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  1. Weekly digest

    Associated Project(s): 

    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

  2. SSLC newsletter promotes SSC Working Groups

    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) ♻️

    The Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) is a student-led organization charged with distributing two student fees: the Sustainable Campus Environment Fee and the Cleaner Energy Technologies Fee. With the ultimate goal of making the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign a leader in campus sustainability, the SSC reviews, recommends, and funds projects that increase environmental stewardship, inspire change, and impact students. Feel free to attend our weekly or biweekly meetings to learn more about SSC, workshop your projects and ideas, meet more people, and overall get more involved in sustainability on campus!

     

    Working Groups and Meetings- SSC Calendar

    • Food and Waste: Biweekly on Mondays 2:30-3:30pm (Oct. 28th, Nov. 11th, Nov. 25th)
    • Education and Justice: Biweekly on Tuesdays 4:00-5:00pm (Oct. 29th, Nov. 12th, Nov. 26th)
    • Energy + Transportation and Infrastructure: Biweekly on Tuesdays 5:00-6:00pm (Oct. 29th, Nov. 12th, Nov. 26th)
    • Land, Air, and Water: Biweekly on Wednesdays 4:30-5:30pm (Oct. 30th, Nov. 13th, Nov. 27th) 
    • Communications: Weekly on Tuesdays 6:00-7:00pm
    • Social Initiatives: Weekly on Thursdays 5:00-6:00pm
  3. 10/18 Lights Out!

    Associated Project(s): 

    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! 

  4. Weekly digest

    Associated Project(s): 

    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

  5. Education iCAP Team October 2024 Meeting

    The iCAP Education team met on Teams from 4-5 PM on Monday October 21st. First we identified the next 5 steps to take towards implementing a sustainability Gen Ed requirement. Then we discussed the integration of sustainability in study abroad programs through different colleges and how to get further student input on the Green Career Forum. The meeting minutes are attached. 

  6. Discussion about Metrics - October 16, 2024

    Associated Project(s): 

    Michael McKelvey and Sarthak Prasad met to continue discussing how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics in the iCAP Portal.

    Discussion/Decisions

    • Option #1: continue showing metrics in accordion on project page
      • Pros:
        • No new effort needed
      • Cons:
        • Lots of metrics on a single page - kind of overwhelming
        • Page load could get slow
    • Option #2: parent project for all pedestrian & bicycle counts with a sub-project for each counter, similar to how Solar Power on Campus is set up
      • Pros:
        • Only 1 metric per page
        • Simple solution
        • Easy to find each counter in hierarchy
      • Cons:
        • 30+ new projects - hierarchy bloat?
        • Don't see all the metrics together; have to visit each project to see its metric
    • Option #3: show all metrics on a single graph
      • Pros:
        • See everything in one place
        • No new projects needed
      • Cons:
        • New feature requires additional work to implement
        • Graphing dozens of items makes it hard to differentiate them - too much data
    • Things to consider:
      • What information do we want people to get from the data? Comparison of pedestrian vs bicycle? Comparison of various locations?
      • Discuss graphing long-term metrics

    TODOs:

    • Bring options to larger group
    • Sarthak will investigate whether Eco Counters website could allow embedding of their visualizations
  7. Weekly update

    Associated Project(s): 

    The Bike Center hired 2 new staff members and got a new inventory of kids' bikes that are already in the works of getting fixed up. Posters are printed and hung at CBC for donations to the Kids’ Bike Giveaway. Posters and flyers were also given to Urbana staff for them to display in their space. 

     

    Visitors: 110

    Sales: $1,153.50

    Bikes (refurb): 1 for $200

    Memberships: 20 for $600

    Tires/tubes: 22 for $163

  8. iCAP Portal Admin Meeting - November 1, 2024

    Associated Project(s): 

    Agenda

    • [Michael] Quick updates:
      • Project Updates now default to being promoted to front page
      • Metrics link on homepage links to Metrics w/Details listing
      • Homepage video updated to iCAP 2025 Kickoff video
      • Featured Projects on Projects page: now showing last 2 updated/edited Featured Projects (previously we showed the latest 2 by creation date, so editing a Featured Project didn't bump it back to the top). This will match the sorting on the Featured Projects listing page.
      • Bugfix: Metric annotations now allow line breaks (previously line breaks in metrics would stop all graphs on the page from loading)
      • Bugfix: Project descriptions - big images were causing "View Full Description" to look weird. Sarthak, you'd reported this bug - could you test this out and see if you can still break it?
      • Started showing all images on SSC Projects and moved the images below the map. Most projects seem to have only 1-3 images anyway. If this becomes an issue for projects with lots of images, I can look into other options.
    • [Michael, Miriam] Intro to new Recommendations process
    • [Sarthak, Michael] Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics (see notes from Sarthak & Michael's discussion)

    Discussion

    • New Google Analytics user numbers dropped in half last year, largely due to changes in the way Google Analytics tracks users (see Google Analytics changes impact the user counts for the Portal project update)
      • Start a new metric?
      • Continue using current metric with an Annotation?
        • This was the preferred approach.
    • Homepage video: the explanatory text about climate change is in the way - can we remove it?
    • Intro to new Recommendations process
      • Recommendations will start being added next week
      • Do we have the process for adding Recommendations documented?
        • No documentation yet, just verbally described
        • Old Recommendations process is detailed in 2 private Word documents on the Sustainability iCAP Portal project page.
      • Decided to continue discussion at next meeting
    • Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics [DEFERRED TO FUTURE MEETING]

    TODOs

    • ✅ Featured Projects:
      • ✅ Stop wrapping text below image
      • ✅ Strip formatting from text
    • ✅ Recommendations
      • ✅ Add iWG Team
    • ✅ Project page
      • ✅ Show list of associated iCAP Teams only to logged in users
    • ✅ Recommendations search page
      • ✅ Only show links for Recommendations; make the rest plain text
      • ✅ Add column for latest Recommendation Update status
  9. Planning Meeting with Sarthak Prasad

    I met with Sarthak Prasad, 1pm, Oct. 10th, to discuss the Transportation Team's presentation at the Sustainability Celebration on the 23rd. We are going to highlight the Campus Bike Plan and briefly go over our other current projects.

    We also planned the agenda for our Oct. 22nd meeting and went over some protocol for the iCAP portal. A helpful meeting!

  10. iCAP Energy Meeting October 2024

    Associated Project(s): 

    The Energy Team had their meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 8th, from 3:30 - 4:30 PM. We discussed solar rooftop project progress, reviewed funding opportunities for sustainability projects, and explored improvements to campus energy dashboards. Other topics included state-mandated LED transitions and occupant comfort strategies in campus buildings. The meeting minutes are attached!

    Our next meeting is November 12th, 3:30 - 4:30 PM.

    Attached Files: 
  11. 9/20 Illini Lights Out!

    Associated Project(s): 

    At Friday's Illini Lights Out event, 2805 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $426 in energy costs.This prevented 3.9 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 438 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a huge impact! 

  12. Transportation iCAP Team October Meeting

    The Transportation iCAP Team had their first meeting for the fall semester! Exciting to review projects where they were left off and pick them back up. The minutes are attached. We introduced the projects for the year and discussed what next steps look like for them.

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