RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the October 2023 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 1,906.1 Megawatt hours.

The October 2023 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.

The Land & Water iCAP team met on Teams from 1-2 PM on Friday, December 1st. The team discussed the meadow at Orchard Downs, revising the iCAP Land & Water objectives, and the development of an IPM plan for non-F&S areas. Meeting minutes are attached.

November 2023 photos of the Florida Orchard Prairie have been added to the box folder.

Done:

• Fixed: suggestions page now looks right in mobile view
• SSC project embedding: added category filtering options

Discussion:

• SSC project integration discussion
  • New projects need to be approved and located appropriately in portal hierarchy
  • Codie considers an SSC project worth adding once it has a CFOAP
  • Projects can be updated w/SSC info by SSC students/employees once they exist in portal
  • How to show projects with multiple funding allocations over time? (e.g. $100K in spring 2020, $100K in fall 2020)
    • Is it the same project over time? Sometimes it is, but sometimes the leaders change and the direction changes significantly
    • Discussed dusting off the Project Funding feature we'd deprecated several years ago. It looks promising for showing SSC's funding of projects!
  • Michael and Codie will meet next week to discuss specifics about what SSC needs the iCAP Portal to be able to do in order to use the iCAP Portal for the SSC website's project listing.
• Question about a TODO: "Collections page: Add image upload option". At a previous meeting we had this TODO, but what was the context? Was it to have a thumbnail for each Collection? Or a banner image? Or an image gallery?
• Should we link to "Take Action" project from homepage?
  • Replace map link in Highlights?
  • Need to finish Take Action page content
• Continue discussion of Fancy Page Layout (see the 4 mockups in the October 21, 2022 meeting notes)
• Continue discussion of improving site's aesthetics
• Archiving projects
  • Add "Archived" checkbox?
  • Add "Archived" to Visibility options?
  • Add "Archived" to Project Status options? (probably not - this mixes the status of the project itself with whether we still want it to show up on the site)
  • Remove from nested listings, still publicly available?

TODO:

• Main map:
  • See CSU's campus map (Sustainability section) for inspiration
  • Campus boundary, like ArcGIS Bicycle Map
  • Improve mobile filter?
  • Use heatmap when zoomed out, switch to markers when zoomed in?
• (long term goal) look into importing information from another source, e.g. SSC students without iCAP Portal access can put together info in a structured format for automatic import into iCAP Portal
• Look into Collection embedding again, à la Drawdown Solutions Library Sammy had found ("Filter by sector or area of action" section)
  • SSC project embedding: add category filtering options
• Metric search/display:
  • Theme (via connected Project, i.e. Theme -> Project -> Metric)
  • Most recent updates as of: (list of years) -> can we query Tracking data?
  • (Internal only) Last updated before (list of years) -> can we query Tracking data?
• (Low Priority) Make column headers click-sortable on Projects by Project Status page
• Fancy project layout mockups - keep tweaking #3 to improve contrast
• Discuss metrics
  • Metrics with lots of data
  • Consider how to handle old metrics that no longer track new data. Archive somehow?
  • Fun with math (e.g. combining multiple metrics)
  • Calculated Metrics on Dev site

Ideations:

• Map brainstorming:
  • What if we had a separate Campus Sustainability Tour expandable section, alongside Collections and Themes? Perhaps with a specific order to the locations and information about each location in the infowindow popup? We might have to hand-craft it rather than using Collections, but it might be worth it if we want an interface more like the CSU sustainability map. This could also work for any other bespoke sections we might want to include in the future.
  • Are there other things we'd like to highlight on the map beyond Themes and Collections? If we can think of them, Michael can try to figure out how to make it happen.
  • Michael is working on trying to make the map queries work asynchronously so each filter doesn't require a new pageload. This would make interactions with the map much snappier.
  • Would we like to provide the ability to view individual projects for each section in the sidebar, à la CSU's map?
  • Are there other categories we would like to include, either in addition to or instead of Collections and Themes? Is that information already in the iCAP Portal? If so, perhaps there's a way we can use it... If not, perhaps a new tagging system specifically for the map might help us achieve it?
  • Sarthak: would like to create a Biking Tour
  • Reed: highlight things students can see/experience
• SSC projects
  • May want to use this Archive of Funded Projects on old SSC site (2019) as a reference for showing SSC project info
  • Discussed using iCAP Portal projects for SSC projects page vs. maintaining own project pages directly on SSC website.
  • One possible challenge - SSC sometimes funds part of a project or provides funding for a period of time (e.g. 1 year) for a longer-term project, so only the project updates for that period of time are relevant, not all updates in perpetuity. How do we handle that?
  • Decided to start with map embed from Student Sustainability Committee Funded Projects collection, then look at adding card-based project embed as well.

Dear Friend of the Reimagine our Future sustainability competition,

Thank you for your fantastic support for the 2023 Reimagine our Future competition as a participant, specialist advisor, judge, sponsor, media representative, or interested person. This year we had a record number of 243 participants and 44 submissions from 10 higher education institutions.

The roughly 100 initial judges have reviewed the submissions, provided comments which will be sent to the teams, and selected 12 finalists. (The list of finalists is available below this message.) These teams or individuals will briefly present their projects during an award ceremony on Saturday Dec. 2, 2023, 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. (US Central Time). The winners of nine awards totaling US$7,000 will be announced after the presentations.  

Professor Kelvin Droegemeier will be the guest speaker at this event. UIUC’s Student Sustainability Committee will conduct the ceremonies.

You are cordially invited to join us in-person if you are in the vicinity of the UIUC. The ceremony will take place in Room 4031 of UIUC’s Campus Instructional Facility. We will serve refreshments from 10:45 a.m. and a light lunch after the ceremony.

If you cannot join us in-person, you are invited to join the award ceremony via Zoom:

Please be so kind to respond to this invitation by completing the following poll before Thursday Nov. 30 at 10 a.m. (US Central Time).

Thank you again for your support. We look forward to thanking you on Dec. 2 and are confident that you will be impressed by the students’ outstanding projects.

Yours sincerely,

Leon Liebenberg (Teaching Professor, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, UIUC) 

Warren Lavey (Adjunct Professor, College of Law, School of Earth, Society & Environment, and College of Medicine, UIUC) 

Robert McKim (Emeritus Professor, Department of Religion, UIUC) 
Codie Sterner (Coordinator, Student Sustainability Committee, UIUC) 

(Reimagine Our Future co-founders and coordinating committee)

FINALISTS IN THE 2023 REIMAGINE OUR FUTURE COMPETITION

(In alphabetical order of the team leaders’ last names)

Arshia Ajmera, Keerthana Nallamotu (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – Accessible screening for preeclampsia

Muskaan Alimchandani (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – Vrddhi Sthan – A brighter future for Dharavi

Brandon Baron, Whitney Fowler, Shito Ito, Ada Moy, Gwynne McGrady (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – Parking lot permaculture

Karmyn Flesch, Nadia Wilson, Emily Rhodes, Gabriella Sanchez (University of Illinois, Springfield) – Zero food waste

Amy Jurkowski, Matthew Nowlan, Liesl Schrag, Aiden Sup (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – Renewable energy-supported housing and opportunities for immigrants

Iryna Maistrenko (International Humanitarian University, Ukraine) – Organization of organic farming during the war in Ukraine

Margot O'Malley, Tom George, Jasper Nord (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – Grounds for nutrition

Manan Sanghavi (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – Optimizing resource efficiency by digitizing receipt processes

Jamie Scimeca, Xiang Fei Heah (University of Birmingham) – Light-water small modular reactor

Advay Sudarshan, Patrick Harsono, Jesse Wei, Hugo Ji (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – Polyester upcycling and fiber composite furniture

Hlib Vakumenko (Vienna University of Economics and Business) – Transform food waste into improved dietary nutrition

Charles Wheeler, Lucas Baronello, Saharra Murphy, Caila Riggs, Michelle Check (University of Illinois, Springfield) – Farm to School: a shared investment for a healthier future

Parking has limited funding, so during the first May iWG meeting, the recommendation was sent back to the Land & Water team. The committee advised to add in capture rate and return on investment data before resubmitting for another meeting.

See submitted recommendation LW006 Permeable Asphalt Maintenance at Lot C9

The following email was sent by Marty Kaufman on Oct 26, 2023:

Hey Jennifer,

 

I reached out to Tim Knox, and DIA did try to become a member of the Green Sports Alliance in June, but the organization said that the University was already a member so there was no need to submit payment. I see no reason to pay more money if the organization already says we are members. I understand that Athletics isn’t mentioned independently as a member, but since we are part of the University as a whole and the Alliance doesn’t feel we need to have a separate membership, it doesn’t seem fiscally responsible to pay a second membership fee.

 

Maybe we look at sharing the cost for next fiscal year or at bumping it up to the $2,500 level next year if that provides more benefits? Please see the correspondence from Tim attached.

 

I welcome your thoughts.

 

Thank you,

Marty
 

Jen Fraterrigo responded on Oct 26, 2023:

Hi Marty,

 

Thanks for looking into this matter. I reached out to Betsy Ligett and she confirmed that F&S paid the membership fee for the Nov. 1st, 2022 - Nov. 30th, 2023 time period. I agree with you about not needing a second membership. However, it would be great for DIA take over the membership starting December 1st, 2023 and pay the membership fees going forward at the level you prefer.

 

For now, I suggest identifying a new point person at DIA. I would then be happy to facilitate a meeting with Betsy and the DIA POC to get him/her up to speed.

 

Best,

Jen

Marty Kaufman responded on Nov 21, 2023:

Hi Jen,

 

Happy Thanksgiving to you as well.

 

Yes, DIA will pay for the renewal. Tim has been in touch with the Green Alliance and we will coordinate the payment for next year.

 

Happy to help.

 

Thanks,

 

Marty

The iCAP Resilience Team Meeting met on November 10th, 2023 to discuss current project statuses, review the 2016 resilience commitment, and further discuss the mission and goals of the team.

Meeting minutes, a supplemental slideshow, and recording is attached.

Meeting recording: https://uofi.box.com/s/7xow5bqoe8zz0xk3qxyctdxi1duvg0mf

Powerpoint: https://uofi.box.com/s/7ysynolap0ykpcaoxboxojaieispjn8a

Attached is the EPA GPP Reporting form for FY23.