Hello all! We hope you are as excited as we are for the upcoming semester! For a complete list of upcoming events, please check the Calendar. It will be updated as soon as new information is available.

For 1Ls, we look forward to meeting you during Orientation!

For everyone, our first meeting will be Wednesday, August 27 at 12:00 in Room B. We know everyone has dozens of meetings to attend at the start of school so if you can’t make it, don’t worry; we’ll go over all the information we give out, and much more, in a meeting September 10th.

What you don’t want to miss is Peer’s Pub! We are very excited to be kicking off the Fall Semester by hosting Peer’s Pub the first week of classes, so please join us August 28 in the Pavilion. We are delighted to be sponsored by Seven Saints in Downtown Champaign and Strawberry Fields in Urbana.

We will be serving Ben & Jerry’s and desserts so we hope you will stop by and celebrate surviving the first week of classes with some ice cream! Anyone who purchases $2.00 in ice cream or desserts automatically has a chance to get one of three gift certificates to Seven Saints or a gift certificate to Strawberry Fields.

All proceeds from the event go directly to assisting ELS in hosting one of the many exciting speakers and panels we are organizing for this year. We have a lot coming up, so please check back in to see what else we’ve planned.

To recap:

Aug. 27- Brief introductory meeting

Aug. 28- Peers Pub

Sept. 10- First General Meeting with Professor Freyfoygle (more details on this forthcoming)

Summer is underway and it seemed like a good time to go over the exciting semester we just finished up.

First, this semester welcomed in new leadership for the club.  Stephanie Johnson and Pamela Domash took up the challenge of getting the student body interested in Environmental Law.

We had a great fundraiser suggested by some of the wise graduating members of selling Compact Florescent Lightbulbs (CFLs).  For our first fundraiser, it was a magnificent success.

Our fearless leaders flew out to Burlington, Vermont to attend the National Association of Environmental Law Societies annual conference in late March.  This was an fantastic event, with some fascinating panels on climate change, water issues, and our personal favorite, international fisheries.  There was also a reunion dinner for NRDC that included an fascinating recap of its beginning by two founding members.

We met some amazing professors, attorneys, scientists, and fellow law students.  What an inspiration!  And to top it off, we even met Jerry from Ben & Jerry’s!  Vermont may be cold, but the scenery is beautiful and there was an abundance of delicious ice cream.

We capped off our whirlwind semester in April with a fantastic panel on climate change, with our topic being carbon cap and trade systems.  The event featured the following knowledgable panelists:

Margrethe Kearney is an associate at Latham & Watkins practicing environmental law in Chicago. An alum of Harvard Law School, Ms. Kearney has worked on environmental regulatory matters involving EPA rulemaking under the Clean Air Act.

Hannes Leetaru works as a senior geologist at the Illinois State Geological Survey researching sequestration of CO2 into saline reservoirs. Dr. Leetaru has a PhD from the University of Illinois and is an adjunct professor with the Department of Geology.

Oscar Marrero is an associate at Jenner & Block in Chicago, working in their Environmental, Energy, and Natural Resources Law practice. Mr. Marrero has worked on Clean Water Act issues in the Great Lakes as well as state environmental regulatory issues. Mr. Marrero is an alum of the University of Texas law school.

Jennifer Walling is an alum of the College of Law and currently works as the Chief of Staff for Illinois State Senator Heather Stearns. Ms. Walling worked at the  Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago after graduating from the College of Law. She also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences from the University of Illinois.

We thank the panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules to attend.  They were tremendously informative and the event was a great success!  Thanks to all who attended!  (The following picture is a bit misleading, as the direct front rows, naturally, remained vacant)

Finally, to follow up the panel we were proud to co-host Peer’s Pub with the Animal Law Society as a reception to the panel.  It was graciously sponsored by Chipotle, who donated burritos to better inform the student body about their sustainable farming practices.  As one might imagine, it was quite the hit.  Many thanks to Chipotle and the Animal Law Society for their hard work as well!

We’ve already begun contacting possible participants for events in the fall, so stay tuned for what’s to come!  We’ll see you in August!

Hello all. We are wrapping up the 2007-2008 school year and as finals draw near, we will let the group wind down to give us all time to study. There will be a ton of events coming up in the fall, including more meetings, panels, speakers, fundraising, etc., so keep a close watch on the site as we start getting plans finalized over the summer. Thanks to everyone who came out this year- we are very excited with how the semester went!