e.g. the project that spawned the recommendation, if any) vs. the project that comes out of a recommendation, if any. Do recommendations ever have both? Do they always have at least one?
  • Michael will schedule a meeting with Miriam and Sarthak to discuss further.
    • ​​​​​​​See meeting notes: Discussion about iCAP recommendations - April 15, 2024

The Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) Working Group (iWG) recently approved recommendation Edu009 from the Education iCAP Team to update College of Business course descriptions to reflect the sustainability content.

This recommendation aligns with Objective 6.2 of the iCAP 2020: Establish a comprehensive online repository for courses and academic programs with sustainability content. 

The College of Business shared their action plan on completing the approved recommendation (attached).

This will be followed up on in the fall to ensure the proper implementation of the recommendation.

This project name was "Fossil Fuels Divestment" which is a misstatement because the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign does not have direct authority over the investments at the UI Foundation.  To clarify the goal of this objective in the 2020 iCAP, I updated the project name to be "Fossil Fuels Divestment - Support Letter."  I also provided more details in the project description, and added the full text from the iCAP 2020 document in the background section of this project page. ~Morgan

Michael McKelvey, Miriam Keep, and Morgan White met to finalize the discussion of how to structure iCAP Recommendations. We came to an agreement on the structure which we diagrammed online. Recommendations will be patterned after Metrics. If a Recommendation update warrants a Project Update, that will need to be added manually; it will not happen automatically with this approach.

Summary of structure:

• A Recommendation can be associated with a Project and an Objective and contains some additional general information
• A Recommendation can have many "tracking" updates including at least a status, date, and some notes

Detailed structure:

• iCAP Team
  • Title
  • Description
  • Theme [references one of our 10 themes, optional]
• Recommendation
  • Title
  • iCAP Team [references an iCAP Team]
  • Supplanted by [references another Recommendation, optional]
  • Associated Project(s) [references a Project, optional]
  • Objective [references an iCAP Objective, optional]
  • Description / "Specific actions/policy recommendations"
• Recommendation Tracking
  • Title
  • Recommendation [references a Recommendation]
  • Description
  • Date (M/D/Y field)
  • Status (dropdown list)
  • Internal Notes
  • Public File(s)
  • Private File(s)
  • Next step (dropdown list)
  • Next step due date (M/D/Y field)

Additionally, we do not plan to use the iCAP Portal to collect Recommendation feedback - a shared Word Doc on Teams is more conducive to this process. Certain fields in a recommendation will be added to the iCAP Portal Recommendation, and the uploaded document will contain more details, including comments.

Hello, all. My name is Joy Scrogum and I’m a member of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) Technical Assistance Program (TAP). ISTC is working with F&S this fall to conduct waste audits of your buildings. Thank you to everyone who filled out the availability polls set up by Daphne Hulse, and to Daphne for gathering this information! I will be using the information you provided over the next few days to send representatives of each building an Outlook invitation for a walkthrough appointment with myself and my colleague, Zach Samaras, so be sure to watch your email inbox for those. Invitations will be for times on Monday, September 11, or Tuesday, September 12th. If the suggested time no longer works for you, please respond with suggested alternative times on the 11th or 12th as soon as possible, and we’ll do our best to accommodate you. Our goal is to schedule all walkthroughs on these two days to minimize travel expenses, so we really appreciate your cooperation. We are tentatively planning to conduct the building waste audits during the third week of October.

Your walkthrough appointment with ISTC will take approximately half an hour of your time for each building involved. We will be interested in viewing the types and placement of trash and recycling bins, along with any associated signage throughout the building, and observing trash rooms, if applicable. We’ll want to fully understand the flow of landfill-bound and recyclable materials in your building, and the processes involved in collection from your perspective. We want to hear about any challenging materials and/or issues with contamination faced within your building, and we’d be happy to hear any suggestion you may have for improvements. We will also describe our audit procedures and logistics related to the collection of samples for the audits.

We realize that building service workers are key stakeholders and are working with F&S to get a representative to share their perspective on operations at your building as well. When you receive your Outlook invitation, if you think there are additional individuals from your team who should be involved, feel free to forward the invitation to them. Please also edit your response to the invitation--or let us know in a separate email--where we should plan to connect with you on the day of the walkthrough (e.g., “just inside the main entrance on the north side of the building,” “outside at the loading dock,” or something similar).

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. My office phone number is in my signature below, and to assist with communication on the days of the walkthroughs, my cell phone number is 217-979-7345. Thank you in advance for taking time out of your busy schedules to speak with us and show us your facilities!

Sincerely,

JOY SCROGUM

Hello, All. In preparation for the campus building waste audits next week (Oct. 23-27), attached are instruction sheets for F&S BSWs at buildings that will be included in the study (BIF, CIF, Noyes Lab, & RAL). Separate, similar sheets will be sent to building contacts for those buildings that coordinate their own BSWs (Illini Union, ARC, and Allen Hall/LAR). Daphne had previously suggested sending these to both her and Pete since Pete might be out of the office. Macie, since I see Pete has an automatic email reply indicating that he’ll be out of town through the 30th, I’ve copied you as well; if there’s anyone else who should receive these in Pete’s absence, please feel free to forward the BSW sheets to them. Daphne and Macie, If you or any key stakeholders involved in communicating with BSWs have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. In case you need it during the week of the audits, my cell phone number is 217-979-7345.

The ISTC team will plan to deploy gaylords to all buildings on Monday morning (Oct. 23). We’ll begin collecting samples from those gaylords as early as mid-day Monday—see the attached sampling schedule as well. The goal is to collect samples from each building for at least 2 days (dark green on the spreadsheet) with an optional third day (lighter green on the spreadsheet) if that’s needed to obtain adequate poundage for representative samples (unlikely but built into the plan nonetheless). BSWs are being asked to put trash and recycling into the gaylords first for as long as they’re present at the building, reverting to normal dumpsters/collection containers whenever the gaylords are full. To be clear, if, say, on Monday evening BSWs fill the gaylords up, they should not assume that they can ignore the gaylords on Tuesday evening. In that hypothetical situation, ISTC will have removed samples from the gaylords before Tuesday evening, so the BSWs should find that there’s room in the gaylords on Tuesday evening, and once again, use those first until they’re full before reverting to using the normal dumpsters.  I think we’ve conveyed that on the BSW sheets, but in case any of them ask any of you for clarification, I wanted to point this out. We’ll remove gaylords from buildings once adequate samples are in hand. When the gaylords are gone, BSWs can resume all normal operations.

The trailer is being dropped off at the Waste Transfer Station (WTS) this Friday, Oct. 20th, and it will be picked up on Monday, Oct. 30th, as previously discussed with Shawn. Daphne, although we had asked you and Dan previously if F&S might have a truck we could borrow for sample collection, we were able to reserve one from the ISTC/PRI fleet for the entire week for that purpose. As previously discussed with Shawn, ISTC is providing the gaylords, but for the pallets beneath the various gaylords, we’ll plan to pull from the stockpile at the WTS.

As Daphne is aware, there is a sign-up for volunteers to help with the sort at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F48ADAA2DA5FD0-44917798-uiuc#/. Thus far, no one has signed up; students often tend to wait until the last minute to sign up for things. Daphne, have you shared the link with the lists you had mentioned? I noticed that it was not included in the Eweek, so if you submitted it, they didn’t include it in this week’s edition, which would have been ideal. Thanks to Daphne, this did get included in the most recent edition of the iSEE newsletter. I posted it to the waste reduction and recycling Facebook group, to the PRI Sustainability Microsoft Team, and sent it via email to all ISTC staff based in Champaign (our director followed up with his own email encouraging folks to participate). I’ll also see if the Office of Civic Life will post it on their volunteer opportunities page. Please share the link with anyone or any group you think might be interested, especially interns or students involved in campus sustainability. We’ll have all ISTC zero-waste team hands on deck for this (including a new hourly employee we happily just hired) but having some additional volunteers would be helpful. And, because it’s common to have no-shows whenever volunteers are involved, the more we can spread the word, the better.

Thanks to everyone, and our team looks forward to next week’s audit!

JOY SCROGUM