Hello, CALS,
Today, Monday, we have our spring semester Town Hall at 2:15 p.m. in the Dolezal Auditorium, 127 Curtiss Hall, and I hope you can attend! I’ll offer a presentation about some of the latest and greatest in the college, and Jay Harmon, Kendall Lamkey and Ruth MacDonald will present on topics related to their work portfolios of Extension and Outreach, Facilities and Operations, and Personnel and Finance, respectively. Alison Parker has arranged for movie theater popcorn during the presentations! It's another excellent CALS community event, much like the fun CALS Spring Awards event we had last week.
At that event, we honored several dozen of your colleagues who this year received faculty and staff awards, and we made a few special recognitions. Posthumously honored with the CALS Dean’s Award for Sustained Excellence was alum and international agriculture expert extraordinaire Bill Gamble, who passed away late last year at the age of 103. Some of his family were with us to celebrate his contributions and accept the recognition in his memory and honor (more on Dr. Gamble below).
We also solemnly remembered four of our colleagues who we have lost in the recent past, who left us and their families way too soon and, while still here, were working with us every day. They all had a Department of Animal Science affiliation, so Jason Ross and I made some remarks to remember them, and we celebrated their lives with heartfelt applause. They were Ken Stalder, professor of animal science; Richard Gates, professor of animal science and agricultural and biosystems engineering and Egg Industry Center director; Chelsea Iennarella-Servantez, animal science alumna and instructor; and Sherry Olsen, professor of animal science. They are all dearly missed.
Also during the awards ceremony, I recognized and gave a shout-out to all the farm crews at the Ag450, animal science, and college farms around the state who, through the deep snow, bitter cold and raging wind during the brutal double-blizzard of January 2024, steadfastly cared for our farm animals and each other. Total commitment on terrible days.
Coming up in a few short weeks is graduation season:
- CALS Convocation on May 10 at 9 a.m. in Hilton Coliseum
- Graduate College Commencement for CALS Graduate students on May 9 at 7 p.m. in Hilton Coliseum
- University Undergraduate Commencement on May 11 at 9 a.m. in Hilton Coliseum
Please come out for those and celebrate the success and future of our students. Especially consider attending the uniquely CALS Convocation, where you can be part of the handshake, hug and high-five line of faculty and staff who line up to congratulate the graduates! It’s fun (really, it is) and meaningful (very much so) and a great way to spend a workday morning. Each of our students has looked forward to this for years – and we should be there to celebrate them! If you want to know more, please reach out to Angie Weeks (amweeks@iastate.edu), or just show up a bit early on Friday, May 10, and find your way to the faculty and staff sitting area so you can join in this fun (no academic regalia required, but it's OK, too).
Finally, a special thanks to all the faculty and staff who advise our students and are fighting their way through the launch of Workday for Students, getting them happily registered and on their way. It’s a tough transition but a necessary and good one to achieve and to get behind us before too long. Great thanks to everyone who has worked on this.
My best for a great week. - Dan
Scenes from CALS
William Gamble ('48 agricultural and life sciences education, '49 MS) spent more than 30 years working in agricultural education, research and development in 90 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. He worked for the Ford Foundation as a specialist in agriculture and a country director in Burma, Mexico and the Caribbean, Colombia, Venezuela, and West Africa. In 1975, he became the director of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria, a research organization that focuses on ensuring a food secure future for sub-Saharan Africa. From there, he became the founding director of the International Service for National Agricultural Research in The Hague, the Netherlands.
He and his wife, Sara Virginia Liggett Gamble, established the Gamble International Agriculture Scholarship at Iowa State to support international experience for CALS graduate students who intend to pursue a career in agriculture on an international level.
Several members of Gamble's family were in attendance at the CALS Spring Awards program to accept the CALS Dean’s Award for Sustained Excellence honoring Gamble.
