In the corporate world, the double-L in “LLC” is an acronym for “Limited Liability.” At the University of Illinois, “LLC” stands for “Living and Learning Community.” And one specific community, the Sustainability LLC, is fighting for the planet’s environmental future — a global issue that everyone is liable for.
By surrounding young people with fellow sustainability-minded individuals — all living in one residence hall — the Sustainability LLC complements their education with learning opportunities that go beyond any typical curriculum. Each year, events that reach wide audiences (an annual film festival), new educational programs (a book club for 2024), and multiple field trips (St. Louis, anyone?) are designed to impact lives and, of course, the Earth.
That starts with campus’s very landscape — specifically, the façade and sides of Lincoln Avenue Residence Hall (LAR), where LLC members tend native plants. The garden is the main locus for the LLC’s flagship educational experience, Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES) 294.
“The course kind of has two phases to it: Eight weeks in the fall, eight weeks in the spring,” Sustainability LLC Director Adam Betz said. “And it’s a hands-on course. There’s actual gardening that goes on — planting and weeding and all sorts of other things under the guidance of a plant expert.”
“Hands-on” may mean literal sunshine and daisies, but it carries the lesson that sustainability is impossible without hard work. “I remember we had this giant mulch pile,” former Sustainability LLC Intern and junior Bioengineering major Peter Nardulli said, “and it took us so many hours to get it distributed. I spent my last night at the LLC outside shoveling mulch.” Pause. “It was fun.”
Above: Tending to the gardens around Lincoln Avenue Residence Halls (LAR) is part of the Sustainability LLC-exclusive course, NRES 294. Top: Sustainability LLC students set up next to the Hallene Gateway for the annual “Light the Night” campus bike event.
Living and Learning Communities started sprouting up at American universities as a way to transform ordinary dorms into residence halls that provide more than just a place to sleep and eat. Or, as Betz puts it: “The idea of an LLC is the synthesis between learning objectives and students’ academic interest within a residence hall setting. Each LLC has its own academic theme.”
The first LLC at the University of Illinois was also among the first in the country: In 1971, a small LLC in Allen Hall called “Unit One” was established as a group geared toward Art & Design students. Today, Unit One is among the largest of the university’s 10 Living and Learning Communities.
The Sustainability LLC is one of the university’s newest, established in 2012. This year, it has 24 students, 18 of whom are new freshmen. While it’s a smaller cohort than usual, Betz is enthusiastic about being able to focus more energy on each student.
“Let’s focus on a smaller crop of students, students who are really interested in all of it — really interested in doing the native plants course, going on field trips, and getting involved with the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP). I think the theory here is that less is more,” he said.
For Betz, who also oversees the Innovation LLC, 2024 is his first year as the Sustainability LLC’s Program Director. With his appointment, the LLC started to see immediate, important upgrades.
For one, the LLC was moved from LAR down the street to the Illinois Street Residence Halls (ISR). There, the LLC is building a brand new lounge space in what used to be the ISR library. Once that space is refurbished, Betz hopes to use it for the Sustainability LLC’s new book group. This year’s read: What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care by Elizabeth Cripps.
Another text Betz mentions often is Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. Among other “nudges” in the book are small actions to increase sustainability, like changing the design of bins or light switches to promote recycling or energy-saving habits. With his background in philosophy, Betz is consulting this text to kickstart a future environmental ethics course for the LLC.
Also new this year was a field trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. “We got special tickets for a sustainability exhibit in the gardens,” Betz said. “It showed how much they’re repurposing plant waste and how they go about maintaining the grounds in eco-friendly ways. The gardens also have little eco-friendly nudges and methods of persuasion for getting people to appreciate sustainability, plant life, and natural aesthetics.”
For Nardulli, every educational component of the LLC — the academic course, the gardening, the field trips — seemed like the natural next step when coming to college. “Ever since I was in middle school, I would go volunteer at the Forest Preserve near my house because I like the outdoors. I’ve always been looking for ways to keep nature going, making sure we’re not just destroying it all,” he said.
Evidently, there were multiple people who felt similarly. According to Betz, one of the major draws to joining an LLC is “you’ve immediately got at least this much in common with the people you’re going to be living with. There’s enough intersections of interest that you have a bond right away.”
The concept seems to work. “I met one of my roommates I just moved in with through the LLC,” Nardulli said. “I think it’s very useful for forming friendships. At the start of college, everybody comes in looking for new people and groups. And I think the LLC is just a really good method of doing that.”
A common love for the environment, and a shared drive to protect it, may be something that every student at the University of Illinois Sustainability Living and Learning Community possesses, but its reach goes much further.
For the past seven years, the LLC has hosted an annual film festival around Earth Day that screens so-called “sustainability shorts.” Each short runs about 10 minutes, must focus on a sustainability topic, and can be submitted to one of four categories: Documentary Short, Narrative Short, Music Video, and a new category this year exclusively for University of Illinois students. The festival is an unequivocally global event for a very global issue.
Sustainability LLC students get their first introduction to the LAR gardens during Orientation Week 2024. All credits: Adam Betz
“Last year we got submissions from Great Britain, from Ukraine, from across the United States,” Betz said in late September, “from Mexico, from South America, submissions from Kenya and other African countries.” This year seems to be no different. “So far, we’ve gotten 70 submissions and it’s been open five days. These are going to continue to pour in and this is all run through the LLC.”
In 12 short years, the Sustainability LLC’s outreach has stretched from the small gardens surrounding Lincoln Hall, to the larger Midwest, and into the world that it’s trying to protect. Still, its greatest impact is on its students.
When asked if the Sustainability LLC has prepared him to tackle environmental issues, Nardulli said, “It is sometimes stressful just to think about the future and what the whole planet will look like. But I feel like a lot of people are involved and a lot of people realize that this is an issue. And I think we’re smart enough as a species to be able to solve it.”
— Article by iSEE Communications Associate Gabe Lareau