On March 12, 2020, we held the "It's Your MTD Too!" event at the NCSA conference room 1040 from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm. Due to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, there were only 6 attendees and we proceeded with the workshop as planned. The event was very casual because of the low attendance, but it helped us figure out some of the points that we can do better.

Please see attached the final powerpoint presentation document.

Click here to see the structure of the workshop.

Sarthak Prasad reached out to the communication teams at NCSA, Beckman, ECE, CEE, Hydrosystem lab, CSL, and Will Hall to advertize the workshop. Travis Tate at the F&S CRC team forwarded the flyer to signage@illinois.edu to use this flyer as digital advertising for the event. Sarthak also had these posted at the aforementioned departments and their digital screens.

F&S CRC team also posted the workshop details in the e-week Newsletter on the March 8th edition under events section.

Sarthak met with Evan Alvarez and Allison Haines from MTD to finalize the powerpoint presentation for the workshop, and to confirm the final destination for the demonstration.

We also discussed how to structure the workshop - Sarthak will make the introduction, get a pre-workshop survey, then invite Evan and Allison to make the presentation. Following the presentation, we will catch the 22S Illini from Main and Goodwin to Ceramics Building, make a transfer, catch the 13N Silver or 10E Gold/Goldhopper to Lincoln Square, get off the bus, and return via the same route. Following the demonstration, Sarthak will ask the attendees to fill out the post-workshop survey, thank them for joining and end the workshop.

Evan and Allison agreed with the structure of the workshop. Evan will send Sarthak the final draft of the presentation before the event on March 12.

Sarthak Prasad and Stacey DeLorenzo met with Katie Henning at NCSA to discuss the It's Your MTD Too event. This event would be open to faculty and staff at NCSA and nearby departments/units. Katie was very interested in the event, and asked us for some dates. We decided to host this event from 12:30 to 1:30 pm. Sarthak would finalize a date and time for the event with Evan Alvarez.

Sarthak Prasad met with Lisa Lillig at KCPA on November 21, 2019. Following are the meeting notes.

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I met with Lisa yesterday (November 21, 2019) at the KCPA lobby to discuss holding this event at KCPA. I was under the impression that it would be just for KCPA employees, and not that we will hold this event at KCPA for anybody who was interested.

Lisa said that she had spoken to the management at KCPA, and they do not think that their employees would be interested in this program. She said that there are 85 employees, and they have meetings with production, their team meetings, management meetings, and that they would not be willing to wait 30 minutes to get to their meetings using the bus. I tried to explain that it doesn’t take that long for the buses, and that it is much the better option for the environment. However, she was not interested.

She said that their employees often work 12 hour shifts and they would not want to wait another 30 minutes to get to their homes. She said that the employees usually park in the parking lot below, and they use the permits (I didn’t force the fact that they may want to save the permit fee, if they parked at the periphery of the campus and took the bus from there). Their employees usually have late night shifts as well, and I told her about the SafeRide program (she said that she knew about it).

Finally, she said that a 30-minute presentation and a 30-minute demonstration of how to ride a bus, is a lot of time. She suggested that we should do the presentation while in the bus, to which I explained why it would not be effective. However, she still maintained that 1-hour is a lot of time to invest (and said that I can do a lot of work in 1 hour) for this program.

Lisa suggested that I talk to Renee Laeyll from Employee Development and Learning, and include this in their program. She also suggested that I should contact the Department of Theatre (Cathy Feely) and Department of Dance (Ana Sapozhnikov) to see if their student, faculty, or staff would be interested in this program. Finally, she suggested that I contact LAS and Engineering to see if I could get a table during the Welcome Week at KCPA (as they hold the Undergrad Convocation at KCPA).

Overall, KCPA was not interested in holding this event, although I did not have the correct information about the program.

Thank you,

Sarthak

Tristan Pisarczyk connected Sarthak Prasad with Jenna Fesemyer, the Resident Director, at Newman Hall. Jenna said that she does not believe that this is a service that their residents need. She said that this program would serve better towards the beginning of the school year.

Jenna suggested that we should wait for the next academic year to put on a program during an earlier time.

Sarthak Prasad reached out to Tristan Pisarczyk on October 1, 2019, for hosting the "It's Your MTD Too!" event at Newman Center.

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Hey Tristan,

My name is Sarthak Prasad, and I work as the Sustainability and TDM Specialist in the Facilities & Services department at the University of Illinois. Stacey DeLorenzo asked me to reach out to you to organize a workshop (presentation and demonstration) on how to use the MTD on campus for students living in the Newman Center.

I would love to chat with you to discuss more about this program. I have spoken to the MTD people and two people from MTD would join me for this presentation. I think it would be a great program to demonstrate how easy, safe, and accessible the MTD bus service is. How many students would you think would be interested in this program? What all do we need to do to get this started?

Thank you,

Sarthak

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