The iCAP Education team met on Teams from 4-5 PM on Monday November 18th. First we discussed steps on moving forward with the sustainbility Gen-Ed requirement, then we discussed the integration of sustainability in study abroad programs and lastly how to get further student input on the Green Career Forum. The meeting minutes are attached. 

The Transportation Team had their November meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 12th, from 1:00 - 2:00pm. We discussed the student research projects and heard an update on the EV Charging survey from Denissa Darmawi. We ended by discussing the problem of motorized transit on the quads and what might be helpful to discourage it. The meeting minutes are attached!

Our next meeting is December 10th, 1:00 - 2:00PM.

At Friday's Illini Lights Out event,  2209 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $336 in energy costs. This also prevented 2.7 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 300 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a huge impact

Attached is a detailed metrics report for October 2024.

Some water bottle filler stations are equipped with an indicator light that turns red when the filter needs to be replaced.  The Building Service Workers will alert the F&S Service Office when they see an indicator light is red.

Fabricated through our own mill shop. Cost to make two of these bins is attached.

The Sustainability Council met on Nov 5, 2024. The primary agenda items included: 

iCAP 2025 development process

• a)    Timeline
• b)    Progress on iCAP 2020 goals
• c)    Challenges and opportunities going forward 
  • i.    Trends in energy efficiency and space
  • ii.    Funding opportunities
  • iii.    Dealing with the question of divestment

The slide deck and minutes are attached.

On October 10th, 2024, iSEE hosted it's semesterly Trash Pick-Up in honor of Campus Sustainability month. Volunteers picked up litter near Boneyard Creek and around the Bardeen Quad, and sorted the litter into trash or recycling bags. In total, 40 lbs of litter were collected.

Agenda

• [Michael] Updates:
  • Recommendations: added iWG Team
  • Project page: showing list of associated iCAP Teams only to logged in users
  • Recommendations search page:
    • Only showing links for Recommendations; made the rest plain text
    • Added column for latest Recommendation Update status
  • Trimmed down content in Project Updates listings so they're easier to scan:
    • Before: associated projects, full description, public & private files, notes, visibility
    • Now: associated projects, summary description, notes, visibility
    • Open to feedback!
  • Project page: "Add Project Update" and "Add new Metric" links on Project page now auto-fill the current Project!
  • Recommendation page: "Add Recommendation Update" on Recommendation page now auto-fills the current Recommendation!
• Continue discussion of new Recommendations process
• (Time permitting) Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics (see notes from Sarthak & Michael's discussion)

Discussion

• Project Updates listings: can descriptions expand/collapse instead of just truncating?
• New Recommendations process
  • Recommendations:
    • For description, enter summary of recommendation rather than iWG assessment
    • Add files column to Recommendation Updates table
    • Michael will investigate ways to show more of the story for each recommendation (incl. teasers w/expandable descriptions?)
    • Description field: "Original Recommendation" heading
    • Keep Recommendation Updates listing reverse chronological
    • Move Supplanted By box up to second position, right after iCAP Team
  • Recommendation Updates:
    • Use status at the time of the update rather than current status
    • For titles, use descriptive sentence rather than single word status
• Sheri: duplicate locations in iCAP Portal
  • Send list to Michael; he'll merge them
• SSC embed on ECE kiosks - will that become out of date with new SSC Projects approach?
  • We could potentially use the SSC embed, or a variation on it
  • Joyce Mast has retired; Catherine Somers is the current contact
• May want to add SSC and possibly Public Affairs recognition to footer
• Embeds: add card option for listings
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics

TODOs

• Update Add Project Update links on Project Header Layout projects
• Recommendation pages: Show most recent status prominently
• Sort Recommendation Updates listing alphabetically (also look into adding sort options)
• Michael will reach out to Sheri to get SSC Projects embed working on SSC website
• Update SSC link on iCAP Portal homepage to go to SSC Projects page

Below is an update from Brent Lewis on Oct 17th about the Monarchs need Milkweed recommendation:

FYI, I’m close to getting a $2.5k bag of milkweed seeds delivered to me.  😊  We are getting this in the portal and ordered so Grounds can get this spread out this fall. 

I’m hoping we can still get pots in the ground this fall too.  I see plenty of plants available at Midwest Groundcovers nursery in St. Charles, IL.  Deb is working on that.

Additionally updates from the Land & Water Clerk which were provided at the Campus Sustainability Celebration:

Milkweed Seeds for Monarch Butterflies

•Received a grant for planting milkweed across campus to support monarch butterfly populations which are important pollinators

•Seeds and plants will be planted around campus in late fall in low and no mow areas

•Working to clarify no mow and low mow  zones on campus to support the growth of native plants, also making it easier for the planting of milkweed

This is likely due to the change in Google Analytics’ reporting system. They moved from “Universal Analytics” (UA) to “Google Analytics 4” (GA4) which included a significant change in the way they count things like pageviews. It’s not exactly that the numbers we had before were inaccurate, nor that the new numbers are inaccurate, it’s that they’re being counted in a different way. Here are 2 major differences:

1. UA tracked each device as a user; GA4 tries to track the same person across multiple devices (e.g. phone, tablet, laptop, desktop computer)
2. UA would count the same person visiting on different days as different users; GA4 will track the same person visiting multiple times as a single user in a given report. So if you ran a report for 2 days, the same person visiting twice would count as 2 users in UA, but only 1 user in GA4. Now expand this out to an annual report, and you can imagine how the numbers can become much lower if you have a fair number of repeat visitors.
3. GA4 may be doing a better job of honoring browsers’ Do Not Track requests, plus over time more people may be using extensions that block 3rd-party cookies and traffic, like Google Analytics.

To demonstrate how point #2 above can lower our numbers, here are some tables comparing longer-term reporting periods with sums of shorter-term reporting periods:

Monthly vs. Annual

Comparison:

• Total users in single report from Jul 1, 2023 to Jun 30, 2024: 24,548
• Difference between reporting methods: 1,190
• % more users when broken down by month: 5%

Daily vs. Monthly

Comparison:

• Total users in single report from Oct 1, 2023 to Oct 31, 2023: 2,579
• Difference between reporting methods: 580
• % more users in October 2023 when broken down by day: 22.5%

For anyone who’s interested, here’s a bit more information about the differences between UA and GA4:

• [GA4] Differences in user counts
• GA4 Users vs UA Users
• The trouble with Users in GA4

I hope that helps explain some of the difference. I am surprised the number dropped in half – that is a pretty substantial change. If you’d like, I can spend some time delving into that in more detail to see if there’s something going on, but my hunch is that it’s mostly attributable to the change in the way Google Analytics records and reports its data. I’m not an expert at Google Analytics; if you know anyone who’s good at analyzing Google Analytics reports, we could invite them to take a look and see what they notice.

</Michael>

Michael McKelvey

Office for Mathematics, Science, & Technology Education

The Zero Waste Team had their first meeting on October 14, 2024. Daphne Hulse provided updates on the 2025 proposed changes as well as a summer recap of accomplishments. Here are the meeting minutes.

CTAC meeting was held on Thursday, October 24, 2024, focusing mainly on

1. 2024 Campus Bike Plan: Public Input - Accepting feedback until October 31, 2024. The public input form can be found here: go.fs.illinois.edu/BikePlanPublicInput
2. Long Range Transportation Plan 2050: https://ccrpc.gitlab.io/lrtp-2050/
3. Lincoln Avenue Corridor Study - Between Green St and Florida Ave - CCRPC
4. Lincoln Avenue Corridor Study - Between Florida Ave and Windsor Rd - F&S TDM

Please see attached the slides from meeting. To view the recording, please go to https://uofi.box.com/s/kvpjfs26kyqwofjkri0y8gwocbqye5jp

The Bike Center received a few more donations and started processing the abandoned bike pile which they'll continue to tackle throughout the week. There was a mention in E-Week for their Kids Bike Giveaway and already have donations lined up. 

Visitors: 66
Sales: $575.10
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $140
Memberships: 8 for $240
Tires/tubes: 9 for $69

Attached is Veo bike share data from July 2024, August 2024, and September 2024. 

At Fridays Illinii Lights Out event, 2,223 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $338 in energy costs. This also prevented 3.1 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 349 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a great impact! 

The iCAP Transportation Team met today and discussed the upcoming sustainability celebration, the progress that has been made on 2020 iCAP goals, and student research assignments for the upcoming year. 

Please see attached the iWG meeting notes from the meeting held on Oct 22, 2024. The following items were discussed:

1. Energy data visualizations and their implications for Energy iCAP objectives

They finalized the date and times for our Kids Bike Giveaway event: 12/14/24 from 2 – 4p at Urbana IMC building, so they submit work orders for signage/posters/social media posts. Thus far, we’ve gotten zero donations of kids’ bikes, but between both shops we have ~15 to start working through. 

They'll also have their first instructional class on how to fix a flat tomorrow.

Visitors: 69

Sales: $1,153.50

Bikes (refurb): 2 for $395

Memberships: 20 for $600

Tires/tubes: 22 for $163