Hello, CALS,
The redbuds are really out. Spring! And more and more seeds are in the ground, but there is still a ways to go - keep tabs on corn planting progress across the U.S.
Campus seems to have already quieted as we approach convocation and commencement. Please take time to wish our students well for the summer, whatever their destinations are. This Thursday evening, we have the university-wide graduate commencement, Friday morning CALS Convocation, and Saturday afternoon undergraduate commencement for CALS. Please consider coming out to cheer our graduates on!
Our college has so many dimensions, old and new, and sometimes they are right in front of us and we don’t know it. Last week, with David Acker and Carmen Bain, I had the chance to tour the ISU-EEOB Ada Hayden Herbarium in Bessey Hall, with herbarium leadership Lynn Clark and Deb Lewis. It's an amazing collection, including, for example, specimens collected by none other than George Washington Carver with labels in his own handwriting!
Later today we’ll do the ribbon cutting at the new Stanley L. Balloun Turkey Teaching and Research Facility on South State Avenue. This new facility will be a place where the latest and greatest happens in our college, as in so many other special places around us. Stanley Balloun was a professor of animal science here, who, among many things, was key in the development of ways to add soybeans to the diets of turkeys and chickens. His son, Jim Balloun, made the lead naming gift to recognize his father and to enable this great new farm facility. The Iowa Turkey Federation members were central to this effort, as well. In the animal science department, there have been many in leadership to move this project to completion, including Professor Dawn Koltes, who has helped coordinate the effort from end-to-end. Congratulations to everyone involved.
Have a great graduation week! - Dan
Scenes from CALS
What a beautiful day to gather outside Curtiss Hall and celebrate the retirement of Mark Honeyman. Included in the gifts he received were a 1905 photo of Central Campus (with a viewpoint similar to that from his office window in Curtiss), a commissioned hand-turned bowl from the old yellowwood tree that was behind Curtiss Hall before the tree had to be cut down, and a brick cut from the original stairs of Curtiss Hall before they were replaced a few years ago (engraved on the brick was a thank you note for Mark's many years of service to the college).
Tammy Porter, business admin for natural resource ecology and management, submitted these images she took of the blooming and fragrant tulips and hyacinths at Reiman Gardens last Wednesday. In celebration of Go Public Gardens Days, Reiman Gardens offered free admission to the public May 4.
