Good morning, CALS,
This week, on Tuesday, Oct. 8, is the outstanding CALS Career Day from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. in the Lied Recreation Athletic Center. Please walk over and check it out – it's an amazing room full of your students and hundreds of organizations looking to hire them! It is truly a great event to visit, to feel the energy in the room, and to see how what we teach and study here connects with the people who hire our students. It’s one of the largest career fairs of its kind in the nation, with great thanks to Mike Gaul and Lois Benning for making it happen!
Then on Tuesday evening, at 7 p.m. in Dolezal Auditorium, 127 Curtiss Hall, is the annual distinguished William K. Deal Leadership Lecture. It will be given by Larry Nielsen from North Carolina State University on “Fowl, Fish and Forest – Leadership Lessons from Great Conservationists.” Professor Nielsen is truly a one-of-a-kind lecturer and storyteller.
Last week was the annual fall Iowa State University Foundation Governor’s Week, and it highlighted study abroad (Iowa State sends 16% of its students on study abroad experiences, and in CALS it's nearly 25% of our students!) and global engagement. Our college was featured in several ways – most especially in recognition of the 20th anniversary of our Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL) in Uganda. We hosted an afternoon symposium for donors and friends and an evening dinner celebration with about 100 people attending. Then CSRL was featured at the ISU Foundation Governor’s luncheon, with CALS agricultural education and studies master’s student Sofia Fernandez speaking, and again as the opening “story” of the Order of the Knoll event with about 1,000 people attending. The Order of the Knoll event also featured Reagan Suubi, a master's student in agricultural education and studies and formerly a service learner from Makerere University in Uganda at our campus there in Kamuli. All-in-all it was a great set of events celebrating this work. Special thanks was offered along the way to David Acker, Gideon Nadiope, Gail Nonnecke, Dorothy Masinde, Tammi Martin and many others, including past CSRL directors and the founding and key funding partners. Among the donors/supporters receiving special recognition were the Kolschowsky, Borel, Sukup, Schleuter, Miller and Tim families.
Did you know that over the past 20 years in Uganda, our programs, with private gift funds supporting nearly 50 full-time Ugandan employees and our campus there, have:
- Worked with local communities and with infants to seniors
- Installed boreholes to provide clean and accessible water
- Provided 2,000 elementary and high school students with skills training to earn money to pay school fees
- Provided 5,000 students with a nutritious lunch every day of the school year (and often it is their only meal of the day)
- Helped 50,000 crop and livestock farmers to have better seeds, breeds and sustainable farming practices
- Provided 20,000 mothers and their infants with life-, and quality-of-life-saving nutrition interventions
- Engaged 4,000 young people in entrepreneurship training (Start Something!) to be able to launch their own careers and businesses
- And so much more!
This past weekend was another great Iowa State football win, making the team 5-0 for the first time since 1980! The team includes 13 scholarship players studying in CALS, and the fabulous Cyclone marching band includes lots of CALS students, with two of the three drum majors being CALS students, too! Before the game, there was a terrific tailgate hosted by the Department of Animal Science with lots of college people and friends there (from multiple departments), as well as the delegation that is here from Ireland to help plan the August 2025 Iowa State vs. Kansas State football game to be held in Dublin. A great time this weekend!
Have a great week. - Dan
Scenes from CALS
