Ag and Life Sciences ONLINE

COLLEGE NEWS



- Moving days for college offices



- Brenton Center update



- New forestry chair named



- Firsts for orientation . . .



- . . . and for the four-year plan



- Faculty, staff salaries



- Students in Service: Shared Visions



- Ag Online posted



COMMUNICATIONS KIOSK



- Spaghetti Web



INFOGRAZING



- Federal research funds, cont.



EXTERNAL VOICES



- Haying weather



MARGINALIA



- Caffeine web







C O L L E G E N E W S







MOVING DAYS FOR COLLEGE OFFICES



Beginning Monday, June 12, your patience is requested as many

of the College of Agriculture's administrative offices begin moving

into new locations in Curtiss Hall. The moving is expected to

take almost four weeks. The moves, and in some cases changes of

office names, reflect the new administrative structure outlined

in the college's strategic plan. For now, the only offices that

will NOT be moving are the Dean's office (Room 122), Ag Development

(Room 115) and Ag Placement (Room 120). Phone numbers of current

administrators and staff will remain the same. As the dust settles,

Ag Online will run more information on where to find offices and

people. In the meantime, if there are questions, contact Cathy

Good, 294-1823, Joyce Shiers, 294-2518, or Ag Information, 294-5616.





BRENTON CENTER UPDATE



Construction of the Brenton Center for Agricultural Instruction

and Technology Transfer in Curtiss Hall is slated to be finished

early in July. Installation of equipment for the hi-tech instruction

and distance learning center will begin during the last half of

June. Later in July, the equipment will be tested and a link established

to the Iowa Communications Network. Richard Carter, head of the

agricultural education and studies department, says about a dozen

college courses are scheduled for the center's two classrooms

this fall, including four night classes. Carter said workshops

will be offered to acquaint faculty and staff with the center's

features. A tentative date for an open house and dedication of

the facility is Nov. 11.



NEW FORESTRY CHAIR NAMED



James Kelly has been named chair of the Department of Forestry.

Kelly, who has worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority since

1976, is currently the senior technical specialist in the atmospheric

sciences division of TVA's Environmental Research Center. He also

has adjunct appointments in the Department of Forestry, Wildlife

and Fisheries and the Graduate Program in Ecology at the University

of Tennessee. Kelly, who will begin in October, succeeds Steve

Jungst, who was chair for 10 years and will return to the department

faculty.



FIRSTS FOR ORIENTATION . . .



On June 6-7, 145 students who will enter the College of Agriculture

this fall attended the first of four summer orientation sessions.

This is the first year that individual departments organized meetings

for students and their parents. DEOs and/or professors hosted

the get-acquainted sessions. Tests for advising and university

purposes were given, but this was the first year in which placement

exams were not required, giving students the option of being placed

by ACT or SAT scores.



. . . AND FOR THE FOUR-YEAR PLAN



Another first for this summer's orientations is the chance to

check out ISU's new four-year graduation plan. A contract spells

out the conditions that the student and the university are required

to meet. Before committing to the plan, students are encouraged

to talk it over with their parents and with their advisers in

the fall, said Tom Polito, director of Ag Student Services. Of

the students who start in agriculture at ISU, about 61 percent

graduate in four years.



FACULTY, STAFF SALARIES



Pay hikes for ISU faculty and P&S staff for the next fiscal

year should average just under 4 percent (including faculty promotion

increases). Under proposed salary guidelines, faculty and staff

who are meeting performance expectations will receive raises of

approximately 1.3 percent. Larger raises will be based on individual

merit, equity or market considerations. The College of Agriculture

is withholding a small pool of research and extension funds for

salary adjustments to help departments correct salary inequities.

For the same reason, the provost's office is withholding a small

portion of the teaching base salary budget. (For more information

on salary increases, see Inside Iowa State, May 26.)



STUDENTS IN SERVICE: SHARED VISIONS



Rick Exner, a Ph.D. candidate in agronomy, works through ISU Extension

as farming systems coordinator for Practical Farmers of Iowa,

a producers' group that conducts on-farm trials. PFI and ISU,

with W.K. Kellogg Foundation support, have started Shared Visions:

Farming for Better Communities, a program to strengthen rural

communities through the farms that surround towns. It facilitates

projects that bring farmers and townsfolk together around sustainable

systems of farming and marketing.



AG ONLINE POSTED



Hard copy of each Ag Online issue is now posted on a central bulletin

board (or boards) in each department, along with the name of the

college communications adviser for your department.







C O M M U N I C A T I O N S K I O S K









SPAGHETTI WEB



Howard Strauss of Princeton University says World Wide Web content

designers need to relearn some old lessons of scholarship (and

perhaps of communications, too): "In the past we learned

how to use footnotes, tables of contents and indexes effectively,

but in our electronic formats we seem to have forgotten all that.

We use too many hypertext links, use them where they make no sense,

ignore the difference between footnotes and tables of contents,

build links to bizarre and unexpected places, ignore standard

ways of linking, and confuse, rather than enlighten, with hypertext

structures that make bowls of spaghetti seem like models of good

organization." (Edutech Report, May)







I N F O G R A Z I N G







FEDERAL RESEARCH FUNDS, CONT.



Another look at the status of federal research funds, this time

for the USDA: President Clinton's fiscal year 1996 budget request

to Congress for the Cooperative State Research, Education and

Extension Service proposes a decrease of almost 6 percent from

current appropriations. The request maintains formula funding

for the base research, education and extension programs at current

levels; proposes increased funding for the National Research Initiative

Competitive Grants Program; and reduces other research funding.

It emphasizes the 1890 institutions and critical national issues

such as water quality, integrated pest management, alternatives

to pesticides, capacity building grants, the Hispanic education

partnerships, the Native American Institutions endowment fund

and sustainable agriculture. It proposes legislation to improve

facilities at the 1890 institutions. The House of Representatives

Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture is expected to "mark

up" the appropriation in mid-June, with full-committee action

through July. (About half of the federal grant monies that the

Experiment Station receives are from the USDA.)







E X T E R N A L V O I C E S







HAYING WEATHER



"Haying is what I always loved about the farm; alfalfa, far

more than corn, summed up agriculture for me. It was raised and

baled on the farm, fed on the farm and spread as manure on the

farm. No one ever trucked it away. It had the right smell. And

rural life never looks better than when haying weather hits Minnesota,

Iowa or Montana." Verlyn Klinkenborg, a native Iowan, in

his book, Making Hay.







M A R G I N A L I A







CAFFEINE WEB



From an item in The New Yorker, June 5: Using spiders, scientists

have identified the chemical agent responsible for human error.

They don't appear to know that, but they have. According to the

London Independent, the scientists considered the structures of

webs spun by spiders under the influence of marijuana, benzedrine,

chloral hydrate (a sedative) and caffeine. The marijuana web is

pretty close to the conventional one but is unfinished. The benezdrine

web is meticulous in places but has huge gaps. The chloral-hydrate

web is a stray collection of strands. The illuminating example

is caffeine. Anyone who has ever had a tip from an excitable stockbroker

go south, or had the rearview mirror fall off his brand-new car

and discovered it was made on the night shift . . . will be struck

by the slipshod, disorderly, ill-planned, chaotic and slaphappy

structure.