Ag and Life Sciences ONLINE

COLLEGE NEWS



- Briefing on ISU's new benefits plan for ag faculty/staff



- Parent and Family reception on Saturday, Nov. 2



- Address changes for college administrative offices



- Record number of employers at Ag Career Day



- ISU-MANRRS hosts regional conference



- Meyers named interim director of CARD



- Deadlines & Reminders



COMMUNICATIONS KIOSK



- As different as strawberry shortcake and sand



INFOGRAZING



- Web searches: Colleges the third most popular search



- Web searches: Research-specific engines needed



- Web searches: Parallel engine organizes what it finds



- Web searches: Desperately seeking someone



EXTERNAL VOICES



- Faking it through class, through life



MARGINALIA



- Looking good: Access granted / Smelling bad: Access

denied







C O L L E G E N E W S







BRIEFING ON ISU'S NEW BENEFITS PLAN FOR AG FACULTY/STAFF



On November 12, 13 and 14, the College of Agriculture will host

three sessions to brief faculty, P&S and supervisory staff

on the new university benefits program (ISU Plan). These sessions

will occur the week before the general university sessions, and

before the workbook and enrollment forms arrive. If you can't

attend the university sessions, or would like a preview or an

early chance to get your questions answered, you can attend a

session at 9-10 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 12; 1-2 p.m., Wednesday, Nov.

13; or 6-7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 14. All will be held in the Curtiss

Hall auditorium. After each session, refreshments will be served

in the college's new conference room in 142 Curtiss, and presenters

will be there to continue the question-and-answer session. Spouses

are invited. If you plan to attend, please call 4-2518 or e-mail

jshiers@iastate.edu.



PARENT AND FAMILY RECEPTION ON SATURDAY, NOV. 2



This weekend is Parent and Family Weekend at ISU. A College of

Agriculture reception for parents will be held 10-11:30 a.m.,

Saturday, Nov. 2, in the Scheman Building. Ag Student Services

sent more than 700 invitations to parents of new students, and

invited students through their orientation classes. At the reception,

ag faculty and Student Ag Council members will visit with parents,

Dean Topel will greet the group, Associate Dean Eric Hoiberg will

talk about establishing a parent council and Ag Council President

Dan Belzer will discuss student activities. Door prizes will be

given away, including mums and apples from horticulture, summer

sausage from animal science, Ag Ed Club mugs and other college

paraphernalia.



ADDRESS CHANGES FOR COLLEGE ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES



The Macarena may be sweeping the nation, but in Curtiss Hall they're

doing the shuffle again. Remodeling is coming to an end. Please

make a note of the new office mailing addresses below because

they won't be listed in the new campus directory. Phone numbers

remain the same. (A note about Suite 130: It's the south hallway

of the first floor, which has been enclosed, and will include

the staff offices of Cindy Hansen, Norma Hensley, Julie Honeick

and Marie Miller.)



The following addresses were effective Oct. 28:



Room 138: David Topel, Dean



Room 138: Colin Scanes, Executive Associate Dean



Room 134: Eric Hoiberg, Associate Dean-State Programs



Room 137: Gerald Klonglan, Associate Dean-Nat'l Programs



Room 131: Russ Wilson, Candi Kelly & Donna Evans, Development

Office



Room 141: Roger Bruene & Karen Klaiber, Career Services



Room 133: Del Koch, Laurie Vold, Josie Neeld & Barb Martin,

Budget and Finance



Room 138: Joyce Shiers, Dean's Office, & Cathy Good,

Executive Associate Dean's Office



Suite 130: Cindy Hansen, Dean's Office



Room 26: Shirley Riney & Carla Persaud, Experiment Station



Room 3397 Food Sciences Building: Mary deBaca, College of

Agriculture



The following addresses are effective Nov. 6:



Room 132: Wendy Wintersteen, Interim Associate Dean-Industry

Programs



Room 134: Norma Hensley, Office of Associate Dean-State Programs



Room 137: Marie Miller, Office of Associate Dean-National

Programs



Room 132: Julie Honeick, Office of Interim Associate Dean-Industry

Programs



RECORD NUMBER OF EMPLOYERS AT AG CAREER DAY



A record number of employers -- 140 -- are expected at Ag Career

Day on Nov. 12 in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union. More than

25 are first-time participants in the annual job fair, which attracts

close to 2,000 students, alumni and other visitors interested

in careers in agriculture and natural resources. Faculty and staff

should especially encourage underclass students to attend because

106 employers have summer job opportunities. Ag Career Day is

coordinated by College of Agriculture students and the Ag Career

Services office. For more information: 4-4725.



ISU-MANRRS HOSTS REGIONAL CONFERENCE



The ISU chapter of Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources

and Related Sciences (MANRRS) hosted the organization's Region

V conference on Oct. 25. Attending were more than 55 students

and faculty from six universities, and five students from the

Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences. The two-day conference

included a career fair; workshops on leadership, the Internet,

preparation for grad school, and internships and summer programs;

and a panel discussion on recruitment and retention of minority

students. Charanne Parks, director of Agriculture Minority Programs,

is the adviser for ISU-MANRRS.



MEYERS NAMED INTERIM DIRECTOR OF CARD



William Meyers has been named interim director of the Center of

Agricultural and Rural Development. Meyers has been associate

director of CARD, and is a professor of economics, executive director

of the Midwest Agribusiness Trade Research and Information Center

(MATRIC) and co-director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research

Institute.



DEADLINES & REMINDERS



Nov. 2: College of Agriculture Reception, Parent and Family Weekend,

Scheman Bldg., 10 a.m.



Nov. 4-8: Flu shots for faculty/staff, 205 TASF; 4-0874



Nov. 12: Ag Career Day, Memorial Union



Nov. 18: Leopold Center research proposals due, 209 Curtiss



Nov. 13-15: FFA National Convention, Kansas City







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









AS DIFFERENT AS STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE AND SAND



A College of Agriculture staff member recently provided a tip

for remembering how to correctly spell "dessert" and

"desert." Dessert is spelled with two s's: think strawberry

shortcake. Desert is spelled with one s: think sand.







I N F O G R A Z I N G







WEB SEARCHES: COLLEGES THE THIRD MOST POPULAR SEARCH



The third most popular search subject on the World Wide Web is

finding colleges and universities, according to the Alta Vista

search engine. (The two most popular? Sex and its variants, and

finding a job.)



WEB SEARCHES: RESEARCH-SPECIFIC ENGINES NEEDED



Most scholars agree that the average, run-of-the-mill Internet

search engine doesn't produce much of value to their academic

research efforts. One philosophy professor at the University of

Evansville has taken matters into his own hands and created a

search engine for his area of expertise, the ancient world. His

engine, called Argos, filters out unwanted information by limiting

searches to preselected Web sites deemed by a group of editors

to be scholarly and topical. "We're imagining a whole series

of these search engines to serve academe," he says. Argos

can be found at: http://argos.evansville.edu/ (Chronicle of Higher

Education, Oct. 18)



WEB SEARCHES: PARALLEL ENGINE ORGANIZES WHAT IT FINDS



Inference Find's parallel search engine simultaneously searches

all the major search engines and eliminates duplicate findings,

clustering the information into content type and organizing it

according to user preferences. Check out: http://www.inference.com/

and click on "InFind." (Information Week, Aug. 19)



WEB SEARCHES: DESPERATELY SEEKING SOMEONE



Digitized directory assistance can track almost anyone down. Here

are several Web sites that provide directory assistance (from

Forbes, March 11):



Big Book: http://www.bigbook.com



Four11: http://www.four11.com



Nynex Interactive Yellow Pages: http://s14.bigyellow.com/



Internet Address Finder: http://www.iaf.net/



Switchboard: http://www.switchboard.com



WhoWhere: http://www.whowhere.com







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







FAKING IT THROUGH CLASS, THROUGH LIFE



"Faking it for a class session is one thing. But it's so

easy to find ourselves making faking it a lifestyle. This summer

I saw a bumper sticker that said: 'Jesus is coming. Look busy!'

. . . But laziness is not just the refusal to give our physical

effort to being prepared. Often it is the failure to give expression

to our convictions; we do not live them . . . Society would rather

invest in prisons [than in] education, employment programs and

serious compassionate welfare reform . . . Society works hard

at being unprepared!" From a convocation speech to students

given by Luther E. Smith, professor of church and community at

Emory University. (Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 11)







M A R G I N A L I A







LOOKING GOOD: ACCESS GRANTED



SMELLING BAD: ACCESS DENIED



Two emerging technologies for improving security: The Miros company

has created a device that controls computer access using a small

video camera mounted on top of the monitor. When someone sits

down at the machine, the device's software snaps a picture of

the would-be user and compares it with those stored in an image

database. If it can't make a match, access is denied. (So you

might want to wash off that Halloween makeup first.) At Tufts

University, researchers are developing an electronic sniffer to

grant access to a building or room based on a person's personal

body odor. The system combines fiber-optic sensors and neural

network software to identify specific smells. By analyzing the

reaction of a bundle of sensors, the neural network software can

sort out up to a million chemical compounds. (From Information

Week, Sept. 2, and Business Week, Dec. 11, 1995)