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  1. Edu009 - Updating College of Business Course Descriptions - Submitted

    The iCAP Education team made the following recommendation on 2/11/24:

     

    This recommendation asks the faculty teaching ACCY 405, BUS 101, BUS 401, BADM 395, and FIN 490/580 to update their course descriptions to better reflect the sustainability content being taught. Suggested unit/department to address implementation: College of Business, specifically the Business Administration, Finance and Accounting faculty Connection to iCAP goals: 6.2 [Establish a comprehensive online repository for courses and academic programs with sustainability content.] Perceived challenges: Faculty would be required to go through the process of updating their course descriptions, but may not know what constitutes sustainability course content. Being able to disseminate course search terms may be difficult in a decentralized college. Anticipated timeline of implementation: Fall 2024.

    Attached is the iCAP Education team recommendation Edu009 Updating College of Business Course Descriptions with comments from the iCAP Education team.

  2. January 2024 SmartWay posts

    Associated Project(s): 

    Using the #EPASmartWay logo helps differentiate your company from the competition. Be sure to let your customers and stakeholders know that you’re leading the way on clean, sustainable supply chain management. Learn more: epa.gov/smartway

     

  3. 1/26/2024

    Associated Project(s): 

    At Friday's Illini Lights Out event, 2,995 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $455 in energy costs. This also prevented 3.7 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 412 gallons of gasoline being consumed.  

  4. Weekly update

    Associated Project(s): 

    All, Sneakily busy last week. Warmer weather this week will likely keep visitors darkening the doors. Still plugging away at the abandoned bikes. Had an interview last week for another student worker to bolster our team in advance of the really warm weather.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 43
    Sales: $615.50

    Bikes (refurb): 2 for $260
    Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
    Memberships: 3 for $90
    Tires/tubes: 2 for $5

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  5. 01-29-24 Dump & Run Meeting 1

    Associated Project(s): 

    Attendance: Pete Varney, Dan Hiser, Miriam Keep, Bryan Johnson, Mark Kuehl, Thurman Etchison, Daphne Hulse

     

    1. Overview of the budget last year

      1. $6,992.19 spent for the 2023 program

      2. Daphne is determining the number of remaining funds from our SSC award (this will likely be the last year we have funds remaining in our SSC account)

    2. Overview of results last year

      1. Goodwill: 16K lbs (hard household goods)

      2. Salt & Light: 3.5K lbs (soft clothing and bedding)

    3. Overview of this year

      1. Undergraduate residence halls

      2. Explore expansion to graduate residence halls

        1. Orchard Downs

          1. 2 laundry room locations

        2. Ashton Woods

      3. Explore food collection - work with local pantry

      4. iSEE collaboration

        1. Interested in collecting recyclable materials (both that F&S typically collects, as well as special collections)

      5. 3 non-profits interested

        1. Goodwill Land of Lincoln - interested in returning for this year again

        2. Salt & Light - interested in returning for this year again

        3. Habitat for Humanity ReStore - interested in joining this year, wants furniture specifically

    4. Assess last years’ donation site locations (bolded locations were successful, asterisked locations should be reassessed)

      1. Hopkins

      2. Student Dining and Residential Programs

      3. Illinois Street

      4. Lincoln Avenue

      5. Wassaja*

      6. Weston*

      7. Busey-Evans*

      8. FAR/PAR*

    5. Pete & Dan: containers could be opened at 8am and closed at 8pm

    6. Housing suggests that we should look into bolder advertisements in residence halls

     

    Action Items:

    1. Determine exact remaining budget for this year (Daphne)

    2. Identify locations for Orchard Downs & Ashton Woods (Mark, Bryan)

    3. Inquire with Housing communications team about opportunity for advertisement (Mark, Bryan)

      1. + communications for Orchard Downs, Ashton Woods

    4. Reassess FAR-PAR location (Mark, Bryan)

    5. Reassess Busey-Evans location (Mark, Bryan)

    6. Loop in Jenna (Project4Less) into food pantry donation conversations (Thurman, Daphne)

    7. iSEE - what materials will be collected? (Miriam)

    8. Assign locations to non-profit partners, once locations are determined (Daphne)

  6. Zero Waste iCAP Team Meeting Minutes 1/26/2024

    The Zero Waste iCAP Team met on 1/26/24 to review iCAP objectives and the statuses of our focused projects. Thurman Etchison and Daphne Hulse provided updates on Housing Recycling and Recyclopedia. Tim Knox provided updates on Green Sports Alliance membership, and the group discussed the current status of the Coca-Cola Buy-Back program and potential areas of improvement. 

    Attached Files: 
  7. Engagement iCAP Team Meeting Minutes 1/26/2024

    The Engagement iCAP Team met on 1/26/2024 to discuss the Campus Sustainability Survey and provide updates on AY 23-24 objectives. Daphne Hulse attended as a guest speaker to discuss the Green Sports Alliance and Green Tailgate event volunteer engagement.

  8. iCAP Portal Admin Meeting - February 2, 2024

    Associated Project(s): 

    Agenda

    Discussion/Decisions:

    • Discussed the idea of creating a new content type called "iCAP Recommendations" to pull together information about a Recommendation. This idea has merit, but our discussion yielded perhaps an even better approach. Project Updates are already being used for this purpose, and could potentially be augmented to provide the functionality we want, as follows:
      • Create a tag called "iCAP Team" with the following fields:
        • Title [e.g. "Energy", "ECBS", "eGen", "Transportation", etc.]
        • Description
        • iCAP Theme (associate this team with one of our 10 themes) [e.g. "Energy", "Transportation", etc.]
      • Create a tag called "iCAP Recommendation" with the following fields:
        • Title [e.g. "Energy001 Anaerobic Digester Feasibility Study", "ECONS001 Conservation Budget", "EGen001 Wind PPA", "Trans001 TEM_DMI"]
        • Description
        • iCAP Team (associate this recommendation to an iCAP Team) [e.g. "Energy", "ECBS", "eGen", "Transportation", etc.]
        • Supplanted by (associate this recommendation with another iCAP Recommendation)
      • Add the following optional fields to Project Updates:
        • iCAP Recommendation (associate this update to an iCAP Recommendation) [e.g. "Energy001 Anaerobic Digester Feasibility Study", "ECONS001 Conservation Budget", "EGen001 Wind PPA", "Trans001 TEM_DMI"]
        • Recommendation Status (e.g. Submitted, Transmitted, Withdrawn, Accepted by campus unit, Implementation in Progress, Implementation Complete, Accepted, Implementation Stalled, Returned, Denied/Declined)
        • Recommendation Date (only necessary if we need to allow it to be different from the date of this Project Update)
      • So the basic information structure would be:
        • Theme pages can show a listing of iCAP Recommendations (w/statuses) for the iCAP Teams associated with that theme
        • An iCAP Team can show a listing of iCAP Recommendations (w/statuses) associated with it, as well as a link to the Theme it's associated with
        • An iCAP Recommendation can show a listing of associated projects updates (with statuses & dates), as well as a link to the iCAP Team it's associated with, the Theme that team is associated with, and all the Projects its associated Project Updates are associated with.
        • A Project Update can show a link to the iCAP Recommendation it's associated with, as well as its status and date, along with the other information a Project Update usually shows.
        • A Project can show the iCAP Recommendations associated with that project, as well as their statuses (this information is obtained by looking up info from the iCAP Recommendation for each Project Update w/recommendation info filled out that's associated with this project)
        • We can offer a general listing of all recommendations which can be searched and/or filtered by Theme, iCAP Team, Project, etc.
      • Questions:
        • What about the Implementation Chapter on the iWG page? There's no Implementation theme, so what Theme would we associate it with?
      • See Discussion about updating iCAP recommendations - February 21, 2024 for additional information.
  9. Discussion about updating iCAP recommendations - January 25, 2024

    Associated Project(s): 

    Miriam Keep, Sarthak Prasad, and Michael McKelvey met to discuss the process of updating iCAP recommendations.

    Background Info

    Miriam's original request: "I was wondering if we could talk about developing some kind of a landing page for iCAP recommendations. Right now it’s a bit tedious to add updates related to iCAP recommendations because updates have to be made in multiple places. It also seems the only way to link updates back to the original recommendation is to link to the submitted recommendation in the description for the project update."

    Reference projects

    Discussion

    • iCAP Recommendations can go through a winding process, cycling back and forth through many statuses until they are ultimately successful, denied, or supplanted by another recommendation. Sometimes their journey is straightforward and linear, but usually it's more complex.
    • Current process involves manual editing of the Background field for multiple projects, updating the link to the most recently added relevant Project Update and the updated status. This is tedious, time consuming, and error prone.
    • Ideal solution would minimize duplication of effort and make it easy for visitors to understand the history of an iCAP recommendation.
    • The current hierarchy for groups making recommendations is 
    • Recommendations come from iCAP Chapters, each with a single iCAP Team (2020 iCAP). The 2010 and 2015 iCAPs were organized differently. We should try to make sure our solution is as future-proof as possible in case of future reorganizations.

    Ideas/Recommendations

    • Create a new content type called "iCAP Recommendation" which will function vaguely similarly to Metrics
    • An iCAP Recommendation will contain the following fields:
      • Name (text field)
      • iCAP Team (curated listing, need to allow future modifications)
      • Status (e.g. Submitted, Transmitted, Withdrawn, Successful, Returned, Denied/Declined)
      • Date
      • Related Project (allow multiple?)
      • Related Project Update (allow multiple?)
    • How will these iCAP Recommendations be associated with projects so they're shown on Project pages?
      • Need to be able to group the recommendations together, possibly by both iCAP Chapter and iCAP Team
      • How much flexibility do we need in how they're displayed? Can we decide on a rigid structure that will work for displaying recommendations on all projects, or are there several different ways they should be displayed? (e.g. different groupings, orderings, etc.)
      • Should Projects link to iCAP Recomendations, iCAP Recomendations link to Projects? Question applies even if there's a grouping mechanism in the middle, e.g. iCAP Chapter, iCAP Team, etc.
    • The attached Excel file contains examples of what iCAP Recommendations might look like in the new proposed content type. Each sheet groups together iCAP Recommendations for a team, and each row within a sheet demonstrates a single iCAP Recommendation with its fields filled out.
    • We will present our questions and ideas for discussion at the next iCAP Portal admin meeting.
  10. ECE Net Zero Celebration

    https://ece.illinois.edu/about/calendar/eceb-anniversary 

    The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Building at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was certified as the university’s first zero-energy facility in January 2023. Join the ECE Department and The Grainger College of Engineering to celebrate this milestone on the path to building a more sustainable future. 


    When: Wednesday January 24, 2024 from 4 p.m.
    Where: Electrical & Computer Engineering Building Atrium, 306 N. Wright St, Urbana, IL 61801

     

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