For years, students at the University of Illinois have clamored for a comprehensive online training for sustainability – similar to existing mandatory FYCARE training required for all students. While there have been a number of efforts to achieve this in the past, they have all suffered from a lack of resources or continuous institutional support. Rather than put forth another effort to build a whole new course from the ground up, iSEE is requesting that SSC fund efforts to digitize key portions of the core course in the SEE Fellows Program (ENVS301) and build those into a standalone 1 to 3 hour-long open online course, hosted through Coursera at Illinois or a similar system. This course would be available free of charge to all UIUC-affiliated students from the very beginning.  

While this program is not guaranteed to eventually become mandatory for all students, by making the opportunity available and heavily promoting it, this team can address a key area of student demand. We can also begin to work from a bottom-up approach of asking individual departments and programs to require their smaller student populations to take the course, building a transitional model with a coalition that can eventually expand to the full campus.