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COLLEGE NEWS
- Orientation for State Fair exhibit volunteers
- Visiting Professor Program looking for presenters
- New requests for proposals on the Web
- Ambrosia for sale
- Change in Leopold Center Conference public
session
- Deadlines & Reminders
COMMUNICATIONS KIOSK
- Web report contradicts design concepts
INFOGRAZING
- Virtual university goes international
EXTERNAL VOICES
- A Father's Day tribute to a farmer
MARGINALIA
- Virtually immortal
C O L L E G E N E W S
ORIENTATION FOR STATE FAIR
EXHIBIT VOLUNTEERS
Volunteers for the college's
exhibit at the Iowa State Fair are invited for refreshments and
an orientation session 8:30-9:30 a.m. July 29 in 15 Curtiss Hall.
General announcements will be made at 9 a.m. The orientation will
include a chance to see the forestry department's stream table
in action. It will be set up on the west side of Curtiss. Admission
and parking tickets will be distributed. Tickets will be delivered
to volunteers unable to attend. Contact: Susan Anderson, 4-0705.
VISITING PROFESSOR PROGRAM LOOKING FOR PRESENTERS
The college's recruitment committee is looking for faculty members
to be presenters in this year's Visiting Professor Program, which
provides professors to high school classes. Participants are limited
to three high school visits a year to ensure that the time commitment
is not excessive. The committee wants to expand participation
from last year's 60 topics offered by 45 college faculty members.
For more information: Mike Gaul, 4-5624, mikegaul@iastate.edu.
Sign up with Norma Hensley, 4-6614, nhensley@iastate.edu.
NEW REQUESTS FOR PROPOSALS ON THE WEB
Proposals are being sought for the Small Business Innovation Research
(SBIR) Program and the United States--Israel Binational Agricultural
R&D (BARD) Fund. The deadline for the SBIR program is Sept.
4 and Sept. 1 for the BARD Fund. More information is available
from the college's Requests for Proposals page.
AMBROSIA FOR SALE
The Graduate Organization in Agricultural Education is growing
sweet corn on the Ag 450 farm and selling it to help send members
to conferences. The corn variety is Ambrosia, also known as Peaches
and Cream. Harvest begins the first week of August. The corn is
selling for $2 a dozen. Place orders as soon as possible by calling
Cheryl Abrams at 4-5872.
CHANGE IN LEOPOLD CENTER CONFERENCE
PUBLIC SESSION
Nina Leopold Bradley, daughter of Aldo Leopold,
will be unable to appear at a July 30 Leopold Center annual conference
session. Appearing for her will be Buddy Huffaker, an ecologist
with the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wis. Huffaker, who
knows and works with the Leopold family, will talk on Bradley's
original topic: "Family memories of Aldo Leopold." The
7:15 p.m. session is titled "An evening reflecting on the
land" and will include Iowa farmer and poet Michael Carey.
It will be in Scheman's Benton Auditorium. The event is free and
open to the public.
DEADLINES & REMINDERS
July 30-31: Leopold Center Tenth Anniversary Conference, 4-3711
Aug. 7-17: Iowa State Fair
Aug. 21: College of Agriculture faculty-staff retreat on distance
learning
C O M M U N I C A T I O N S K I O S K
WEB REPORT CONTRADICTS DESIGN CONCEPTS
An easy-to-use Web site restricts color
to links, presents a lot of text to make links more informative
and minimizes white space, according to the new report "Web
Site Usability: A Designer's Guide." It is based on usability
tests by more than 50 people as they searched for information
on nine popular Web sites. The study was conducted by User Interface
Engineering, a research and consulting firm. More results and
report ordering information are available at: http://www.uie.com.
I N F O G R A Z I N G
VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY GOES INTERNATIONAL
The Western Governors University, a so-called
"virtual" university that plans to begin offering courses
electronically next year, reports "explosive" interest
from students in foreign countries and has announced collaborations
with institutions in Great Britain, Canada and Japan. "The
Western Governors University is essential to a strong international
economy," says a WGU spokeswoman, "because it provides
an unprecedented access to higher education that students in remote
locations just haven't had." From the July 3, 1997 Chronicle
of Higher Education.
E X T E R N A L V O I C E S
A FATHER'S DAY TRIBUTE TO A FARMER
"My old man's idea of a good time, especially in the summer,
was to announce at supper that we should go for a drive. Then
we would all get in the car and drive up and down gravel roads
at about 25 mph looking at other farms ... If a farm was well-kept
and the beans were hoed and the buildings painted, my father ...
would say: "He's a good farmer." If not we would pass
the offending farm in silence and pity. This gave my father no
end of satisfaction. ... My father was a funny, proud man. He
was proud of the fact he'd graduated from college. ... He believed
in his wife and children, God, Iowa State University, Republicans,
Fords and the Chicago Cubs, more or less in that order."
From a Father's Day column in the June 15, 1997 Arizona Republic
by Clay Thompson.
M A R G I N A L I A
VIRTUALLY IMMORTAL
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University envision a huge multimedia
database that could store minute-by-minute details of your waking
life, all packed on a hard disk the size of a quarter. "Your
great-great-grandchildren will be able to ask your database about
your life and times," says Dr. Raj Reddy, dean of the School
of Computer Science. As hard-drive prices plummet, "storing
all your visual experiences during your 5,840 waking hours per
year, including all your creative expressions, will soon cost
less than $1,000," says the director of CMU's new Human Computer
Interaction Institute, who predicts that in about 15 years, storage
costs will fall to about $50 for 100 years of life.