Briefs

Easy as pie Forrest Frymoyer, ITS network engineer, hits the final stretch of a pie-eating contest during Staff Celebration Day festivities, which took place May 28 at Hubbard Park. Despite a close race with three competitors, Frymoyer finished first—taking home a Staff Celebration Day coffee mug and a full stomach.

No Gothic coin for Iowa

Grant Wood’s American Gothic will not grace the flip side of Iowa’s quarter in 2004.

Legal issues over rights to the painting prevented it from moving forward as one of the design possibilities, the governor’s office announced May 14.

Patrick Lloyd, associate professor and chair of family dentistry—and avid collector of more than 700 items of Gothic-related memorabilia—is disappointed.

“Of the choices for Iowa’s commemorative quarter, the American Gothic design would have been as historically relevant a millennium from now as it is today,” Lloyd says. “The state missed a rare opportunity to forge a connection with one of America’s most treasured pieces of art.”

Also, the U.S. Mint disqualified a design featuring the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo.

The three designs remaining for consideration are two other Wood paintings, Beautiful Land and Foundation in Education, and the design Feeding the World, which includes drawings of a pig, a cow, and corn.

Lloyd and his Gothic collection were featured in the February issue of fyi.

Volunteers needed for Iowa State Fair

Organizers of the UI booth at the Iowa State Fair, which takes place Aug. 7-17 in Des Moines, are inviting faculty and staff members to volunteer at the event.

Volunteers are needed for a variety of tasks—from answering general questions, to distributing posters and buttons, to applying temporary Hawkeye tattoos on visitors. The UI booth will be located in the air-conditioned Varied Industries Building at the fairgrounds.

Shifts are four hours each: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., 1 to 5 p.m., and 5 to 9 p.m.Fair admission, parking passes, and a black-andgold t-shirt will be provided. Shifts are filling fast, so sign up now for a time that works best for you.

Volunteers can get a glimpse of the booth at the State Fair exhibit, “Preview Show,” from 2 to 4:30 p.m., July 29, in the Gilcrest-Jewett Lumber building in Coralville.

For more information or to sign up for a shift, see www.uiowa.edu/statefair/volunteers.html or contact George McCrory at (38)4-0012 or george-mccrory@uiowa.edu.

Capote Award goes to Heaney

Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001 by Irish Nobel Laureate poet Seamus Heaney is the winner of the 2003 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin. The $50,000 Capote Award, the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language, is administered for the Truman Capote Estate by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

The book, published in the United States by Farrar Straus & Giroux in 2002, was selected for the Capote Award by an international panel of prominent critics and writers. Books of general literary criticism in English, published during the last four years, are eligible for nomination.

Heaney, who received the Nobel Prize in 1995, has taught at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University. He is an Honorary Fellow at England’s Oxford University, where he was a professor of poetry through 1994.

The establishment of the Truman Capote Literary Trust was stipulated in the author’s will, and the Annual Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin reflects Capote’s frequently expressed concern for the health of literary criticism in the English language.

Robert Ray scholarship available

Staff members who wish to begin or continue their undergraduate education can apply for funding support from the Robert F. Ray Staff Scholarship offered through the Division of Continuing Education.

Applicants must be at least 25 years of age; employed by the University at least half-time for no less than one year from the date of application; in a position classified as office and clerical, service, technical, or P&S; and remain employed by the University during the period of the award.

The recipients will be awarded $1,500 to cover the cost of educational expenses for up to 9 semester hours at The University of Iowa over the course of one year. While this award is not need-based, applicants must not be receiving tuition reimbursement or other grants (with the exception of staff tuition grants), in order to be considered.

The scholarship fund was established in honor of the late Robert F. Ray, former dean of continuing education. Ray was a recognized leader in distance education, regional accreditation, forensics, and intercollegiate athletics.

The deadline is July 1. For an application or more information, see www.uiowa.edu/~ccp/pages/ccpmisc/studserv.html and scroll down to the Robert F. Ray Staff Scholarship. Questions can be directed to Dawn Freerks, Center for Credit Programs, (33)5-2046.

Football tickets are available

Tickets for the 2003 Iowa football season are available on-line at www.hawkeyesports.com. (Click on the “Tickets” icon located in the upper right-hand corner of the page.)

The 2003 Iowa Hawkeyes, the defending cochampions of the Big Ten Conference, will play seven home games. The schedule includes Miami of Ohio, Buffalo, Arizona State, Michigan, Penn State, Illinois, and Minnesota.

For more information, call the Athletic Ticket Office at (33)5-9327.

Faculty development info on-line

All faculty development information and application materials for the upcoming year currently are available through the Office of the Provost web site at www.uiowa.edu/~provost/facdev.

Because this information is updated annually, it is important to obtain materials from the web. For example, in addition to the regular submission process, there now is a required procedure for on-line submission of the cover and abstract page for all faculty development awards, both applications and reports.

Mormon Trek heritage fest set

The Mormon Trek Heritage Society of Iowa City, a student organization, will sponsor the fifth annual Mormon Trek Heritage Festival from 4 to 7 p.m., June 7, at the Hawkeye Intramural Fields. Free and open to the public, the event will feature three hours of live pioneer and bluegrass music performed by Al and Aleta Murphy and the Drollingers.

The event also will feature a barbecue dinner and free activities, including pioneer games, toys, and crafts. Replica wooden handcarts will be provided for people to pull across a patch of Iowa prairie at the adjacent Mormon Handcart Park, and historical data will be shared.

For more information and a map, see www.uiowa.edu/~handcart or contact Justin Schmid at 648-2059.