The Sustainability Council met on April 30, 2025. The primary agenda items included: 

• iCAP 2025: Objectives for DIA
• iCAP 2025: Updating energy targets
• Student perspectives
• Energy Performance Contract for ACES

The slide deck and meeting minutes are attached.

Friday was a busy day. First up was the quad event, which despite the rainy weather earlier in the day, ended up being a dry time and quite popular. We’ve had 2 – 3 people come by CBC after having been at the Quad event, so it’s definitely getting some new folks aware of our space. Our open hours were not crazy busy on the bike side of things, but our gear rental partners were positively slammed, which created some logjams at the entrance—nothing we couldn’t handle!

This week we have our last Instructional Class of the semester, and unfortunately the lead staffer for that program is graduating. Replicating that staffer’s expertise and enthusiasm for the work will be a tall order.

Tonight is the Bike Project Members’ Meeting, which I’ll be attending.

Warm weather this week, so we’ll likely be busy.

The numbers:

Visitors: 60
Sales: $1,005.25
Memberships: 9 for $270
Bikes (refurb): 2 for $360
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Tires/tubes: 14 for $111

Hi Ali,

Great to hear you are seeing milkweed emerging!  I walked the field a couple of weeks ago and at that time they were not coming up yet.  I was also looking to see if any of the milkweed seeds dispersed in January were coming up but again, I think I was too early.  I plan to get out there again soon to check those areas to see if any of the seeds are germinating.  Attached is the map, areas highlighted in red are where the milkweed seeds were added.

My direction to the Grounds mowing crew is not to mow the low mow field until late Nov-December at the earliest or in late February, early March of 2026.  If we happen to have a breakthrough of noxious weeds between now and then we will strategically spot treat or spot mow the outbreak area.  Moving forward, I instructed that before any such action is taken, I must approve it.  If I agree action needs to be taken, I will reach out to you to discuss what we are seeing and what measures we feel need to be taken.

I like the idea of registering the field as a Monarch Waystation but I will have to check to see if that is something we/you can pursue and let you know.

Thanks,

Ryan

From: Lewis, Ali 
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2025 11:47 AM
Subject: Low Mow Zone Field by CRC: Monarch Waystation

Dear Ryan and Grounds Crew,

There is milkweed emerging in the field south of the Children’s Research Field. Last summer, this low mow zone field was mowed twice, removing most of the milkweed for which the migrating Monarch Butterfly population relies. Of course, we study the monarch population and field each year and are eager to have the field grow over the summer and through the fall. We know you have noxious weeds/invasive species to contend with on your end.

What can we do to help the field grow over the summer/fall? How can we best communicate about it being mowed after the fall  Monarch Migration comes through?

Is it possible to pursue the field area as a registered Monarch Waystation? If so, we could take the lead on that, pending agreement from whomever we need to ask including Ryan? https://www.monarchwatch.org/waystations/

Thanks for thinking with the children/teachers at Uni Primary about this special area adjacent to the school. The field is a true source of delight and freedom for our small school, and we appreciate being in communication with you all about its care.

Sincerely,

Ali Lewis & Uni Primary School Community

-- 

At this past Illini Lights Out event,  2859 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $434.98 in energy costs. This also prevented 4.3 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 489 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a great impact!

Last week was decidedly unbusy, surprisingly! Easter weekend made for a quieter Friday.

We have two new student staff joining us this week or next. Should have a couple weeks to train them up before they forget everything over the summer. Summer learning loss isn’t just for book-learning!

Warmer weather this week should bump our visit numbers. Tomorrow is a bike light giveaway, which we’ll mention to folks who come in today. Elsewhere, still turning out the bikes and hovering around 20 fixed up and ready for sale.

The numbers:
Visitors: 65
Sales: $405.50
Memberships: 5 for $150
Tires/tubes: 10 for $83

The Alma Mater Plaza welcoming center for Bike for Earth Day was moved to Graziano Plaza (plaza between the Engineering Hall and Everitt) because of a scheduled climate march and the March for Science rally. Morgan White was able to reserve Graziano Plaza for volunteers to hand out Bike Lights and Bike Month T-shirts to attendees. For future Bike for Earth Day events, it may be easier to move the welcoming center locations to actual reservable spaces.

Agenda

• Michael's updates
  • Recommendation page: added a Files column which shows any files associated with each Recommendation Update (e.g. ECONS004 Green Labs Coordinator)
  • SSC Projects:
    • Added column click sorting to SSC Projects table
    • Added ability to add/edit description to SSC Projects listing page
  • Metrics fixes:
    • Metric: Bicycle Registration in Project 529 system: Karina Jang had tried to restore a past Metric revision, which didn't work well and clobbered a few records. We reviewed the data and restored the broken/missing records. I have disabled restoring revisions for now. iCAP Admins and Moderators can view revisions, but cannot restore them. While it may typically work for basic content like text fields, it doesn't seem to work well for connected content like tracking records.
    • Metric: Total Purchased Clean Power: Somehow 2 empty records were created when Zach Bromberg updated this metric. I have made the Value and Date fields required, which should help avoid that in the future.
  • Showing Recommendations & Recommendation Updates on Project pages:
    • Initial version of how this could work available on live site (only visible when logged in):
      • Added Associated Recommendation(s) section in main column
      • List each associated recommendation w/its current status
      • Under each recommendation, show table of its related recommendation updates
    • You can find Project pages with associated Recommendations by visiting a Recommendation (All Recommendations) and clicking on its associated Projects.
    • Example pages:
      • Clean Power Agreements Off-Campus - only 2 recommendations; looks pretty good
      • Sustainability Council - somewhat long page
      • Zero Waste iCAP Team - pretty long page
      • iCAP Working Group (iWG) - really long page!
    • Thoughts? For projects with a lot of recommendation updates, it gets a bit busy...
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics (see notes from Sarthak & Michael's discussion)

Discussion

• Recommendations on project pages
  • Will have a side channel meeting to discuss how best to cross reference iCAP Projects and Recommendations
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics
  • Need better way to display metrics with large numbers of tracking records
    • Michael will return to investigating switching charting systems
  • Need to be able to combine multiple metrics on a single graph
    • Michael had previously started work on this; can resurrect and continue it
    • Will have a side channel meeting to discuss needs in more depth

TODOs

• Various follow-up side channel meetings between monthly meetings.

Bicycle census 2025 is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, April 29, 2023 from 11 - 12 pm. We have worked with F&S FIR department to develop the survey collection platform using ArcGIS Field Maps. See the Bike Census 2025: Volunteer Instruction Guide for more information.

Please see attached.

Please see attached the map blocks for Bike Census 2023.

Attached is the Tree Campus Advisory Committee Charge letter for 2025.

We heard from Karina Jang about her research on air travel admissions, reviewed the data on the Transportation Survey, and talked about working for a SSC grant to install ebike chargers on campus. For a more detailed breakdown, the minutes are attached!

Agenda

• Michael's updates
  • Archived projects:
    • Added link to Archived Projects on Projects page
    • Hid archived projects from Theme page hierarchical listings
    • Left archived projects in Project Family sidebar section, for now - may revisit that decision in the future
  • Removed Project Status from hierarchical listing on theme pages and full project hierarchy listing
  • Expand/Collapse buttons added to Project Updates listings. See examples:
    • All Project Updates
    • Project Updates search results
    • Project Updates for collection: Monarch Butterfly projects
    • Projects Updates for Sustainability iCAP Portal
    • Projects Updates for key objective: 2.1 Energy Planning Document
    • Projects Updates for theme: Education
    • Projects Updates for place: Campus Instructional Facility
  • SSC Project embed code is working on SSC site!
  • Resolved an issue with some information connected to Projects (locations, funding info) and Metrics (targets, tracking) losing their connections to those projects.
    • Information still in database, so I was able to restore connections
    • It took some careful and tedious effort to track this down and restore the connections.
• Google Analytics numbers drop
  • Steeper than others have experienced
  • Probably some combination of less traffic and old analytics possibly not excluding bots/crawlers as effectively
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics (see notes from Sarthak & Michael's discussion)

Discussion

• Morgan went through full list of projects to find ones to archive
  • Need to have a larger conversation about what archiving does at some point
• Morgan's intern Zach is doing a couple things:
  • Filling in recent years of campus water data
  • Looking for duplicate metrics
  • Will mark duplicate metrics as duplicate, then work with Michael on deleting them
• Linking SSC Projects to iCAP Portal projects
  • Quinn and Helen working on making sure all connections between SSC Projects and iCAP Portal projects are included
  • What to do about SSC Projects without an existing iCAP Portal project?
  • Quinn: 70-80% of SSC Projects have a direct or indirect connection to an iCAP Portal project; a few are really hard to find a connection
  • Morgan: every SSC Project should be connected to an iCAP Portal project. Quinn will keep working on connections, then this summer we can figure out what to do about the outliers
  • Would be helpful to add column sorting to SSC Projects table
  • SSC Projects listing goes back to 2008; aren't there projects from earlier than 2008?
    • That's all Helen had access to in SSC's master spreadsheet
    • Didn't include cancelled projects
    • Morgan will look for info about projects before 2008
    • Sheri may also have info about those projects
    • Some info about older SSC projects may be available in Project Updates (e.g. Projects Updates for Wind Turbine Generator(s) on South Farms)
• Recommendations:
  • Morgan will have a student work on adding Recommendations
  • Once they're complete, we should remove the manually maintained recommendation links in Projects
  • Next step: show Recommendations & Recommendation Updates on Project pages; Michael will work on a draft version to share
• Going through project hierarchy: adding/updating information to descriptions for Header projects
• Google Analytics numbers drop
• Discussion of how to handle projects with large numbers of metrics

TODOs

• ✅ SSC Projects:
  • ✅ Add column click sorting to SSC Projects table
  • ✅ Add ability to add/edit description to SSC Projects listing page
• ✅ Show Recommendations & Recommendation Updates on Project pages
• Investigate Google Analytics for April 3 - large spike in visits/users
• Investigate how to hide Project Status from certain projects which aren't actually projects - they're meant to act as parents for other projects (remaining from last meeting)
  • e.g. add a "Header" Project Status which hides the status

Check out  SmartWay — a program that supports clean air, energy efficiency, and a stronger, more sustainable supply chain.

This Earth Day, and every day, look for the SmartWay logo on trucks moving goods the fuel-efficient way.

Read this announcement online - 
 

Join the celebration of Earth Day on Tuesday, April 22, by biking around campus, grabbing a free set of lights, or registering your bicycle!
As part of the university’s Earth Month events, the first-ever Bike for Earth Day will feature three welcoming centers open from 3 to 7 p.m. at:

• Alma Mater Plaza 
• Hallene Gateway (intersection of Illinois Street and Lincoln Avenue)
• Activities & Recreation Center (east side driveway)

      🎉 Bike Light Giveaway included! 🎉

Check out the above link for more details

iSEE Sustainable Programs Coordinator Miriam Keep sent the draft iCAP 2025 objectives to the iCAP Working Group:

----------

Hi iCAP Working Group members,

I am sharing the compiled list of draft objectives for the iCAP 2025. Morgan, Jen, and I are asking you to share these to review with your respective campus units/constituencies, and to send me any questions or feedback by Friday, April 25. I will consolidate all feedback for discussion at our April 29 meeting.

Thank you and please let us know if you have any questions.

Have a great weekend!

Best,

Miriam

Sarthak asked campus communication officers to post digital signs about Bike for Earth Day 2025 on their departmental screens, to promote the event, until Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Attached is the promotional image.

The 2025 Campus Transportation Survey closed on April 6. The results of the survey will be analyzed and later shared on the iCAP Portal.

The Sustainability Sub-Council met on April 10, 2025. The primary agenda items included: 

• Energy Performance Contract - College of ACES
• Targets for the next iCAP
• DIA-specific objectives for the next iCAP

The slide deck and meeting minutes are attached.