Entomology Today released an article highlighting the strategy and benefits behind pairing solar energy with pollinator habitats. Supporting its claims with UIUC and Iowa State initiatives, the article discusses content such as the scorecard approach, efficiency of the positioning of planted vegetation, and restrictions from geographic locations.

Read the article on Entomology Today. Or, refer to the PDF of the article in the attached files.

Jessica Nicholson, one of the authors of ISG Sustainability Gen-Ed Requirement Resolution, sent the following updates on 5/12/21:

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Good Morning,

I hope you all are well. Thank you all for expressing interest in the resolution to create a Sustainability Gen-Ed requirement. Towards the beginning of the semester, I shared this resolution with each of you and most of you let me know that you would like to stay updated on the status of the resolution. Many of you have endorsed this resolution as faculty members, sponsored as members of ISG or UC senate, or provided additional support and guidance. That being said, I appreciate all of your support and involvement.

I have a few updates on the progress of our resolution and I want to invite you all to participate in a working group that will draft a formal proposal based on our original resolution. The purpose of this proposal is explained below, so please read through and fill out the attached form if you are interested in being involved. Feel free to share this message and this form with anyone else who you think may be interested as well.

Sustainability Gen-Ed Proposal Working Group Interest Form: https://forms.gle/dfKfTKwaocMpKovi8 

We have added some supporting materials to the appendix of our original Sustainability Gen-Ed Requirement resolution, so the updated resolution is attached below for your reference. I also recently gave a brief informational presentation to the UC senate about our initiative. This presentation contains some valuable information about our next steps and plan to write a proposal, so I have attached the slides for your reference if you want to take a look.

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rMDHj0NpwaJR8TSPg7o9WsONWnnXDGEoEvWIFHwvXK4/edit?usp=sharing

ISG Senators Dana, Creen, Tyeese and I have consulted with iSEE, the Gen-Ed Board, and the Educational Policy and Senate Executive Committees of the UC Senate to determine how best to bring our Sustainability Gen-Ed resolution to the UC senate floor as a binding piece of legislation. Based on input from all of these groups, we have decided to draft a formal proposal that adds critical information to our original resolution.

Unlike our original resolution, this proposal will contain sections that detail steps the University must take to implement the Sustainability Gen-Ed requirement. Our proposal will include logistical considerations such as resource reallocation to courses that fulfill the requirement and the needs of each academic unit. These additional sections should minimize confusion and concerns over the implementability of our Sustainability Gen-Ed requirement. In order to write these sections into our full proposal, we need to meet with each academic unit to understand their specific needs and determine how this requirement should be implemented within their unit. We also need to determine factors such as current capacity, estimated seat demand, and additional seats needed among courses that fulfill the Sustainability Gen-Ed requirement.

These considerations are critical for a new Gen-Ed requirement, so they will be the main focus of our working group when we write the proposal. We welcome you all to join our working group, and we particularly value any experience you can share regarding course logistics to help with the considerations above. Please fill out the form above if you want to get involved in our working group or are interested. Let me know if you have any questions or comments, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you!

Jessica

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Jessica J Nicholson

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Class of 2022

College of Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

Illinois Student Government | Engineering Senator, Chair of Internal Affairs

Illini Rotaract Service Organization | District Rotaract Representative

The 350 square-foot pollinator garden at the National Soybean Research Center is planted! The weather was beautiful and we had a fun time hearing plant stories and learning about our very own native species from Layne Knoche. Check out our Facebook post here. 

Huge thank you to Layne Knoche, Eliana Brown, and the whole Red Oak Rain Garden team, Eric Green, Michael Dzianott and the Red Bison team, Joey Kreiling, Blake Cedergren, and the From the Ground Up team, and all friends who helped out with the planting. 

Stay tuned for more fun! 

The Spring 2021 iSEE Quarterly Update (iQ) was released with the following message from Madhu Khanna, the Interim Director of iSEE:

Dear Colleagues,

Attached, please find the Spring 2021 “iQ” – the quarterly update from the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE).

It has remained a busy time here on our campus, as we bolstered our outstanding Congress and Critical Conversation events with the addition of two experts — activist Catherine Coleman Flowers and nuclear expert Denia Djokić — who are serving as Levenick iSEE virtual resident scholars.

Thanks to the support of experts Eban Goodstein, Tami Craig Schilling, and Harriet Hentges, our new Environmental Leadership Program workshops for undergraduates were a rousing success.

And we were so pleased to have a mix of virtual and in-person Earth Month events to engage students, faculty, and staff from across our campus!

Please take a quick look at those updates and more in this six-page “iQ.” For more regular news, please sign up for our E-newsletter at https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/5031776.

Best wishes for the summer,

Madhu

Brent Lewis provided the following update to the Land and Water iCAP Team:

One of the iCAP objectives under Land and Water (4.2.1) involves a service learning project to better understand our historic and current tree canopy percentages.  I just wanted to reach out and say that I’ve worked it out with our NRES faculty member, Jennifer Fraterrigo that she will work with her students in the fall to prepare this analysis.  As our last 2 tree surveys were generally on 2008 and 2018, they will take a look at those years and put together an analysis.  Over this time, I believe we lost between 10-12% of our tree inventory on campus.  It is my thought that this loss in older trees would have meant a much larger loss in actual tree canopy.  This would generally equate to a loss of habitat, increase in ambient temperatures and increase in rainwater that would otherwise have been used by the trees.  I have been wanting to get a handle on the loss as I push for resources to replace what we had, as well as enhance what we will have for the future.

Halie Collins is the officially the next President of the Illinois Solar Decathlon (ISD) team! In her new position, she will be leading the efforts to form the next Build Team and Design Team. 

The outgoing president, Shashikiran Duraisamy, shared this note of thanks with Morgan White at F&S: "The Illinois Solar Decathlon team is extremely grateful for all the support that you have provided in the last two years. Your support was extremely valuable for our success and to support and contribute towards University’s sustainability initiatives. We are so much grateful for the Facilities and Services’ decision to allow ISD to store our construction materials in the Physical Plant Services Building and the constant support that the Receiving team (Dave Boehm & Jim McGuire) provided us to access the materials with ease. This was a lifesaver for our project. I look forward to the continued relationship between Illinois Solar Decathlon and Facilities & Services."