The Resilience team made the following recommendation on 2/3/2021:
Lisa Merrifield at U of I Extension should coordinate the development of an urban biodiversity master plan for the local urbanized area of Urbana, Champaign, and Savoy, with broad stakeholder input and direct faculty/researcher involvement.
Attached is the Res002 Biodiversity Plan recommendation.
Morgan White and Ximing Cai, the iWG co-chairs, returned the Trans012 Carpool Survey recommendation on February 2, 2021 with the following email.
Hello Transportation iCAP Team,
The iCAP Working Group is continuing to work through the several SWATeam recommendations that were submitted in April 2020. Ximing and I appreciate your patience with this process, which took some additional time due to the iCAP 2020 completion work (and the pandemic).
The Carpool Survey recommendation, Trans012, was initially submitted as a recommendation to conduct a survey, develop a plan, and implement a pilot program. With the Campus as a Living Lab (CALL) project, Student Mobility on and around the Illinois campus, funded in Fall 2019, Ximing reached out to Dr. Ouyang this summer. He shared this update, “Originally we were hoping to conduct not only the survey but also do an initial design of the service system (service model, business plan, resource assessment, economic analysis).” and “We were planning to send out the survey (as major task of the $9K seed project) in Spring 2020, but the topic (carpool service) was inappropriate under the COVID-19 environment -- the results would likely be heavily biased under the unusual circumstance.”
Because there is work underway through the CALL project, and while this work is on-hold for the pandemic, Ximing and I have decided to formally “return” this recommendation to your team. We are very supportive of this project moving forward, once we are in the post-pandemic world. Please consider this particular recommendation (Trans012) as closed. When the CALL efforts are further along, we would be happy to see a new SWATeam Recommendation for the next steps.
Thank you for all your excellent work! We look forward to additional recommendations from your team.
Sincerely,
Morgan and Ximing
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See the Trans012 Carpool Survey submittal.
CCNet hosted several local solar panelists in January 2021. This Zoom meeting was also shared via Facebook Live:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=429039901765435&ref=watch_permalink
Join the CCNet mailing list to gain access to the Zoom and stay connected. http://eepurl.com/g8IM
(video link corrected on 2-2-2021)
Attached are the notes from the February general meeting of the Campus Tree Advisory Committee.
Topics discussed included a suscessful submission of our 2020 tree care plan, the trees on campus that are potental award winners for their size, and planning for this year's Arbor Day celebrations.
Try out citizen science in your own backyard! Melody Arnold, President of the Macon Co. chapter of the Audubon Society, will describe the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, happening February 12-15 this year. She will talk about a few of the birds that we are most likely to see in this area and how we can participate. This program is brought to you by East Central Illinois Master Naturalists.
February 1, 12 PM
Amanda Christenson • Cooperative Extension Service
Join us on Feb.1 at 6pm for an exciting workshop highlighting the collaborative relationship between Illinois and Kyushu University faculty on the development of global CO2 recycling technology towards “beyond-zero” emission. This effort is within the framework of the Moonshot Program in I2CNER at Kyushu funded by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan.
Global Relations • Global Relations
This opportunity is available online
Climate migrations are often characterized as moving people from low to higher income countries, or from rural to urban areas (particularly into slums or low-income neighborhoods). However, climate change will endanger cities across the globe. Is this a realistic concern and what impact could it have on migratory flows? What role will cities play in climate migrations (for good or for bad)?
February 9, 12 PM • Zoom Registration Link
Maria Dorofeeva • Center for Global Studies
All, Things were uncharacteristically busy at the tail end of last week, highlighted by two prospective student employees coming in. They were both really excited by what we do here at the Bike Center. Always good to see enthusiasm and it was a nice glimpse of hopefully where we’ll be post-pandemic: fostering enjoyment, excitement and knowledge about bikes!
Got a student staff meeting, interview, and bikes to build this week.
The numbers:
Visitors: 14
Sales: $371.50
Memberships: 1 for $30
Bike (refurb): 1 for $200
Misc: $18
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager
On February 1, 2021, the Engagement SWATeam met to discuss updates on initiatives assigned at our last meeting. Topics of discussed include:
Meeting minutes are also attached below.
RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the January 2021 Buyer's Share amounts by hour, totaling 1889.0 Megawatt hours. See attached file.
The following scope change was submitted to SSC for the Pollinator Awareness Sign:
Originally, there were no signs at all on campus showing how pollinator friendly the campus is. Now there are four; and the University is now considered part of Bee Campus USA. Now we want to add a bigger sign outlining the bee campus student organization, progress the campus has made, and changes the university implemented to be more pollinator friendly. This sign will include an acknowledgment of the SSC funding for the signs and for several of the pollinator friendly plantings around campus.
The funding does not need to be increased, but we are requesting a schedule extension of one year. The design of the sign is anticipated to take at least one month, so that students can assist with the content development, then the sign will be ordered, and since it may be winter –time when the sign is ready for installation, we may not be able to install it until the spring thaw. Please approve an extension to May 2021.
Read the Scope Change in its entirety in the attached files below.
The dollars spent from TEM for faculty/staff air travel from FY20 is attached.
Congratulations to International Student & Scholar Services (ISSS) for achieving Gold certification in December 2020!
Congratulations to Zeta Beta Tau for achieving gold certification (November 2020) and Triangle Fraternity for achieving silver certification (November 2020)!
SSC received semester report for Fall 2021 for Let It Flow (Control the Flow) project on 1/20/2022. Please see attached.
Hello Education and Resilience teams,
It was great to see many of you at the “Sustainability team open house”. We will plan another event next month so we can continue to connect and get to know each other! I am reaching out to revisit a recommendation submitted last spring by the Education team: Edu002 Internship Coordinator. When the iWG deliberated the next steps of this recommendation, it was discussed that there could be value in collaboratively discussing this idea to hear the perspectives from both the Education and Resilience teams.
I am writing to ask if you are interested in joining this discussion, please complete this Doodle Poll by 2/2. A summary of the recommendation is below and the full recommendation template is linked on the iCAP Portal:
The Education team recommends developing a sustainable communities paid internship program in partnership with local businesses, non-profits, local government agencies, community-based agencies and cultural institutions in Central Illinois.
The internship program will be designed to build organizational capacity in the Champaign-Urbana / Central Illinois with regard to sustainability and resilience efforts to advance sustainable development and/or climate action goals. This program aims to allow students the flexibility to devise an internship experience that aligns with their specific interests within sustainability. Collaborations between the University and Champaign-Urbana community can be taken advantage of as projects where internships can be generated.
The student interns will be involved in sustainability and community resilience efforts with directed emphasis toward sustainable development goals. Interns will gain real-world, project-based, and pre-professional experience in a workplace setting anywhere from 3 months (summer intern) to 1 year.
The intern program will also be tasked to provide leadership training as a foundation for real-world, project-based, and pre-professional experiences. Existing campus resources such as leadership development training modules available through Student Union programming should be utilized.
I hope many of you are interested and willing to join the discussion! Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions.
Meredith
Good afternoon and Happy New Year!
We will be having a virtual open house for all Sustainability Working Advisory Team members on Thursday, January 28 from 3-4pm. This is a great chance to kick off the new semester, say hello and meet the other sustainability team members, hear about what each team is working on, ask questions, provide feedback or words of wisdom, etc.! We hope you can attend.
Have a great week and talk to you soon!
Meredith, Morgan, and Ximing
The Resilience Team met on Wednesday, Jan. 27th for their first meeting of the Spring semester. Our clerk, Kimmy, proposed changes to our iCAP portal theme page and received comments from all team members. The Biodiversity Plan recommendation is in the final steps of gathering approval from every team member and will likely be submitted to the iWG this month. Lastly, the team had a brainstorming session for how to identify existing green jobs infrastructure and how to coordinate our environmental justice efforts with the community -- specifically the Sustainability Advisory Commission for the City of Urbana.
Agenda, meeting minutes, and chat log are attached.
Mohamed Attalla, the Executive Director of Facilities and Services, has officially signed the charge letter outlining goals for the 2021 Tree Campus Advisory Committee. These goals, along with the expectations of the committee can be found in the attached pdf.
Microsoft's 2020 carbon recap offers an example progress report for climate commitments. In this article, the company highlights its biggest commitment to focus on the climate crisis by pledging to become carbon negative by 2030. Focusing on this initiative in-depth, Microsoft speaks about its plan to reduce the company's carbon emissions, remove carbon from the environment, and advancing transparency and accountability as a global company.
