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.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Sustainability Working Advisory Team on Transportation

Date:                12-17-14

To:                   Sustainability Working Advisory Team on Transportation

                        Wojtek Chodzo-Zajko, Professor of Kinesiology and Community Health

                        Bumsoo Lee, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

                        Richard Langlois, Senior eLearning Professional, CITES

                        Peter Varney, Director of Transportation and Automotive Services, Facilities & Services

                        Grace Kyung, Student Member

                        Justin Licke, Student Member  

From:               Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko

Re:       Agenda for Friday December 19, 2014, 1:00 pm meeting 128 Freer

1.         Feedback from Pam Voitik (F&S) – Appendix One

2.         Feedback from Michelle Wahl (Parking) – Appendix Two

3.         Discussion of version 2 2015 iCAP Report (pgs. 26-30) - attached

4.         SWAT strategy cost estimates

5.         Other items

Due to lack of an Arbor Day Celebration in 2014, and additional work that needs to be completed, the application for Tree Campus USA will be delayed to the 2015 calendar year.  Revised schedule for completion is attached here.

Dear Transportation SWATeam,

Morgan and I had a very nice discussion with Pam Voitik at F&S late last week, and I wanted to brief you on some of the key points as they relate to the iCAP revisions.

1) F&S is in favor of hiring a full-time "Active Transportation Coordinator," and having that person report to the Transportation Demand Management Coordinator (Stacey DeLorenzo).  "Active Transportation" (as you probably all know, but I didn't!) is industry lingo for all transportation except single-occupancy-vehicles.  So this person would be responsible for mode shift, the Bike Plan, and so forth...basically the last two bullet points in item #6 on page 30 of the current draft.

2) Pete Varney and his team would be the sensible locus for efforts related to shifting the fleet more towards EVs and bicycles, and exploring renewable fuels for the fleet.  [The second and third bullet points in item #6 on page 30.]

3) The first bullet point, about air travel, is outside of the scope of F&S, and should perhaps be a focus of iSEE or another entity in the domain of the Chancellor or Vice Chancellors.

4) The Campus Bicycle Plan is essentially finalized now, but F&S is working on ascertaining exactly what entity should formally approve it. 

Pam's suggestion is that it should be approved by the campus leadership (rather than by F&S), but the responsibility for implementing it should be with F&S.  This would give the Plan more authority/heft than if it were approved by F&S alone. There is reason to hope that this approval will be finalized before the iCAP.

Cheers,

Ben

Dear Tim,

Some bad news to report.  The Revolving Loan Fund committee elected to defer consideration of the funding for the biomass boiler, because they were concerned that the operational and maintenance issues were not yet worked out.  This is not as bad of news as I first thought, because the RLF process is going to be revamped in the spring to be more of a "rolling deadline" process, so we should be able to go back to them sometime in the spring and get a quick response.

Given the delay in RLF funding, it seems to make sense to delay our proposal to ICECF until July.  Another important consideration here is that the North Campus Parking Deck Solar project is evidently going to apply to ICECF in January, and there is at least some concern about submitting two proposals from campus in the same round.  Yet another consideration is that upon reviewing the ICECF form, we noticed that they are looking for a well-developed educational plan...and we have not really spent any time working on that.

So I'm afraid we are in a bit of limbo here, until we get the O&M issues resolved and the MOU with F&S finalized. Hopefully we can tackle that in January, so that we're ready to go back to RLF as soon as their process re-opens.

At least we've finally made great headway on the engineering work, and will have some real budgetary numbers to work with soon...!

Cheers,

Ben

The attached link provide a pretty good summary of a typical reheat system used in buildings.

http://www.mge.com/images/PDF/Brochures/business/ReheatSystemForCommercialBuildingsFactSheet.pdf

I had some time this morning and did a super rough estimate of the number of waste bin on campus.  This is a simple extrapolation from the bins per square foot in the waste audits that ISTC did.  For larger size recycling bins, an extremely rough estimate comes to about 8800 landfill and recycling bins in campus buildings. - Morgan

Congzhu Ruan's report on Climate Change issues - part one.  Part two will be produced in Spring 2015.  She said, "Here is the draft of the report,it basically covers all the points but I plan to do some editing (to correct typos and grammar if there's some, perhaps add some new points if I find some!) this winter to make it better."

Dear Swat team:

Attached is the chapter on Agriculture, Land Use, Food, and Sequestration (ALUFS) that is part of the draft 2015 iCAP compilation.  The whole document is about 70 pages and covers all areas of campus energy; I would be happy to forward it to you if you need something to read over Christmas.  Our chapter, however, is our immediate concern.  I ask each of you to review it with the idea that it can be edited, changed, as the final report will not be completed until March with the Chancellor to sign the final plan in April.  So, there is time but the review process is extensive, and we’re the first step.  

I would like to meet next Friday, the 19th, to discuss this chapter and our suggestion for revisions.  I know this a busy time and some of you may not be available, but rather than the whole doddle poll thing, just send me your availability for Friday Dec. 19th by tomorrow, and I’ll pick at time that is most convenient.  

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

Bruce