All, Finished last week strong as the relative warmth of Friday resulted in a busy afternoon for early December.

We’re in the home stretch for the KBG. That’ll be this upcoming Saturday. At last count we’ve got ~60 bikes between both CBC and Urbana TBP so we’re on pace to do better than last year, assuming we get as many folks showing up.

We’re also in the home stretch of the semester with only two weeks to go.

The numbers:

Visitors: 26
Sales: $285.80
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $180
Memberships: 2 for $60

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator

The Transportation team met briefly on December 3rd, 2021 to discuss a recommendation of members for a potential Electric Vehicle Task Force, and a potential recommendation for the Fleet replacement plans. Sarthak Prasad also gave a brief update on the Commuter Program which appears to be on track.

Meeting Materials are attached.

The Energy iCAP team combined its November and December meetings for the fall of 2021 into a single "Winter Meeting" This meeting was used to discuss 12 different recommendation ideas, a select amount of which will be developed into recommendations in the near future. 

Additionally, the team discussed a short note to the iCAP Working Group asking that the Comprehensive Energy Plan not have its name changed to '"lean Energy Plan"

Notes from the meeting are attached.

Illini Lights Out totals for the Fall 2021 semester:

13,942 bulbs turned off
24049.95 kWh of energy saved
16.98 metric tons of carbon saved 
$2022.60 saved
595 total volunteers for the semester 

iSEE’s six ILO events in Spring 2022, pending any COVID-19 protocol updates for campus are found below.

The signup form is found here — as is the link to our Facebook event page! Questions? Email us at iseeinterns@gmail.com.

• Jan. 28
• Feb. 11
• Feb. 25
• March 25
• April 8
• April 29

The final Illini Lights Out event of the semester was December 3, 2021 and over 120 volunteers helped out. Volunteers shut off 3,254 light bulbs and saved 5613 kWh of energy, 3.98 metric tons of CO2, and $472 in energy costs. Thanks so much to all of the volunteers who made this possible, and to all of the volunteers who have helped at Illini Lights Out this semester!

Bill Stewart, Professor in Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism and member of the General Education Board, responded to Ximing Cai with the following email on 12/3/21:

Hi Ximing,

I’m following up about the Sustainability Gen Ed Working Group that was formed this year.  The Provost has directed the gen ed board to form a working group with the following charge:  Sustainability General Education: A student group is continuing work to develop a proposal to create a Sustainability General Education requirement. This working group will meet with the student group and provide updates to the full board about the status of the proposal as well as feedback about the implications of a new requirement for evaluation of courses.  I’m serving as chair, with the following members of the working group:  Geoffrey Challen, Leon Decosta Dash, Stephen R Downie, James Robert Miller, and Sterling Raskie. 

We’ve met twice now, with the first meeting focused on discussing our charge along with the history of sustainability education on campus.  We invited Jessica Nicholson along with others from her team to our second meeting to provide an update on the proposal and the intended next steps.  We plan to take back the activity to the gen ed board, and garner feedback from them.  Notes from our recent meeting are attached.

Just keeping you in the loop here.

Best,
Bill

================

For future updates, please see the Sustainability Gen-Ed Requirement project page. 
See iWG assessment and transmittal of Engagement001 General Education Board Sustainability Sub-Group.
See original recommendation and submittal of Engagement001 General Education Board SUstainability Sub-Group here. 

The Sustainability Council is in support of further discussion about the Vet Med Parking Lot Re-Design and broader rainwater management issues, as discussed at the meeting on November 29, 2021. F&S will get the committee together to discuss broad rainwater management issues, and one of the tasks will be to discuss the Vet Med challenge. For future project updates, visit the Vet Med Parking Lot Re-Design project page here.

=====================

See transmittal and iWG assessment of the LW002 Vet Med Parking Lot Re-Design.
See submittal of LW002 Vet Med Parking Lot Re-Design here.

Following the completion of iWG assessment for LW002 Vet Med Parking Lot Re-design, the recommendation was transmitted to the Sustainability Sub-Council (11-10-21) and Sustainability Council (11-29-21). 

See the attached iWG assessment for LW002 Vet Med Parking Lot Re-design.
See the Land and Water recommendation of LW002 Vet Med Parking Lot Re-Design. 

Following the completion of iWG assessment for Engagement001 General Education Board Sustainability Sub-group, the recommendation was transmitted to the Sustainability Sub-Council (4-5-21) and Sustainability Council (4-28-21). 

===========================

Dr. Ximing Cai sent the following message to Dr. Bill Stewart on 4-14-21: 

Dear Dr. Stewart:

Greetings! I’m writing about the ongoing student senate resolution on sustainability education. As you noticed, the Engagement SWATeam submitted a recommendation to support the resolution. Thanks for your comments as attached to the end of the recommendation. The iCAP Working Group (iWG) discussed the recommendation and concluded that “The iWG supports the creation of a General Education Board task committee to discuss feasibility and implementation of a sustainability gen-ed requirement as soon as possible. This is in support of the ISG resolution, which was approved February 2020.”

The Engagement SWATeam & iWG recommendation will be presented to the Sustainability Council meeting on April 28th as a discussion item, which will go after the introduction of the resolution by a student senate representative. iSEE Interim Director Madhu Khanna and I would like to invite you to join the discussion, given that you’re familiar with the resolution, the Engagement SWATeam recommendation and your membership with General Education Board.  In particular, you’re expected to answer some questions from the Council members, as well as provide relevant information.

We assume this effort will eventually go through the Senate mechanism. iSSE/iCAP hopes to show our support & engagement since it is consistent to some major education objectives of iCAP 2020. We also hope the discussion at the Council meeting chaired by Chancellor with attendance of Provost and Deans will speed up the process.

The meeting is at 10:00-11:30 on April 28th. The particular discussion will take about 20 minutes. I will tell you later the appropriate time at which the discussion will start.

Best regards

Ximing Cai

iSEE Associate Director on Campus Sustainability

===========================

See iWG assessment of Engagement001 General Education Board Sustainability Sub-group attached.
See original recommendation and submittal of Engagement001 General Education Board SUstainability Sub-Group here.