COLLEGE NEWS
- Moving days for college offices
- Brenton Center update
- New forestry chair named
- Firsts for orientation . . .
- . . . and for the four-year plan
- Faculty, staff salaries
- Students in Service: Shared Visions
- Ag Online posted
COMMUNICATIONS KIOSK
- Spaghetti Web
INFOGRAZING
- Federal research funds, cont.
EXTERNAL VOICES
- Haying weather
MARGINALIA
- Caffeine web
C O L L E G E N E W S
MOVING DAYS FOR COLLEGE OFFICES
Beginning Monday, June 12, your patience is requested as many
of the College of Agriculture's administrative offices begin moving
into new locations in Curtiss Hall. The moving is expected to
take almost four weeks. The moves, and in some cases changes of
office names, reflect the new administrative structure outlined
in the college's strategic plan. For now, the only offices that
will NOT be moving are the Dean's office (Room 122), Ag Development
(Room 115) and Ag Placement (Room 120). Phone numbers of current
administrators and staff will remain the same. As the dust settles,
Ag Online will run more information on where to find offices and
people. In the meantime, if there are questions, contact Cathy
Good, 294-1823, Joyce Shiers, 294-2518, or Ag Information, 294-5616.
BRENTON CENTER UPDATE
Construction of the Brenton Center for Agricultural Instruction
and Technology Transfer in Curtiss Hall is slated to be finished
early in July. Installation of equipment for the hi-tech instruction
and distance learning center will begin during the last half of
June. Later in July, the equipment will be tested and a link established
to the Iowa Communications Network. Richard Carter, head of the
agricultural education and studies department, says about a dozen
college courses are scheduled for the center's two classrooms
this fall, including four night classes. Carter said workshops
will be offered to acquaint faculty and staff with the center's
features. A tentative date for an open house and dedication of
the facility is Nov. 11.
NEW FORESTRY CHAIR NAMED
James Kelly has been named chair of the Department of Forestry.
Kelly, who has worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority since
1976, is currently the senior technical specialist in the atmospheric
sciences division of TVA's Environmental Research Center. He also
has adjunct appointments in the Department of Forestry, Wildlife
and Fisheries and the Graduate Program in Ecology at the University
of Tennessee. Kelly, who will begin in October, succeeds Steve
Jungst, who was chair for 10 years and will return to the department
faculty.
FIRSTS FOR ORIENTATION . . .
On June 6-7, 145 students who will enter the College of Agriculture
this fall attended the first of four summer orientation sessions.
This is the first year that individual departments organized meetings
for students and their parents. DEOs and/or professors hosted
the get-acquainted sessions. Tests for advising and university
purposes were given, but this was the first year in which placement
exams were not required, giving students the option of being placed
by ACT or SAT scores.
. . . AND FOR THE FOUR-YEAR PLAN
Another first for this summer's orientations is the chance to
check out ISU's new four-year graduation plan. A contract spells
out the conditions that the student and the university are required
to meet. Before committing to the plan, students are encouraged
to talk it over with their parents and with their advisors in
the fall, said Tom Polito, director of Ag Student Services. Of
the students who start in agriculture at ISU, about 61 percent
graduate in four years.
FACULTY, STAFF SALARIES
Pay hikes for ISU faculty and P&S staff for the next fiscal
year should average just under 4 percent (including faculty promotion
increases). Under proposed salary guidelines, faculty and staff
who are meeting performance expectations will receive raises of
approximately 1.3 percent. Larger raises will be based on individual
merit, equity or market considerations. The College of Agriculture
is withholding a small pool of research and extension funds for
salary adjustments to help departments correct salary inequities.
For the same reason, the provost's office is withholding a small
portion of the teaching base salary budget. (For more information
on salary increases, see Inside Iowa State, May 26.)
STUDENTS IN SERVICE: SHARED VISIONS
Rick Exner, a Ph.D. candidate in agronomy, works through ISU Extension
as farming systems coordinator for Practical Farmers of Iowa,
a producers' group that conducts on-farm trials. PFI and ISU,
with W.K. Kellogg Foundation support, have started Shared Visions:
Farming for Better Communities, a program to strengthen rural
communities through the farms that surround towns. It facilitates
projects that bring farmers and townsfolk together around sustainable
systems of farming and marketing.
AG ONLINE POSTED
Hard copy of each Ag Online issue is now posted on a central bulletin
board (or boards) in each department, along with the name of the
college communications advisor for your department.
C O M M U N I C A T I O N S K I O S K
SPAGHETTI WEB
Howard Strauss of Princeton University says World Wide Web content
designers need to relearn some old lessons of scholarship (and
perhaps of communications, too): "In the past we learned
how to use footnotes, tables of contents and indexes effectively,
but in our electronic formats we seem to have forgotten all that.
We use too many hypertext links, use them where they make no sense,
ignore the difference between footnotes and tables of contents,
build links to bizarre and unexpected places, ignore standard
ways of linking, and confuse, rather than enlighten, with hypertext
structures that make bowls of spaghetti seem like models of good
organization." (Edutech Report, May)
I N F O G R A Z I N G
FEDERAL RESEARCH FUNDS, CONT.
Another look at the status of federal research funds, this time
for the USDA: President Clinton's fiscal year 1996 budget request
to Congress for the Cooperative State Research, Education and
Extension Service proposes a decrease of almost 6 percent from
current appropriations. The request maintains formula funding
for the base research, education and extension programs at current
levels; proposes increased funding for the National Research Initiative
Competitive Grants Program; and reduces other research funding.
It emphasizes the 1890 institutions and critical national issues
such as water quality, integrated pest management, alternatives
to pesticides, capacity building grants, the Hispanic education
partnerships, the Native American Institutions endowment fund
and sustainable agriculture. It proposes legislation to improve
facilities at the 1890 institutions. The House of Representatives
Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture is expected to "mark
up" the appropriation in mid-June, with full-committee action
through July. (About half of the federal grant monies that the
Experiment Station receives are from the USDA.)
E X T E R N A L V O I C E S
HAYING WEATHER
"Haying is what I always loved about the farm; alfalfa, far
more than corn, summed up agriculture for me. It was raised and
baled on the farm, fed on the farm and spread as manure on the
farm. No one ever trucked it away. It had the right smell. And
rural life never looks better than when haying weather hits Minnesota,
Iowa or Montana." Verlyn Klinkenborg, a native Iowan, in
his book, Making Hay.
M A R G I N A L I A
CAFFEINE WEB
From an item in The New Yorker, June 5: Using spiders, scientists
have identified the chemical agent responsible for human error.
They don't appear to know that, but they have. According to the
London Independent, the scientists considered the structures of
webs spun by spiders under the influence of marijuana, benzedrine,
chloral hydrate (a sedative) and caffeine. The marijuana web is
pretty close to the conventional one but is unfinished. The benezdrine
web is meticulous in places but has huge gaps. The chloral-hydrate
web is a stray collection of strands. The illuminating example
is caffeine. Anyone who has ever had a tip from an excitable stockbroker
go south, or had the rearview mirror fall off his brand-new car
and discovered it was made on the night shift . . . will be struck
by the slipshod, disorderly, ill-planned, chaotic and slaphappy
structure.