150 Points of Pride

The Iowa State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has a proud and distinguished history. As part of Iowa State's sesquicentennial celebration, 150 points of pride related to the College - accomplishments, discoveries, contributions, highlights, famous and interesting people - will be posted here. These postings will coincide with 150 days of the 2007-2008 academic year, beginning Aug. 20, 2007 and ending May 2, 2008, with time off for the Thanksgiving, winter and spring breaks. Check back each Monday for five new items.

Herman Knapp

Herman Knapp was born in Vermont in 1863 to Seaman and Maria Knapp. In 1867 his family moved to Vinton, Iowa, where his father became head of the Iowa College for the Blind. Seaman Knapp was appointed to head the agriculture program at Iowa State Agricultural College in 1879, and later became the college’s second president. In 1880, Herman Knapp entered Iowa State College as a freshman. On September 23, 1883, he began the first in a series of jobs at Iowa State when he was appointed deputy treasurer. In November of that same year he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in scientific agriculture. A year later, Knapp became secretary to the president and agriculture assistant. In 1885, he was appointed assistant professor of agriculture. During 1886, he was placed in charge of the department of agriculture. 1887 was the year Herman Knapp was appointed as treasurer, registrar and superintendent of the college bookstore, in addition to his duty as the director of agriculture. In 1898, Knapp was placed in command of the college cadet corps and became a captain and a major in the Iowa National Guard. In 1903 he was appointed purchasing agent and business manager, dropping his duties as registrar. Knapp was acting president of Iowa State College in 1926-1927.

Fast fact: Iowa State College celebrated Herman Knapp Day November 19, 1933, in honor of his 50 years of service to the college. He died in 1935 at the age of 71.

Perry Holden

By the time Perry Holden came to Iowa State, he had already worked at Michigan Agricultural College where he conducted experiments with growing sugar beets. At Illinois University, he became the first professor of agronomy in the United States. Holden worked a couple of years in private industry with sugar refining and scientific corn breeding. He came to Iowa State in 1902 to present a short course for farmers. His popularity with farmers so impressed President William Beardshear that private funds were found to hire him. He organized the agronomy and farm machinery departments. Soon, Holden came up with the idea of taking his classroom to the farmers. In 1903, he teamed with local farmers and the county government to set up a county demonstration farm in Sioux County. A year later, Holden, with the help of the railroads, put his classroom on wheels. Several train cars outfitted with speakers’ platforms and charts became what Holden would refer to as the “Seed Corn Gospel Train.” Holden traveled the state, teaching farmers how to select and test corn to get the best seed. The novel teaching technique caught on and soon educational trains, offering expertise on all kinds of agricultural topics, were rolling throughout the nation.

Fast fact: Holden became the first director of Iowa Extension in 1906, eight years before Congress created the national extension program. Following an unsuccessful bid for Iowa governor in 1912, he left the state to become extension director for International Harvester.

William H. Stevenson

William H. Stevenson

Although born and raised in Illinois, William H. Stevenson spent most of his adult life in Iowa. He joined the agronomy faculty at Iowa State in 1902. He is perhaps best known for instituting and supervising county soil surveys, having authored numerous survey reports and bulletins on soil fertility. Of particular note was “The Principle Soil Areas of Iowa,” released in 1905, which was the first publication of Iowa State College’s three-year-old Agronomy Department. Stevenson worked under Perry Holden, the first head of the department. When Holden left, Stevenson began a reorganization of the department. Agricultural engineering, soil bacteriology and farm management were added to the curriculum. Student enrollment increased rapidly, the scope of the teaching program was expanded and there was a major effort to promote high quality research. Stevenson developed the first ISU Agronomy Farm and was instrumental in separating Agricultural Engineering from Agronomy. He was also a leader in establishing drainage districts across Iowa, which led to widespread drainage of Iowa’s wet soils. By the time he stepped down as head in 1932, there were 29 faculty members and the Agronomy Department had become prominent nationally.

Fast fact: Stevenson House in the Birch residence hall was named in honor of William H. Stevenson.

Nine decade s of continuous corn

P.E. Brown

A tour and commemoration ceremony of Iowa State University’s long-term continuous corn research plots took place Oct. 12, 2006. The plots have been planted in corn since 1915. They were originally part of an extensive crop rotation/soil fertility study established when the agronomic plot work was moved from central campus in 1915 to south of Ames on State Avenue. The land is now part of the ISU Animal Science Teaching Farm complex. The long-term continuous corn plots have been maintained although the experimental treatments have been modified. At the ceremony last year, the plots were named after William H. Stevenson and P.E. Brown, former ISU soil scientists who were instrumental in establishing the plots. Stevenson and Brown began a long-term crop rotation and soil management study that tested lime, manure and fertilizers in different cropping systems. Those results were the basis for Iowa State recommendations to farmers during the first half of the 20th century. The study changed in 1953 to evaluate only commercial fertilizers.

Fast fact: The research continues. In spring 2006, the plots were redesigned, from 32 to 12, and the study was modified to accommodate larger machinery.

Research and demonstration farms

The first outlying experimental farm was organized at Kanawha in Hancock County in 1930. Land, climate, and agricultural enterprises vary considerably from one area of Iowa to another. To find solutions to problems in each area and to study the impacts of regional differences, researchers often run their experiments on several farms in different locations. Iowa has about 20 major soil associations, or combinations of soil types. Today, local nonprofit associations of farmers and business people own or lease 9 of the 12 outlying research farms. The state owns the other three. In central Iowa, ISU affiliate organizations own land for research. Associations and affiliates lease the research farms to the Experiment Station. Income from farm product sales is used to offset research costs. Area producers suggest local problems that need to be studied and often offer suggestions for improving research at the farms. The Experiment Station publishes research results in annual reports. Extension specialists use the reports in meetings, pamphlets, news stories and broadcasts. And local farmers can observe experiments firsthand, learning about the latest findings at field days held at the farms.

Fast fact: In 2006 more than 500 projects were conducted on the ISU research farms and more than 15,000 people visited.

*Some historic photographs courtesy of the University Archives.

150 Points of Pride Archives