A group of seniors completed the attached report for the Art and Design Building, for rooftop solar.  They recommended a flexible solar material, with micro-inverters.  The Art and Design department is interested in working with a student in the fall to seek funding for the rooftop solar from the Student Sustainability Committee.

The final reports for the six student projects are attached here.

This program was approved by the Senate of the Urbana-Champaign Campus at its Sept. 21, 2015, meeting, and enrolled its first cohort of students in late fall 2015.

Many students aren’t exposed to the broad and detailed aspects of CEE until a summer intern opportunity or it could be as late as their senior level course work. There is a great desire by faculty and among our students to bring more meaningful experiences, exploration, and context to CEE in the Freshman and Sophomore curricula. There have been recent changes to CEE195 to engage our entering student more into thinking about the different disciplines of CEE through invited speakers and selected case studies. CEE research and professional practices have traditionally been based on observation and then explanation through theoretical models. The goal of this new course would be an extension of the introductory CEE195 class with more emphasis on exploring CEE through presentations on current challenges and innovations in CEE, field trips to various area CEE infrastructure facilities giving students context about what civil engineers build, operate, and maintain, and sensing and experimental measurements of civil engineering quantities. A semester, team project will also be part of this new course which will be designed around providing students with several real problems facing the University of Illinois campus and allowing them to propose solutions. This project and experiment-based learning approach are integral to student connecting the importance of engineering fundamentals and experimental measurements and observations with solving future challenges in CEE.

Course Vision

The purpose of this course is to primarily give our freshman/sophomore level CEE students the opportunities to learn through hands on laboratory experimentation and field measurements, field trips to local infrastructure facilities, and lectures on current problems and innovative solutions facing civil and environmental engineering. Due to the many societal and infrastructure challenges in CEE, we want to motivate the next generation of engineers to solve these grand challenges, e.g., NAE Grand Challenges, through a project and experiment-based learning environment.

Course Genesis

The development of this course first began with a conversation with Dr. Jack Dempsey of F&S, who was interested in offering a campus-wide course to students of the challenges facing campus infrastructure especially as it relates to sustainability as well as F&S connecting faculty and students who could propose and possibly offer solutions to some of these challenges. After a few meetings, it was obvious that most of the topics in this course would be most applicable to civil and environmental engineers and it could find a permanent and thriving home in the CEE department, and be an excellent class for freshmen/sophomore level students.

Course Objective

This course will expose and instruct the students about the broad areas of CEE disciplines through lectures, experimental measurements, and field trips and link them with challenges facing the civil infrastructure on the University of Illinois campus and in the local community. This course is a follow up course to CEE195 to provide further insight into the practical application of multi-disciplinary civil engineering themes through lectures, project and experiment-based learning, and field trips. This course complements other key courses in the CEE department and will strengthen student’s idea of challenges in civil engineering to assist society and the environment, foster interdisciplinary work during the undergraduate experience. Collaboration with the University of Illinois Facilities and Services Division will further strengthen this class as a living, learning laboratory with relevant problems to solve, data to collect, measurements to make, and the need for interdisciplinary experts.

Course Format and Implementation

The long-term course goal is to provide a bridge class for freshman/sophomore students in CEE linking the introductory CEE195 class to the introductory courses in the various CEE specialty areas such as structures, transportation, materials, hydrology, sustainability, etc. This course will engage our undergraduate students during a sensitive time in their education in order to retain, inspire, and motivate (or even attract) them so that they can make a large impact on societal infrastructure challenges. It is anticipated that this course would become a permanent, required class for freshman/sophomores, i.e., CEE203 in the Fall 2015. This 2-hour course will be fully implemented over a 3-year period starting with limited enrollment in the Fall 2013 as a one hour class, a 2-hour restricted enrollment class in the Fall 2014 with the laboratory and field sensing/ measurements content being added, open enrollment in Fall 2015 for all CEE students, and mandatory enrollment in Fall 2016 for all CEE freshman or sophomore. A fixed number of class slots will be reserved for other engineering and campus disciplines to further broaden and promote the interdisciplinary nature of solving future CEE challenges. The following subsections provide a brief description of the course evolution.

It was a really pleasant experience working with you and Ethel. I appreciate your guide and assistance during the whole semester and I am looking forward to working with you again in the future.

Early wish for Christmas!

Sicong

U of I F&S Trial Crosswalk between the Business Instructional Facility (BIF) and Wohlers Hall

In recent years, pedestrian safety on-campus has become a growing concern at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U of I). One such issue was raised by U of I’s College of Business, specifically on the frequency of pedestrians jaywalking between the Business Instructional Facility (BIF) and Wohlers Hall, just south of the intersection at Sixth Street and Gregory Drive. Using funding from the College of Business, U of I’s Facility & Services (F&S) implemented a temporary mid-block crosswalk in the area on September 22, 2014.

In order to assess if this temporary crosswalk should be installed permanently, a survey was created by 2 Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS) James Scholars (Sicong Fang and Ethel Liao) with the guidance of U of I F&S employees (Morgan Johnston, Stacey DeLorenzo, and Roland White). The survey collected over 500 electronic responses from the perspectives of pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers, and bus drivers in the affected area for 2 weeks from October 31 - November 14, 2014. Survey participants included U of I students, staff, faculty, and guests; they were contacted via targeted email newsletters (departmental, eweek, F&S, and CUMTD), official U of I social media channels (Facebook and Twitter for F&S, the College of Business, and CUMTD), and on-site surveying with iPads by the LAS James Scholar students. Questions on the survey were based on a 1 to 5 number scale and allowed respondents to explain why they rated each item as they did. Topics covered included how perceptions on safety, convenience, and traffic flow changed upon the temporary crosswalk’s installation; there was also an area for respondents to suggest other problematic transportation spots on-campus and how the process F&S went through for this crosswalk may be improved for future projects. Final analytics on collected data were done by Sicong with the help of the summarization function in Google Forms.

These students are working with Morgan Johnston for LAS Honors College credit in the James Scholar program for Fall 2014.

• Ethel Liao – BIF crosswalk
• Sicong Fang – BIF crosswalk
• Jack Carrera – Bike Census
• Cara Ruan – Communication about Climate Change
• Vicki Prince – tree campus
• Ricki Runions – tree campus

Many thanks to Jeevaka Somaratna for his help as the teaching assistant for the first year of the CEE 398 Project Based Learning course!  The new TAs for Fall 2014 are Paul Littleton and Alek Heilstedt.

Courses and Syllabi

Participants in the Prairie Project were inspired to include sustainability in their courses.  Below you will find revised syllabi and some example assignments with clear linkages to the Sustainability Learning Outcomes.  In addition, there are resources from other universities that offer similar curriculum workshops and national organizations.  We encourage you to integrate sustainability into your course.

BADM 532 Sustainable Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces

BADM 533 Sustainable Product Design and Business Plan Development

Example Syllabi for Sustainability-Infused Courses:

Courses of the 2010 Prairie Project Resource People and Participants

NRES 285: Wetland Delineation and Classification (PDF)

NRES 287 ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY – SPRING 2010 (PDF)

Conservation and Ecosystem Health (PDF)

Ecotoxicology of the Northern Hemisphere (PDF)

IB 105: Environmental Biology Fall 2010(PDF) 
IB 105: Environmental Biology Spring 2010 (PDF)

Political Science - Learning Outcomes - Introduction to International Relations (PDF)
Political Science 280 Fall 2010 (PDF)
Political Science 280 Fall 2009 (PDF)

LAS 101 Fall 2010: Environmental Sustainability & World Citizenship (PDF)
LAS 101: Homework 5 on ecological footprinting and environmental sustainability (PDF)

CEE 498: Multilateral Environmental Agreements Fall 2010 (PDF)
CEE 498: Multilateral Environmental Agreements (PDF)

CEE 535: Environmental Systems Analysis II Sustainable & Resilient Environmental & Water Resource Systems (PDF)
CEE 535: Spring 2011 Upper Embarras Project Terms (PDF)

UP 204, Chicago: Planning and Urban Life, Spring 2011 (PDF)
UP 204, Chicago: Planning and Urban Life: Course Description (PDF)
UP 204, Chicago: Planning and Urban Life: Overview (PDF)

External Examples:

Association for the Advanceemnt of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) examples of courses on campus sustainability (PDF)

AASHE course inventories*

AASHE list of Web sites with example syllabi*

Ponderosa Project Web site, containing course syllabi and other resources

Piedmont Project syllabi and course modules

* These sites require a members-only login to the AASHE site. The University of Illinois is an institutional member and you can create an account for free with a uiuc.edu (and hopefully Illinois.edu) e-mail address.