The next steps for the project progress would be to review the past BFU applications from 2011 - 2019 to understand the stage we as a university are at currently and would help to identify, compare and contrast the work across these timelines to improve the status and make recommendations after reviewing the feedback.
In the past weeks, Aparna reviewed the BFU Application to understand the scope of work, did research/literature review work, and familiarized herself with the current initiatives taken by the university at present to combat bike thefts. Moreover, she also had a conversation with a transportation staff from UCLA and ASU who had recently reached out to me on their ideas/approach on this topic for a qualitative aspect of this project. The same was also discussed with her capstone advisor, Prof. Lindsay Braun to go over the progress and find better clarity.
This week Aparna got in touch with the staff of transit services from Arizona State University to understand their approach to achieving the Gold BFU certification.
Sarthak and Aparna also had a quick overview of the materials shared and brainstormed ideas/recommendations to raise awareness in the campus community as well as keep bike thefts in mind.
The next steps would be to familiarize with the topic better, collect all the research materials and make notes/highlight the existing implementation, and make comments on these.
In this meeting, potential ideas for secured bicycle parking were discussed as ways to promote awareness among the campus community. A capstone proposal outlining the final objectives and deliverables was drafted and Sarthak helped support this discussion sharing an Excel sheet that has all of the goals, current status, and plans for the future of some mentioned ideas towards achieving the said objectives with challenges that are yet to be tackled.
This week, Aparna is going to try to get in touch with the transportation team from other universities that have achieved the Gold BFU status to gather some ideas specific to raising awareness about bike thefts. This would navigate the research better.
Aparna is also spending her initial time on the project learning about the Bike registration process and other initiatives that are already ongoing at UIUC to help understand the way forward. She also has access to the iCAP portal to update and document the weekly meetings to keep a track of the project progress.
Questions and doubts regarding the literature review done in the past week were discussed including a capstone report outline highlighting the main topics of research. More research work to follow in the coming week to help familiarize with the project's background. Aparna got contact information from the transportation department of UCLA and Arizona State University to discuss the project with their transportation team as the 2 universities have achieved the Gold BFU status and hoping to get a sense of direction or any leads on this. She is also in touch with Prof. Lindsay Braun who is her capstone advisor, and Briana Barr, Thomas Valencia, and Lily Wilcock from the City of Urbana who are working on similar projects.
The idea was to bring more concepts and recommendations for a bike-friendly university to the table. We might also try to involve the Student Sustainability Committee, which uses a comprehensive evaluative process to fund a project that incorporates student involvement and an ability to spark change on campus. Aparna would help identify a cause as a part of the bike-friendly project which would also serve as a student-led project to apply for the SSC funding. An excel sheet that charts out the current status of the project were shared by Sarthak for better clarity, which also includes feedback from BFU to help plan for the future and achieve the desired goal.
Three main objectives of the proposal would be -
An overall capstone proposal that outlines the said objectives and a work plan will be shared in the upcoming week. Access to the iCAP portal will be granted soon to chart out real-time updates and minutes of meetings.
I, Aparna Padmakumar from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning am pursuing a master’s degree with a concentration focus in the field of transportation and currently is looking to take up a potential capstone project with the transportation iCAP team hoping to contribute to better bicycle safety/access on the UIUC campus. After multiple discussions and meetings with Sarthak Prasad, the projects that I will be helping out with would be the ‘Bicycle Friendly University Status’ and ‘Reducing Bicycle Theft on Campus’ through the months of October until May. In today’s kick-off meeting (10/3/2022) previous data, studies, and information were shared with me for better clarity and expected to go through all the previously collected information on the iCap portal. Sarthak guided me through the 2022 Bicycle Friendly University (BFU) application to achieve Gold-level BFU certification and also the Bike at Illinois website as a source of information for the second ongoing project. I am also in constant touch with the other concerned team members to note down important background information on these 2 projects for a better sense of direction before our next weekly Monday meeting’
From: Shanmugam Narayan, Vinothni
To: White, Morgan
Recipients: mbwhite at illinois.edu
Hello Morgan,
I have shared the NCEL & HSL plans, newsletter, and Earth month schedule with my team. Thank you so much for sharing those.
I have also attached a link for case study videos that my concept team students created for one of the activities I planned last semester.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KRaWCbD2WYsWEA9bR0JUx9a_ELMov0v9?usp=sharing
Thanks for initiating to include their work on the website. Have a nice day!
Sincerely,
Graduate – Masters | Class of Dec 2022
Civil and Environmental Engineering | Construction Engineering and Management
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
vs37@illinois.edu | +1 (217)-200-2817
From: Jie Hu <noreply@box.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2021 11:12 AM
To: White, Morgan
Subject: Jie Hu has invited you to work together in "LA537-Fall, 2021 Final Presentation" folder on Box
Jie Hu wants to work with you on LA537-Fall, 2021 Final Presentation
"I'd like to share my files with you on Box."
From: Hu, Jie
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2021 11:27 AM
To: Hays, David Lyle; Ruggles, D Fairchild; Sullivan, William C; White, Morgan; McGuire, Mary Patricia
Subject: LA537 final presentation materials
Dear All,
Thanks for Dede, Bill and Morgan to be juries and participant to LA 537 final presentation, and thanks for all of you comments and suggestions!
After the presentation, students has revised their final submission materials. I have put all of their final works here in the box. I hope you can give more comments, suggestions and ideas to help me further improve my studio teaching.
Thank you for all of your support and help!
Enjoy your winter break! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Jie
Project Phoenix is an Illinois student initiative to give high school students a platform to highlight their fashion design interests and create their own upcycled clothing brands! The group offers one- to two-hour weekend workshops to teach Champaign-Urbana high school students applicable fashion and graphic design skills and provide opportunities in business and enterpreneurship. U of I students can sign up now to be a Project Fellow! The deadline for applications is Oct. 1.
This is a list of projects that need students to work on. It will be updated periodically by sustainability staff members, the last update was 9/16/21:
This project is a collaboration with the Illinois State Section of the American Planning Association; we have been asked to create a community land use and revitalization plan for a small town in Kankakee County. It is a rural community, predominantly people of color, originally settled by folks leaving the South during the Great Migration. There are many layers to the story, but it is ultimately a story of environmental equity as The Nature Conservancy and Field Museum have been collaborating with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to acquire land to create the Black Oak Savana nature preserve. The majority of residents are opposed to this preserve, primarily because land has been purchased via tax sale and foreclosure, therefore taking land out of Black ownership. This also further burdens remaining property owners because the nature preserve land becomes tax exempt, shifting the property taxes that are no longer paid on nature preserve property to a smaller and smaller portion of land owners.
Students interested in this project could assist with GIS analysis and help identify opportunities to balance environmental sustainability goals and land preservation with social and economic sustainability goals and to identify economic opportunities that accomplish all three. Contact Lacey Rains Lowe at lacey.rains <at> champaignil.gov.
Expand on existing statistical analysis with ArcGIS and spreadsheets of potential race/income disparities in provision of street trees, sidewalks, urban heat, parks, bus stops, etc. Data sets provided. Contact is Scott Tess at srtess <at> urbanaillinois.us.
LIVESTOCK FACILITY DECOMMISSIONING at the Imported Swine Research Laboratory - The push to expand the UI Research Park will require decommissioning of the waste lagoons associated with the Imported Swine Research Laboratory (ISRL). This presents an nice opportunity for a class to develop and design a decommissioning plan with associated costs and timeline. Colleen Ruhter is the point of contact, cruhter <at> illinois.edu.
If you have a project idea, please contact us at sustainability@illinois.edu, or submit it through the iCAP Portal Suggestions page.
This is a list of projects that need students to work on. It will be updated periodically by sustainability staff members, the last update was 8/30/21:
The attached project list is being considered by the nearly 200 CEE first year students for the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Project Based Learning class this year. The project idea list had been formed over several years and was last updated on August 23, 2021.
This year, the CEE project based learning course transitioned to a requirement for all incoming CEE students and a permanent part of the curriculum. It has 188 students, meets 4-6 on Mondays and Wednesdays in 0035 CIF, and is still team-taught by CEE faculty with F&S assistance. There are also some online students and a mirrored course that Dr. Art Schmidt is teaching for a partner school in China via Zoom.
This is a list of projects that need students to work on. It will be updated periodically by sustainability staff members, the last update was 6/24/21:
The following list was provided by Warren Lavey and includes a detailed description about recent Environmental Justice projects:
This is a list of projects that need students to work on. It will be updated periodically by sustainability staff members, the last update was 6/8/21:
This is a list of projects that need students to work on. It will be updated periodically by sustainability staff members, the last update was 5/14/21:
The Bike Month planning team met today, with representatives from several areas across Champaign County.
1) CU Safe Routes to School - planned for May 5 - Urban Planning student is an intern for CU-SRTS. They are also working on a safe routes to parks program.
2) Champaign County Bikes - Charlie Smyth is the chair of CCB this year. They will have a new website in a few days. They still need one more board member for this year. They talked with Amelia Neptune at the League of American Bicyclists (LAB), and Charlie shared several points about the national outlook.
3) This group will plan virtual events for the spring, and meet again in February.
This is a list of projects that need students to work on. It will be updated periodically by sustainability staff members, the last update was 1/2/21:
Sol Systems published a blog today sharing information about the collaborations with the UIUC Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Fellows program, the campus-wide minor in sustainability.
"This past week, two groups of students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign presented to Sol Systems regarding their findings through the university’s sustainability minor capstone course. The students conducted an emissions audit for supply chain and land-usage for the university’s second utility-scale solar project, Solar Farm 2.0, a 54-acre, 12.3 MW dc system on the Urbana campus that is being developed by Sol Systems. The presentation and partnership served as part of Sol’s sustainability initiatives and acts as the foundation for building Sol’s framework for future and current solar project developments...."
Read the full post online at https://www.solsystems.com/groundwork-for-solar-sustainability/.
