COMPETITIVE SPIRIT – CALS TEAMS BRACKET NATIONAL SUCCESS

Crops Team

The ISU crops team helps prepare students for a career as agronomists by teaching them skills such as plant, insect and disease identification as well as problem solving. Each year the team competes against other four-year universities at the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA ) contest which is held at various locations across the country. During the competition the team also travels to farms and agricultural businesses to learn about the area’s agriculture. In 2012 the ISU Crops Team finished first in the Knowledge Bowl and second in the Crops competition. Erik Christian and Josh Enderson, agronomy, are coach and assistant coach of the team.

Dairy Product Evaluation Team

The Dairy Products Evaluation Team is a student club in the food science and human nutrition department that focuses on learning and sharpening the sensory evaluation techniques and skills for six dairy products: 2% milk, cottage cheese, vanilla ice cream, Cheddar cheese, butter and strawberry yogurt. Until the 2009 team was formed, ISU hadn’t competed in the National Collegiate Dairy Products Evaluation Contest since the late 1970s. Since reviving the team, the students have enjoyed success, earning finishes within the top four each year. Each fall semester the team prepares for the annual National Collegiate Dairy Products Evaluation Contest and in the spring they focus on fundraising, social activities and industry visits. The team is coached by associate professor Stephanie Clark.

Livestock Judging Team

Intercollegiate livestock judging provides students with communication and decision making skills. At each contest, teams representing universities from around the country compete by placing 12 classes of livestock (cattle, hogs and sheep) and giving eight sets of oral reasons. A set of oral reasons is a prepared speech given to an official by a student defending the way the individual placed a particular class of livestock. Typically over 30 teams compete at national events. The 2011/2012 Livestock Judging Team finished first at the Aksarben Stock Show, Iowa Beef Expo and at the Sioux Empire Farm Show. They brought home a third-place finish from the National Western Stock Show in Denver. Jonathan DeClerck, animal science, coaches the team.

Meats Judging Team

Intercollegiate meat judging is a competitive student team activity dating back to 1926. Students travel across the country and interact with leaders in the meat industry, while competing against teams from other universities. These competitions provide students opportunities for improving their skills and competencies in determining the value of beef, pork, lamb and processed meat products. The team is coached by Sherry Olsen and the assistant coach is Lori Ellensohn. At the 2011 Southeastern contest the team finished third and fourth. They finished ninth at The American Royal, and at The International, the team finished 16th.

Soils Judging Team

Success is a common theme associated with Iowa State’s soils judging team. Three of the past four years, the ISU team has won the regional contest and in 2012 the team finished third overall in the National Collegiate Soils Judging Contest. Graduate student Matthew Streeter and professor Lee Burras, agronomy, coach the soils team. Jonathan Sandor, who recently retired, coached the team for 28 years. The competition allows students to develop their skills while describing soil properties, identifying types of soils and associated landscape features and interpreting soil information for agriculture and other land uses.

Turf Bowl Team

The ISU Turf Club has captured first place in the last 12 of 14 national “Turf Bowl” competitions. Hosted by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, the competition gets students excited about mastering professional skills key to the industry. Over the years, the Iowa State team has become known as the team to beat. The team’s achievement is largely due to their willingness to devote time to hands-on training at prominent golf courses. They also learn the latest techniques in turf by inviting guest speakers to club meetings. Networking with the top golf course superintendents in the United States at various conferences has also helped their success. While the Turf Bowl is what they’re best known for, the club also offers projects for members to bridge their knowledge from the classroom to real life scenarios. The team is coached by Nick Dunlap, a graduate student in horticulture, and the team adviser is Nick Christians, University Professor of Horticulture.

VOICES: DEFINING THE CALS EXPERIENCE

Director of Student Services Tom Polito sees the student experience in agriculture and life sciences as connecting what happens in and outside of the classroom. For Senior Katee Keller that includes Collegiate FFA, Block & Bridle, the Agricultural Business Club and working in the student services office.

The student experience in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences connects what happens inside and outside the classroom. The two are mutually supportive and synergistic.

Students’ out-of-classroom activities are as instilled in the college’s culture as the land-grant philosophy. Even Iowa State’s motto, “Science with Practice,” reflects how our students take what they’ve learned in class and make the coursework more relevant to them.

Some parts of our student experience, like student clubs, student council and Alpha Zeta, have been fixtures for a century or more. My wife’s grandfather, a 1912 animal husbandry grad, has fascinated me with the story of his Alpha Zeta induction. Traveling abroad goes back more than 50 years. Today, students study on every continent.

In the past 15 years, learning communities have become an important way for new students to become part of the ISU community quickly and easily. About 90 percent of the college’s freshmen are members of a learning community. Learning communities set the stage for what students can accomplish in their time at ISU. Plus, the students enjoy their experiences. One student commented on a learning community evaluation, “This is the greatest thing mom ever signed me up for!”

We particularly encourage and assist our students in finding internships. In my experience, students returning to campus after completing internships have greater direction and motivation. They bring what they’ve learned back into the classroom so that other students and often instructors can benefit.

As a faculty member, it’s exciting to watch students change their focus from a purely academic one to a professional one. Instead of thinking only about grades, they begin to grasp that what they’re learning will impact how they advise future clients, benefit their communities and solve problems locally and globally. Internships aid them in making this transition. Coincidentally, guess what happens to students’ grades as they progress from an academic focus to a professional one?

With such a breadth of opportunities, another of our college’s strengths comes into play—academic advising. I like to think of our advisers as symphony conductors. They help students blend activities both inside and outside the classroom, where each student’s final college experience is greater than the sum of its parts.

Our student experiences have never been one size fits all or cookie cutter. We strive to provide all students with rich, meaningful, individual and personal experiences that enable them to accomplish more than they believed possible when they entered ISU. That’s our legacy, that’s our future.

We have plenty of evidence of success. For me, the most convincing evidence occurs every year on the second Tuesday in October. That’s the day the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences hosts the largest agricultural career day in the nation. Our great graduates are in great demand!

HELPING STUDENTS OVERCOME OBSTACLES

Alumna Maggie DenBeste credits Professor Howard Tyler for believing in her when it seemed no one else would.

Read Howard Tyler’s list of honors and it’s clear the animal science professor puts students first, based on awards for his work as a student adviser and mentor.

“I prioritize my time by focusing first on activities that have the most impact on students,” Tyler says. “Helping students overcome obstacles is the part of my job I find the most rewarding.”

Maggie DenBeste faced many obstacles. After high school, she enrolled at Kirkwood Community College. The following year, her parents divorced and her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Despite family turmoil, she graduated with an associate degree in agriculture and transferred to Iowa State. Her mother died the following spring. “I dropped half my courses and failed the other half,” DenBeste says.

She kept trying and in December 2002 graduated with a bachelor’s in animal science. In January, she learned she was pregnant and would be raising a son alone.

DenBeste worked four years before deciding she couldn’t make enough money to support herself and her son. She wanted to return to school and contacted her undergraduate adviser, Steven Lonergan, who introduced her to Tyler.

“Earning my undergraduate degree was difficult,” DenBeste says. “With my mother’s death, I had trouble caring. I got my grades up enough to graduate, but when I wanted to enroll in grad school, Dr. Tyler was the only one who would consider me.”

“Her grades were not stellar,” Tyler jokes. “But I didn’t feel her grades reflected her ability. It seemed with all she’d been through, graduate school would be a small challenge.”

DenBeste enrolled in January 2007. “That March I almost quit because I didn’t believe I could succeed. I stuck with it, thanks to Dr. Tyler and fellow graduate students,” she says.

Tyler deflects DenBeste’s praise, saying he “just encouraged her to talk, and tried to be supportive of her status as a single mom.”

DenBeste sees it differently. “I had a major lack of confidence,” she says. “During my project, I had to collect blood samples from baby calves within five minutes of birth. Dr. Tyler helped with the first few, watched for a few and then left me to sink or swim. He knew I could do it even if I didn’t.”

Tyler and his wife Kris helped on a personal level. “They would watch my son if I had to be at the dairy farm, or

working on my thesis, or just needed a night off,” DenBeste says.

Tyler organizes monthly meetings for his grad students. “We had speakers who would talk about their journey through life. Dr. Tyler wanted us to learn how to balance personal and work life,” DenBeste says.

She graduated in December 2009 with a master’s in animal physiology and is education program coordinator for the U.S. Pork Center of Excellence at Iowa State.

“Most students face obstacles, but often don’t know how to ask for help,” Tyler says. “Students typically don’t leave school because they aren’t smart enough. With a little more guidance, most could make it. Supporting students is a crucial part of my job.”

Faculty Resources for Helping Students Through Personal Challenges

Howard Tyler was among the first to sign up for the ISU Student Counseling Service’s new Mental Health First-Aid training. The 12-hour session teaches faculty and staff a set of action steps for helping a distressed student until appropriate treatment and support are received. “Many students just need someone to notice they are having challenges and ask about their life in a nonjudgmental way,” says Tyler, who completed the training in July. “The training gives you the tools to initiate these conversations, recognize the issues and effectively refer students to the appropriate resources,” he says.

“Most students face obstacles, but often don’t know how to ask for help. Students typically don’t leave school because they aren’t smart enough. With a little more guidance, most could make it. Supporting students is a crucial part of my job.”

A SAMPLING OF STUDENT CLUBS AND ACTIVITIES

Agricultural Business Club

For the past six years, Iowa State University’s Agricultural Business Club has been recognized as the “National Outstanding Chapter.” This award distinguishes the club as the best agricultural business club in the nation. The club has more than 150 members, with about 30 of those serving each year as chairs for eight committees. The club strives to provide agricultural business students with opportunities to develop their leadership skills, recognize their accomplishments and create unity among the students and faculty. Agricultural business students are given the chance to participate in an industry golf tournament, Pre-Career Day panel discussion, roadside cleanup, industry tours and attend the National Agriculture and Applied Economics Association conference each year.

Block & Bridle

Block & Bridle, the largest club in the college with nearly 300 members, promotes the animal industry through various activities and service projects. The club dates back to 1919, when ISU was among its founding national member universities. It recently received several awards at the 2012 National Block and Bridle Convention placing first in chapter activities and chapter yearbook and second in chapter webpage. The Little North American showmanship contest is one of the most prestigious events the club hosts annually along with other livestock and companion-animal shows. The club serves the Ames community through canned food drives, donating hand-made blankets to hospitals and participating in VEIS HEA service projects.

Collegiate FFA

Members of the ISU Collegiate FFA were happy to have the Iowa FFA Convention back on the Iowa State campus this April after a few years held elsewhere. Iowa State University has had a presence at the Iowa FFA Convention for more than 25 years. The Collegiate FFA assists with the conventions every year by volunteering at a silent auction, sponsoring a bingo night and interacting with high school FFA at different convention activities. Besides helping with FFA events, this organization is most well known on campus for its annual pancake breakfast which is held during National FFA Week and sponsoring a “Dean for a Day” contest as a fundraising event for the club.

Landscape Club

Known for its hands-on experiences, the Landscape Club gives ample opportunities to enhance learning outside of the classroom. It seeks service projects that allow club members to conduct the entire process of landscape design and installment. Recently, members took part in the design and installation process of the green roof on the Horticulture Building. Because of their great efforts, the club was asked to install another green roof on the Memorial Union in Spring 2012. “The skills that we learn through these projects we put to use at our annual Professional Landcare Network trip,” says club president, Miles Thompson, a senior in horticulture. During the trip club members compete at events such as landscape installation and design contest and take advantage of great networking opportunities.

National Agri-Marketing Association

Iowa State University’s student chapter of the National Agri-Marketing Association is a catalyst for students with the desire to expand their agri-marketing abilities while developing and utilizing professional networks. The student club works closely with the Iowa Professional NAMA chapter. The club supports a marketing team, which competes nationally. Students receive independent study credit as members of the marketing team. Currently, there are over 30 student members and this continues to grow each year. The Iowa State student chapter has earned several national awards in recent years including Outstanding Chapter twice in the last five years and the 2011 John Deere Signature Award.

VEISHEA

The 90-year-old tradition of VEISHEA wouldn’t be a success without strong leadership from College of Agriculture and Life Sciences students. The 2012 executive committee was nearly 50 percent CALS students and led by B.J. Brugman, senior in agricultural business, as a general co-chair. The college had 11 clubs participating in this year’s VEIS HEA through fundraising and activities for the public. Some VEISHEA favorites include the Dairy Science Club’s “I Milked A Cow” event, timbersports on central campus, the Horticulture Club’s plant sale and several club foodstands.

Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Science

The Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Science is a growing organization open to students from any major. This national organization promotes the advancement and potential of multicultural students on campus through assisting with leadership activities, internships, scholarships and career placement. “This organization is all about making life changes and helping students have a successful college experience,” says Aurelio Curbelo, the club’s adviser. Statistics have shown that multicultural students involved with MANRRS have increased graduation rates and obtain jobs faster. One of the most rewarding activities that MANRRS members partake in is a campaign promoting the importance of receiving a diploma in Iowa and Illinois at-risk school districts. Members also get the opportunity for international travel and serve the community with various service projects.