College News
College Alumni Reception Looks Back
About 60 alumni and their spouses gathered Friday at the College's Alumni Days reception for graduates. Retired Associate Dean Eric Hoiberg hosted the morning's activities with the theme, Then & Now: 50 Years of Change & Growth. Department chairs shared highlights and discuss how their departments had evolved over the past 50 years and alumni told what they had been doing the last five decades. Alumni Paul Jacobson, who earned a bachelor's degree in agricultural engineering in 1932, was presented a special gift for representing the earliest graduating class present at the College reception.
Career Management System Adopted by College
Ag Career Services has begun using a university-wide career management system, called ISUCMS to bring students and employers together. The system has been in use for nearly two years, started by the College of Engineering. The colleges of business, liberal arts and sciences and human sciences also have adopted the system. Students can upload documents, such as resumes, and apply for jobs directly; and employers can post positions and campus interviewing schedules university wide. Students are automatically signed up for the system when they enroll and it is available to alumni. Mike Gaul, career services director, said the new system and the College's present system are operating simultaneously but the College system will end Aug. 1. He said one advantage is that students can view every job in the system, which currently lists about 500 active positions.
Professor Looks to Expand Student Recruitment
Levon Esters, agricultural education and studies, grew up on Chicago's South Side and describes himself as someone you wouldn't expect to be involved in agriculture. "You can't get any more nontraditional than myself, I mean, a young African-American male from the South Side of Chicago, from the third largest city in the country," he said in a story from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. His recent research has included surveying students at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, where he taught agribusiness in the late 1990s. He believes more work needs to be done to recruit students from urban and minority communities (see Internal Voices, below).
Branded Beef Demonstration Project Underway
Iowa's reputation as a producer of high-quality beef is the basis for a demonstration project to develop a brand linked to that reputation. The Iowa Beef Center and the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development are collaborating on the project.
Agronomy Professor Named Fellow
Lee Burras, associate professor of agronomy, was named a fellow of the Iowa Academy of Sciences at the organization's annual meeting April 29. Burras joined the ISU agronomy department in 1995. His teaching and research examine the relationship between agriculture and the environment. He serves on the department's teaching panel and teaches five courses a year at Iowa State and at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory. Burras also holds the current Pioneer Agronomy Professorship and is a Miller Faculty Fellow in the ISU Center for Teaching Excellence.
Plant Sciences Institute Awards Innovative Research Grants
The Plant Sciences Institute has awarded start-up funding to seven innovative research projects. The projects relate to the institute's research initiatives, which target specific challenges facing Iowa agriculture and the plant bioscience industry.
Search Begins for Vice Provost for Extension
A 20-member search committee, which includes College of Agriculture Dean Catherine Woteki, plans to name a successor to Vice Provost for Extension Stanley Johnson by year's end. The committee's first meeting is Wednesday, May 25.
Joint Agricultural Conference Planned
The 17th Annual Integrated Crop Management Conference (ICM) and the Agribusiness Association of Iowa Agribusiness Expo will be held Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 on the Iowa State University campus. This is the first year the two events will be held together. The ICM conference is hosted by ISU Extension, the College of Agriculture and the departments of agronomy, entomology, plant pathology and agricultural and biosystems engineering.
Grundy County Barn Quilt Project Attracts Visitors
A surprising attraction causes some motorists to exit Highway 20 in Grundy County -- barns. But these aren't just any barns. Each displays a quilt square, chosen to represent agricultural heritage or rural life. Currently, 13 barns display quilt squares. Organizers hope to complete 20 more quilt squares in 2005, in celebration of Iowa's "The Year of the Barn and the Family Farm."
Deadlines and Reminders
June 23: Research and Demonstration Farm Field Days begin, Southeast farm, 1:30 p.m., more: https://farms.cals.iastate.edu/research-farms-field-days-and-meetings
July 6-8: Agricultural policy summit, "New Directions in Federal Farm Policy: Issues for the 2007 Farm Bill"
July 12: Lauren Christian Pork Chop Open, Veenker Memorial Golf Course, Ames
Communications Kiosk
'Home In' isn't the Same as 'Hone In'
"Home in" is frequently misrendered as "hone in," hone means "to sharpen." "Home in" refers to what homing pigeons do; the meaning is "to come closer and closer to a target." (The Chicago Manual of Style, 2003, 15th edition)
Infograzing
Pig Compound Fights Infection
University of California at San Diego scientists have found an anti-bacterial agent produced by pigs that can help prevent skin infection in humans, according to BBC News. The molecule - PR39 - is from a family of protective proteins called cathelicidins. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that PR39 in combination with a human cathelicidin can kill streptococcal bacteria. When scientists delivered PR39 to human skin cells in the laboratory, the cells were better able to fend off infection by the bugs. Mice engineered to produce PR39 also showed increased resistance. Humans only have one cathelicidin gene, whereas pigs, cows and horses have several. The new study suggests that having more than one kind of cathelicidin offers extra protection. More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4523301.stm
Internal Voices
Anything can be Connected to Ag
"Ask students to name me these 300 careers, and they'll tell you a florist, an agronomist, but there are so many other careers. We need to discuss these career opportunities. Anything you have an interest in can be connected to ag." -- Levon Esters, agricultural education and studies, talking about the more than 300 career paths connected to agriculture in a Medill News Service article.
Next issue: May 31
Ag Online
Editor: Ed Adcock, edadcock@iastate.edu
Phone: (515) 294-5616
Web site: http://www.ag.iastate.edu/aginfo/
Subscribe: Ag Online, the newsletter for faculty and staff in Iowa State University's College of Agriculture, is e-mailed every Monday. To subscribe, send your name, e-mail address and the message "Ag Online subscribe" to edadcock@iastate.edu. To unsubscribe, send "Ag Online unsubscribe."
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