Student Sustainability Committee - University of Illinois

More than 80 students turned out for our Sustainability Career Panel last week, sponsored by?#iSEE?in partnership with the?Student Sustainability Committee - University of Illinois ?? Young professionals in sustainability positions with private industry, nonprofits, and government agencies talked about their work and how they prepared for their current positions. Several University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alums credited iSEE's #sustainability minor (the SEE Fellows Program) and Environmental Leadership Program for enhancing their career pathway! ?? Thanks to all who attended, and especially our wonderful panelists! ?? Kasandra Alvarez, Program Manager at Friends of the Forest Preserves ?? Lauren Louise Ellstrand, Global Enterprise Sustainability Analyst at?Boeing ?? Bridget Friel, Associate Engineer II at GTI Energy ?? Silas Gilklay, GIS Analyst at?WSP ?? Neil Kasbekar, Coordinator, Environmental Compliance and Strategy at?Invenergy ?? MJ Oviatt, Illinois Agroforestry Educator at the?Savanna Institute ?? Betsy Ruckman, Visiting Scientific Specialist, Sustainability at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center ?? Anna Scheidel, Natural Resources Technician at Champaign County Forest Preserves ?? Asli Topuzlu, Energy & Sustainability Analyst at?JLL ?? Jamie N. Zouras, Senior Specialist, Nature-Based Climate Solutions at?Delta Institute

Meet SSC's intern team! Mia Seaton collaborates with external departments to expand SSC’s outreach, assists the Social Initiatives and Communications teams with operational tasks, manages SSC’s orders, and coordinates events to promote engagement. Reed Thibaudeau assists with the internal branch by processing, bookkeeping, and monitoring projects to ensure compliance and organization. Helen M. works on researching student-facing sustainability programming on college campuses, along with conducting audits on ongoing and completed SSC projects and uploading every SSC project onto the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) web portal. We are grateful for all their hard work that benefits SSC!

Meet SSC's Communications Project Leads, Annika Gustafsson, Megan O'Sullivan, Jenna Schaefer, and Alyssa Shih! They promote SSC events, funding opportunities, and sustainability engagement by creating social media posts, digital signage, and newsletter content. Stay tuned to meet more of our board members!

Meet SSC's Vice Chair Internal! Teague Mitchell oversees SSC's working groups and working group chairs. We've enjoyed having him on the board for two years!

Meet SSC's Vice Chair Treasurer Lucy Zhou! Lucy monitors SSC's expenditures, prepares budgets, and provides financial updates to the board. She is SSC's first Vice Chair Treasurer and she has done an amazing job!

Meet SSC’s Vice Chair External Ellen Cha! Ellen leads the Social Initiatives team, which develops SSC events and programming. This is her second year on the board. She is a tremendous asset to our team!

This past Wednesday, we were fortunate to host a presentation by Dr. Donald Wuebbles titled "Our Changing Climate: Growing Our Economy While Responding to the Science." Dr. Wuebbles is is the Harry E. Preble Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Illinois, former Assistant Director with the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the Executive Office of the President, and served as coordinating lead author on international climate assessments led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), contributing to the panel being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Dr. Wuebbles presented the oncoming climate emergency as not just a threat to lives and lifestyles, but also to the financial integrity of the nation and the world. Without appropriate intervention to reduce the human contribution to global warming, increased extreme weather events, unreliable weather patterns, sea level rise, glacier melt, and its many other externalities endanger billions, if not trillions of dollars in investments, crop yields, lost productivity and more. Many of the fastest growing regions of the country are also those least equipped to handle their changing climates. The solution, he said, starts with us: encouraging those around us to be mindful of our lifestyles and understand the multifaceted threat that global warming is, using our political power to outweigh that of the polluters, and remaining optimistic about our future. An illuminating presentation all around. The event drew hundreds of students and faculty of all backgrounds–we couldn't have imagined such a turnout! We'd like to thank Dr. Wuebbles for his time as well as our Social Initiatives board and general members for organizing the event!

Meet SSC's Vice Chair Communications! Charles Okoli leads SSC's communications team and oversees SSC's social media platforms and newsletter. We've enjoyed having him on the board for two years!

Join us on Wednesday, December 11th, for the Green Fund Gala! We'll celebrate this semester of SSC with food, drinks, certificates for general members, and a Greener Goods sustainable self-care basket giveaway. We'll also hear from some of our board members about the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) conference that they recently attended! The dress code is semi-formal/business casual, but everyone is encouraged to attend, no matter what you're wearing!

Welcome back for Part 2 of our project deep-dive with CLO3D! Listen to Project Lead Chiara Vincenzi talk about her work and working with SSC with Megan O'Sullivan and Annika Gustafsson ??????