Happy Monday, CALS colleagues,
This week, we conclude the semester and take a deep breath as we head into the wonders of summer. Our students are so ready to commence – some to summer work and opportunities before coming back in the fall, and others to graduation exercises and the next stage in their lives and careers. It’s a fantastically wonderful place we get to inhabit here in higher education to help people learn, to engage in discovery and to transfer knowledge to others. We make lives and livelihoods and people and communities better everywhere. It’s proud service we do, and a deep experience for our students.
I struggle when I hear people say that, after graduation, students get out into the real world. First-off – higher education is most certainly part of the real world. By some estimates, there are about 20 million students at U.S. colleges and universities, and about 3.5 million employees. That’s our industry – our enterprise. That’s most certainly a real world number of people.
And the work we do, that you do, is indeed work by any definition. Further, by suggesting that students are somehow not in the real world while here, but just taking time to pause in the midst of life, undermines the seriousness of our efforts and the demands we place on our students, and they on themselves. Let’s promote our place as central to the real world, and its continual betterment!
Last week, we had lots to celebrate and the same will go for this week!
Last week there was a terrific university reception for newly promoted tenured/tenure-track faculty, and this week the same for term faculty who have been promoted! I also had the opportunity to enjoy, with Lorraine Lanningham-Foster and many others, the panel discussion and product tasting at the conclusion of the Science and Practice of Brewing course led by Robert Brown, Jordan Funkhouser and others.
Also taking place last week was the terrific Friday evening reception in the Student Innovation Center for the first cohort of CALS Innovation and Entrepreneurship Faculty Fellows (see photos below). There was also a review meeting for the EARTH Program and Fork In The Road Station on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, led by Gail Nonnecke, David Acker and others – including terrific presentations by graduate students Jesse Matt (NREM), Dalena Rogers (NREM) and Lillian Nabwiire (FSHN).
This week will be the second session on the design process for the CALS rooms in the Student Innovation Center - a collaborative project with colleagues from the College of Design and support from Farm Credit Services of America.
Later this week, we’ll cap off the semester with ISU Graduate Student Commencement on Thursday evening with our own Kevin Schalinske (FSHN) as the featured speaker, CALS Convocation on Friday morning at 9 a.m. (PLEASE COME AND SEE, and be a hand-shaker/high-fiver!), and ISU Undergraduate Commencement (CALS and College of Business) on Saturday morning with featured speaker Temple Grandin! Visit the Commencement Speakers webpage for more information on the speakers.
Have a great celebratory week and launch to your academic summer season! - Dan
Scenes from CALS
Last Friday, May 5, the 2022 CALS Innovation and Entrepreneurship Faculty Fellows held a reception to recognize the accomplishments each fellow and their students made this year. The cohort was comprised of nine fellows from eight departments across CALS, with projects ranging from creating robotic limbs to studying the hair of bees. Learn more about the 2022 cohort on the CALS IEFF website.
Spring is in full bloom on campus, including the many redbud trees. With spring often comes rounds of spring thunderstorms. Ames and many other parts of the state experienced another round of hail Sunday evening, bringing a collection of varying sizes of hail, as pictured.
