Hello CALS Colleagues,
I hope you had a great long weekend and all's well with you and yours. I want to acknowledge a few key things:
- What a great and important win our Cyclone football team had on Saturday! Did you know there are about 10 players on the team from our college, and even more in the most excellent ISU Cyclone Marching Band? Just a few days till CyHawk! Check out the entries in today's newsletter regarding taping of the U.S. Farm Report scheduled for this Thursday at 11 a.m. outside Curtiss Hall, featuring Dermot Hayes, Distinguished Professor in economics, and Lee Schulz, associate professor in economics.
- We also had a truly fantastic CALS Alumni BBQ before the game in the Hansen Agriculture Student Learning Center with about 500 in attendance. Special thanks to Haley Cook and Melea Licht who stayed with this event for us even though they have already started new jobs elsewhere at Iowa State. What great work they did with so many others to help make the event a success! Thanks to all. It was great to see so many of you there, and next year I hope even more! You don't need to be an alum to attend, just need to be in the CALS community - after all, they let me in!
- Thanks to everyone for steering us through the second week of the semester and taking precautions to help keep the campus community healthy. It is wonderful to see the college in action, with focus on our missions and students, and keeping diligent on COVID-19 precautions. Let's keep encouraging each other.
- It's exciting to let you know that over the past nine years, our college has raised more than $240 million in gifts as part of the $1.5 billion raised across Iowa State for the Forever True, For Iowa State campaign. Truly amazing generosity, common purpose, recognition of excellence, and enabling opportunities embedded in those numbers! Great thanks to everyone who helped with that work, which continues today - Sarah, Bobbi, Nick, Brandon, Carol, Alyssa, Kelsey and Ray.
- Next week we'll have some new enrollment numbers for you, and with that will come great thanks to our recruitment team for turning the corner on the freshman class.
I hope you'll enjoy a couple more Snippet Stories below and send in some new ones we can use. And, of course, enjoy the pics below.
My best, and please let me know if you what you're thinking. Dan
CALS Snippet Story
By Don Beitz, Distinguished Professor in animal science
The Joy of Advising
My favorite activity as a faculty member is the advising of undergraduate and graduate students through their degree programs. I have had the satisfaction of helping biochemistry undergraduate students initiate professional careers with B.S. degrees or mostly with graduate and professional degrees. How pleasing it is to see former graduates succeed in professional careers! Highly satisfying is seeing former advisees come back to Iowa State for a visit and even give back to Iowa State by, for example, providing scholarships to assist students who follow them. I wish to thank Iowa State University for providing me the opportunity to work at something that is so enjoyable and satisfying to me as advising students.
CALS Snippet Story
By Matt O'Neal, professor in entomology
Who put prairie in my honey?
Two great things that taste great together - Starting the week of Aug. 16, students and staff at Iowa State began harvesting honey from colonies kept at farms with small patches of prairie developed with help from Iowa State’s STRIPS (Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips) project. This project was supported with help from the CALS Dean's office, the new Student Innovation Center, and the many farmers who participate with the STRIPS project. The honey harvest will take several weeks, but preliminary estimates look very promising, with yield exceeding expectations for a typical central Iowa corn and soybean farm.
Nature in Focus
Susan Lamont, Distinguished Professor in animal science, submitted this photo of a pollinator hard at work at Ada Hayden Heritage Park in Ames.
Please keep sharing your photos with me via email!
