Pop quiz: How well do you know the UI campus?

Last month the staff of fyi offered a “pop quiz” to see how familiar our campus colleagues are with University trivia. fyi associate editor Amy Schoon had quite a bit of fun researching the questions, learning more about the University, and putting together the following answers. (Click here for a list of those who made the grade.)

 Identify where the photos to the right are located on campus.

It’s amazing how thousands of people walk by campus buildings every day and never really “see” them. University Relations photographer Tom Jorgensen aimed his lens at some architectural details one afternoon and came up with these images.

a. Macbride Hall—on the east doors

b. Iowa Memorial Union—east side, across from the parking ramp

c. Halsey Hall—part of the dance building’s unique brickwork

d. Iowa Memorial Union—on the east side, base of a lamppost across from the parking ramp

e. Quadrangle Hall—part of a gate (this one nearly stumped the fyi staff, who spent the longest time wondering what the initials UAD stood for—one guess was University Athletic Department—before realizing that the circle around the letters was actually a Q, therefore spelling QUAD)

f. Hospital Parking Ramp 4—the “P” is tucked away between the ramp and the southwest doors of the Field House

What did the following UI undergraduate students have in common?

Jacob Van der Zee (1905), Charles G. Siefkin (1930), Margaret O. Little (1983), and our own Mark E. Schantz (1963), the University’s current general counsel, all were Rhodes Scholars. According to Iowa Curios, a trivia booklet printed by the UI Foundation in 1984, these folks were among 15 undergraduate students from Iowa named Rhodes Scholars since the awards were first given in 1902. The scholarships provide full tuition for at least two years of study at Oxford University.

Which University building had to be moved across the street in 1904 to make way for new campus construction?

The old Science Hall, now known as Calvin Hall, took a trip 105 feet across Jefferson Street to make room for the new Hall of Natural Science, known today as Macbride Hall.

In the book A Pictorial History of The University of Iowa, author John C. Gerber and his colleagues note that the moving project “required 1,000 screw jacks to lift the building, 27 railroad cars of timber to serve as cribbing, and about 700 rollers, each six inches in diameter and four feet long.” The move took six months and, amazingly, the building was kept perfectly level (all three stories and 6,000 tons of it), and classes continued to meet inside the entire time.

 What year was fyi first published?

Volume 1, Number 1 of For Your Information: News of General Faculty Interest made its debut on Jan. 21, 1964. The first issue included details about recent faculty lectures, published papers, and research, as well as reports from proceedings of University committees and the Graduate College, and a memo from Virgil M. Hancher, University president. The issue, typewritten and printed on 8-by-11-inch paper in pastel colors, listed events of interest on the “SUI (State University of Iowa) Calendar.”

Through the years, fyi expanded to include staff news (merging with the publication Staff) and photography in a tabloid format on newsprint. In January, the publication will celebrate its 40th year serving campus readers. Some of you were clever enough to try guessing based on our current volume number, 41, but the numbering system went askew at some point when fyi switched from calendar year to academic year when calculating volume number.

In 1939, Iowa established the nation’s first _____ _____ that used preservative agents for long-term storage.

The answer is “blood bank” and it’s another in a long line of firsts credited to The University of Iowa and often mentioned in admissions publications for prospective students. Iowa was the first in the world to accept creative work in theatre, writing, music, and art as theses for advanced degrees; first to admit men and women on an equal basis in the United States; first to establish a law school, educational radio station, and daily campus newspaper west of the Mississippi; and first in the nation to create a permanent college-level Department of Education. And that’s just for starters.

  In 1961, Iowa was the first university to completely design, assemble, and operate a WHAT?

If you chose d. a spacecraft, you chose correctly. Iowa’s connections to space exploration have become legendary. James Van Allen, professor emeritus of physics and astronomy, is credited with a breakthrough that many would say was America’s first great space discovery—Earth’s radiation belts (which today bear his name). Iowa Curios Vol. Two, printed by the UI Foundation in 1987, says the spacecraft was called Injun 1 (a name that probably wouldn’t fly today).

  Whose ashes were reportedly scattered over campus in 1940?

Iowa Curios Vol. Two had a little fun with this question, so we thought we’d borrow it for the quiz. Apparently, a biography of Benjamin Shambaugh claims that the former political science professor’s ashes were scattered across campus. But the claim has been disputed—most notably by his now-deceased widow who, years after his death, “couldn’t recall exactly what had been done with her husband’s remains.”

How much was the cost of tuition, as advertised in a local newspaper on March 5, 1855?

Larry Perl, 1976 UI alumnus, wrote Calm and Secure on thy Hill: a retrospective of the University of Iowa. Chapter two was devoted to the University’s “grand” opening, which (as he described it) wasn’t all that grand. There were no parades or ceremonies. Only 124 students were enrolled for the school term, which was 16 weeks long. Tuition was $4.

. Who wrote the lyrics to the Iowa Fight Song?

Meredith Willson made his hometown of Mason City, Iowa, famous in the Broadway hit The Music Man, but this musician-composer gave Hawkeye fans a way to cheer on the teams—he penned for us a fight song. A collection of Willson’s personal papers, including holograph sheet music of the fight song and the final script of The Music Man, are held by UI Special Collections.

 Match the Iowa Writers’ Workshop award-winning faculty members with the titles of their published work.

Visits to the workshop’s web site at www.uiowa.edu/~iww and to Amazon.com may have guided you to the answers (and sparked your interest in learning more about the authors and their acclaimed work).

I. James Alan McPherson/d. Elbow Room

II. Marilynne Robinson/e. The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

III. James Galvin/a. The Meadow

IV. Frank Conroy/f. Stop-Time

V. Ethan Canin/b. Carry Me Across the Water

VI. Marvin Bell/g. Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See

VII. Mark Levine/c. Enola Gay

 What 1918 event caused the academic year to begin late and sent more than one-third of the student body to the hospital?

The Spanish Influenza Epidemic that ravaged the country in 1918 left its mark on Iowa City, too. For most of October, the University was put under military quarantine, the law building was transformed into an emergency hospital, and hundreds fell ill. Around mid-December, the epidemic faded in the area. All told, seven student nurses and 31 University men died. (We gathered our information from an article in the summer 1967 issue of Staff, a magazine published by University Personnel Service.)

 What was the name of the first student newspaper at Iowa?

The University Reporter. It was a 16-page monthly that began printing in 1868, then merged with the two-year-old Vidette in 1881 to become the Vidette-Reporter, a four-page, three-times-a-week paper that cost three cents a copy. Another weekly, the S.U.I. Quill, started in 1891, then merged with the Vidette-Reporter in 1901 and became The Daily Iowan. (Source: A Pictorial History of The University of Iowa by John C. Gerber)

 What “dangerous” popular pastime prompted the student newspaper to write a note of caution in 1889 “to call students’ attention to the danger” and remind them that almost every year it “claims some poor fellow’s life”?

Ice skating on the Iowa River—it may not have been that day’s equivalent of binge drinking, but it seemed reckless to many.

 Who once said, when criticizing the campus architecture, “You must give up your sentimentality about Old Capitol or you will be doomed”?

He may have been a renowned architect, but Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t make many friends in Iowa City with his comment. According to Iowa Curios Vol. Two, when Wright was on campus to lecture at a summer arts festival, Earl Harper, the director of fine arts, was so distressed by Wright’s criticism that he introduced the architect by apologizing to the audience in advance for what he might say. And then it only got worse. Wright, during his speech, reportedly tried to tone down his opinions by noting that Old Cap “wasn’t all that bad, since the state hadn’t had enough money to really spoil it.”

 Which of the following was NOT an Iowa mascot?

Yep. We tried to trick you. Although Floyd (as in Floyd of Rosedale, the bronze statue up for grabs each year at the Minnesota-Iowa football game) is a pig, he—to our knowledge—has never been an Iowa mascot. The history books and trivia hounds note that before Herky the Hawk represented Iowa teams, a live Great Dane mascot named Rex paraded around wearing an old horse blanket with a large “I” on it. Another live mascot, Burch the Bear Cub, lived under the bleachers at Iowa Field and roamed the sidelines for two years before tragedy struck; he drowned in the Iowa River in March 1910.

The hawk mascot sprang from journalism professor Dick Spencer’s pen more than 50 years ago. He drew a couple of lifelike birds then quickly sketched a caricature of a grinning bird wearing an Iowa sweater and waving one wing—a character some described as a cross between Woody Woodpecker and a bald eagle. A man named John Franklin, of Belle Plaine, won a prize for naming the bird Herky, short for Hercules.

compiled by Amy Schoon