Staging Arts Events
in Iowa Classrooms

The Iowa Communications Network (ICN) brought Hancher Auditorium’s arts education events to students in 42 Iowa communities during the 2000-2001 season. Students participated in real-time, two-way, audiovisual interaction with the Pilobolus Dance Theatre, Disney’s "Beauty and the Beast," the Jazz at Lincoln Center Sextet, and storyteller David Gonzalez on the Hancher stage.

"We have found that the largest number of schools who receive Hancher’s educational programming are in small, rural areas," says Emily Hansen, Hancher’s education coordinator.

The ICN is the nation’s only publicly owned, statewide fiber-optic network, which connects schools, libraries, and government agencies, giving all Iowans interactive access to Iowa’s educational, legal, and governmental resources.

InfoHawk Now On-Line

Completed on time and under budget, InfoHawk, the University Libraries’ integrated library system, is a multifunctional web catalog that connects readily into web resources around the campus and internationally. The contents include the combined holdings from the University Libraries, the Law Library, and the Curriculum Lab, representing more than four million titles. Special functions include a direct link to the Libraries’ Gateway to the Web, numerous special databases and indexes, and personalized circulation information that allows a user to see materials they have checked out or put on hold. Explore the web site at infohawk.uiowa.edu.

Teaching the Teachers

For the past five years, nearly 250 Korean science and physics teachers have attended summer workshops at The University of Iowa. The Korean government chose the innovative teaching techniques of the Iowa Chautauqua Project as a model for implementing changes in their educational process.

Named after a tribe of American Indians where wisdom was freely shared, the same can be said for the Chautauqua national science teaching effort, established in 1992. Led by science education professor Robert Yager, the project emphasizes that how one teaches (methodology) can be more important than what one teaches (content).

Yager believes teachers can get students interested in the subject, can teach them to be curious, and can be more effective in their teaching if they can convey how science touches the lives of people.

Little Books on the Prairie

As popular interest in prairie restoration grows faster than tallgrass, the University of Iowa Press has recently published three books that address the interests of environmentalists, plant lovers, and the curious alike. To order these books, visit www.uiowa.edu/~uipress.

In A Practical Guide to Prairie Reconstruction, Carl Kurtz outlines the procedures and problems involved in reintroducing tallgrass prairie to landscapes large and small, giving a formula for success for all but the most extreme conditions.

Thanks to rich soil and a fertile climate, hundreds of prairie plant species combine to produce a diverse, colorful, ever-changing landscape. Using text and maps by Paul Christiansen and newly created drawings by Mark Müller, the first comprehensive guide to the prairie plants, An Illustrated Guide to Iowa Prairie Plants, provides information necessary for identifying even the most similar species.

Focusing on one ecosystem, Prairie in Your Pocket: A Guide to Plants of the Tallgrass Prairie by Mark Müller is perfect for amateurs as an introduction to prairie plant identification and is the only guide of its kind for identifying tallgrass species. The laminated guide folds down to the size of a business envelope.

Gas Goes Down, Credit Goes Up

By developing new techniques to measure greenhouse gas reductions, Essential Science, a new tenant company at The University of Iowa Technology Innovation Center, will help companies verify and improve their emission trades, providing higher value for their emission credits. The company will focus on trades involving energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, such as switchgrass and poplar trees, or carbon stored within soils from converting row crop agriculture to prairie or grass, or switching to no-till or organic farming applications.

The company is breaking into the new market of trading credits for greenhouse gas emissions. In an emissions trading program, a government or trading agency issues a number of permits or allowances to sources of a particular pollutant to release a specified number of tons of the pollutant, consistent with the desired level of emissions. Permit owners may keep them and release the pollutants or reduce their emissions and sell the permits.

California Breathing

To more accurately determine the influence of Asian air pollution throughout the Pacific Basin and on the United States, Gregory Carmichael, professor of chemical and biochemical engineering in the College of Engineering, is studying how Asian pollution is increasingly affecting air quality in California and the rest of the Western United States.

Internationally known for his studies on the environmental impact of Asian development, Carmichael learned that rapid industrialization in Asia is affecting California air quality. His new research, in part, will involve measuring and analyzing Asian pollution as it crosses the Pacific so that scientists can better determine how to reduce it.

His research is being supported by grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation, which total nearly $1 million.

Partners in History

The Research Foundation of the National Council of Teachers of English awarded education professor Anne DiPardo a $12,500 Grant-in-Aid for a program that pairs young students with senior citizens to read books and discuss their impressions.

DiPardo and Pat Schnack, from the Iowa City Community School District, were awarded the grant for a collaborative project, "Cross-Generational Literacy: Seniors and Adolescents Reading and Writing Together," which focuses on case studies of senior citizens and eighth-graders who read books in common and correspond in journals.

The study explores how seniors and young people construct and reconstruct their understandings of one another. Seniors help bring a living history perspective to what the eighth-graders are studying in school. The senior citizens are recruited by Joan Cook, director of the local chapter of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program.

First Nations Intensive Program

High school students from Native American tribes throughout the Midwest and New Mexico spent part of their summer at The University of Iowa, getting a glimpse of college life and learning how to conduct research through the Iowa First Nations Summer Program.

During the intensive three-week program, the 23 students–representing the Navajo, Lakota, and Pueblo tribes–were immersed in health, life, and environmental sciences, as well as liberal arts disciplines, while getting the chance to learn about each other’s cultures. They also prepared for college while exploring career possibilities and working with native teachers and role models.

Joe Coulter, associate provost for diversity and director of Opportunity at Iowa, is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma and the Iowa First Nations Summer Program director. For information and photos from last year’s Iowa First Nations program, visit www.uiowa.edu/~ianation.

Cancer Center Designation

A landmark $25 million gift from the Holden family of Williamsburg, Iowa, provided unprecedented support for cancer research, education, and treatment at The University of Iowa. The family’s gift, through the UI Foundation, also supports the Roland and Ruby Holden Cancer Research Laboratories in the new Medical Education and Research Facility, under construction on the health sciences campus. Just a few months after being named a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Center, the Holden Cancer Center achieved further recognition: NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center status. Based on this additional honor, the center will now be known as the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at The University of Iowa.

University Researchers Address Antibiotic Resistance

According to data gathered in a statewide survey conducted by University of Iowa Health Care researchers along with other state health professionals, the percentage of one infection that is resistant to ordinary antibiotics rose last year.

The Iowa Task Force for Antibiotic Resistance reported that 27 percent of all invasive pneumococcal infections were resistant to penicillin in 2000, compared to 24 percent in 1999.

"This is a concern," said Daniel J. Diekema, assistant professor of pathology and internal medicine and a member of the task force, "because penicillin-resistant pneumococcus is frequently resistant to many other antibiotic classes, making it much more difficult to treat these common but serious infections."

Partnerships Answer Needs of Iowa Hospitals

The Department of Pharmaceutical Care at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics entered into an agreement with Mercy Medical Center in Clinton to provide pharmacy management services and hire a director of pharmacy for the facility.

In 1999, the Department of Pharmaceutical Care signed similar agreements with Marengo Memorial Hospital, the Keokuk County Health Center in Sigourney, and the Ottumwa Regional Medical Center.

The University’s collaboration with each of these communities answers a need caused by the current shortage of pharmacists in the state of Iowa. Since the partnership agreements were signed, pharmacists have been recruited to fill open positions, drug preparation and dispensing procedures have been strengthened and automated to enhance safety, and clinical services have been implemented.

Poison Control Goes Statewide

Iowans in all 99 counties now have better access to information about poisons and other toxic substances through a new statewide Poison Control Center. Last fall, The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, together with St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center in Sioux City, launched a statewide toll-free, 24-hour telephone hotline for poison information.

Previously, two separate poison control services, at St. Luke’s and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, served Iowa. The new consolidated center offers an efficient, consistent response to the public, outreach and poison education, and training for health care providers. It employs 10 full- and part-time registered nurse specialists in poison information, four of whom are certified poison information specialists.

The toll-free number for the new poison control center is 1-800-352-2222.

College of Public Health Surveys Rural Populations

The College of Public Health was created in 1999 with the mandate to become an international leader in the area of rural health. It was in this spirit that the new college inherited the ongoing Keokuk County Rural Health Study, a unique, comprehensive 20-year survey of general health in one rural Iowa county.

Now in its 10th year of funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Keokuk study has enrolled 2,269 volunteers from a randomly selected group of farm, rural nonfarm, and town households.

So far, the study has found relatively high rates of injury, obesity, and childhood asthma among Keokuk residents. It also revealed inconsistent seat belt use. A preventive study has resulted with the goal of identifying environmental factors affecting asthma rates, and a Community Advisory Committee has been formed to address the seat belt use and treatment of childhood asthma among residents.

Virtual Hospital listed among top 50 web sites

The University of Iowa’s Virtual Hospital is one of 50 web sites to be named a winner of Scientific American’s first-ever "SciTech Web Awards 2001." Writing about the Virtual Hospital, the editors at Scientific American said, "Medical professionals and laypeople alike will find an abundance of health-care information at this digital health sciences library. Visitors can read up on asthma, view dissected human brains, watch an x-ray video clip of the human ankle in motion, consult a booklet on hip replacement–the list goes on." About 150 faculty authors, including emeritus and junior faculty and medical residents, have contributed their work. The Virtual Hospital serves as an information resource for health care professionals and the public and as an entrance point for people interested in receiving health care at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. It delivers continuing education to health care providers. More than 7.9 million people visited the site last year. Visit the Virtual Hospital’s web site at www.vh.org.

Environmental Justice For All

In the past, projects such as road improvements often adversely impacted low-income or minority populations disproportionately. A study being conducted by the UI Public Policy Center seeks to identify what populations will be impacted by air and noise pollution caused by transportation projects, and the effects on economic vitality, personal mobility, and community cohesion in these areas.

In collaboration with the URS Corp., the center was awarded a $500,000 contract by the National Research Council to study environmental justice issues such as these.

The UI Public Policy Center fosters interdisciplinary academic research on issues such as transportation, health care, economic development, social equity, and the environment, that affect the state and the region. For more information on these programs, visit the center’s web site: www.uiowa.edu/~ppc/index.html.

Services Extend Beyond University Borders

Every year the Women’s Resource & Action Center (WRAC) provides educational programs that fostered community building and involvement.

WRAC’s Social Change Training Program provided seminars led by experts on public speaking, financial management, fund-raising and development for nonprofit organizations, successful event planning, and an intensive training weekend for students focused on campus involvement.

The campuswide "Paper or Plastic?" project, designed to educate students about personal financial management, was cosponsored by the UI Alumni Association. In addition to providing ongoing educational information to students through the campus newspaper, the project established an on-campus, free financial counseling service and training sessions for parents during the summer orientation program.

In conjunction with the Iowa Women’s Foundation and Iowa City Public Library, the Women and Money program consisted of 10 workshops on investing, budgeting, home buying, estate planning, starting a business, and strategies for acting on one’s values and beliefs through personal economics.

The center is committed to serving the public beyond the boundaries of the University.

Building Vital Nonprofit Resources

The newly created Iowa Nonprofit Resource Center has been described as an entry point into University resources and a catalyst for assessing and meeting the needs of Iowa’s community-based organizations.

Willard Boyd, professor of law and UI president emeritus, says the goal for creating the center is to bring together the many educational programs and services that several UI units currently provide to Iowa’s nonprofit organizations.

Based at the law school, the center plans to strengthen the operational capacity of Iowa’s community-based organizations. Of the more than 26,500 nonprofits organized under Iowa law, nearly 2,800 are tax-exempt charitable organizations.

The center draws on expertise from personnel in the Henry B. Tippie College of Business; the Colleges of Law, Nursing, Public Health, and Liberal Arts and Sciences; and programs in library and information science, social work, religion, health, leisure and sports studies, museum studies, and arts management. For more information, visit the web site at http://nonprofit.law.uiowa.edu.

Cell Bank Success

David Soll’s bank had a great year in 2000, even though it didn’t earn a penny in profits.

That’s a claim few banks can make, but then Soll, a professor of biological sciences, is the administrator of a rather unusual bank called the Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank. Operated under the auspices of the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, it is the largest facility of its kind in the world for supplying researchers with monoclonal antibodies necessary for the study of embryos, cancer, neurobiology, white blood cells, and a host of human diseases.

It is a virtual shopping center for researchers, allowing the University to market antibodies to scientists around the world and, therefore, to play an important role in the international development of biological research and the exchange of information. As the stock and trade of the bank, hybridomas are cells that produce antibodies that bind to specific molecules, making them useful to scientists for a variety of studies. Working in cooperation with the facility, the Iowa Cancer Center’s Hybridoma and Tissue Facility helps grow the necessary cells and provides research support.

Initiated as a collaborative venture between The University of Iowa and Johns Hopkins University in 1986, the bank has been operated solely by the University since1996.

Oakdale Research Park Opens Doors to Albany Molecular Research Inc.

Albany Molecular Research Inc. opened a new $3 million laboratory facility at The University of Iowa Oakdale Research Park, highlighting the expansion of the biomedical industry in the Coralville/Iowa City/Cedar Rapids Technology Corridor.

"AMRI’s decision to locate at the Oakdale Research Park represents an expansion of an industry that is one of the state’s highest priorities–biotechnology," said UI President Mary Sue Coleman. "This growth means career opportunities for graduates in biochemistry, chemistry, biochemical engineering, biology, microbiology, and related scientific fields. It is also good news for the University because it means there will be opportunities for sustained research relationships with the many UI faculty and staff scientists at the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing."

AMRI’s Biocatalysis Division works on projects such as modifying drugs to treat breast cancer, chemistry research, and on applications for the life sciences industries.

Corporate Relations

Beginning in July 2000, the Office of Research Marketing and Corporate Relations (RMCR) initiated a statewide outreach effort, including monthly on-site visits to Iowa companies to match business needs with capabilities within The University of Iowa.

As a part of these efforts, RMCR initiated and/or facilitated discussions among a number of diverse groups (Iowa corporations, multiple UI colleges and administrative groups as well as school districts, other higher education institutions, local/regional economic development agencies, and community organizations). Based on RMCR’s experience with these efforts over the past year and a holistic approach to viewing the University’s role as a partner in economic development, they have found that alliance mechanisms require an increasingly larger number of (varied and multiple) constituencies to come together to address a host of complex issues in workforce training and development in high-tech sectors, co-ops and internships, technology transfer, etc.

RMCR’s role in facilitating partnerships with Iowa industry and the University community advances the University’s tripartite missions of teaching, research, and service and enhances Iowa’s economic and social vitality

Quorum Sciences: Staying in Iowa

The success of Quorum Sciences, a biotech company housed at the Technology Innovation Center (TIC), can be measured by its recent acquisition by Aurora Biosciences Corp. of San Diego, Calif., which enables Quorum to further expand its business and research prospects while remaining in Iowa.

The company was built on research discoveries of E. Peter Greenberg, professor of molecular pathogenesis and professor of microbiology in the College of Medicine. His research has resulted in discoveries that were patented by the UI Research Foundation and licensed back to start-up company Quorum Sciences as its core technology.

By 2001, Quorum Sciences, also known as the Microbiology Department of Aurora Biosciences, expanded its research space in the TIC incubator, thanks to cooperation from the UI College of Medicine. At press time, Quorum Sciences was acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and will remain in Iowa.

Art of the State

Writers’ Workshop faculty member Marvin Bell, Iowa’s first poet laureate, participated in "Cultivating Creative Writing: An Iowa Tradition," a UI Arts Share project. The project is a series of activities designed to raise awareness about one of Iowa’s cultural gems, creative writing, and its impact on 20th-century American literature.

Students at seven high schools in Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, and West Liberty read selected literary works, participated in creative writing workshops, and attended readings by faculty and graduate students.

The Arts Share program provides artistic resources from the Iowa Center for the Arts to schools and community organizations. The 2000-2001 Arts Share roster included more than 70 faculty and graduate students in music, theatre, dance, the visual arts, and creative writing.

Developing Iowa at the Turn of the Century

A trip back in time to the turn of the 19th century is just a click away, thanks to a new

Department of Geoscience web site featuring more than 800 photographs taken between the mid-1880s and the 1920s.

Photographed by Samuel Calvin, UI professor of natural sciences from 1873 to 1911, and his colleagues, the Calvin Photographic Collection (www.uiowa.edu/~calvin) includes geological, agricultural, and industrial landscapes as well as scenes of Iowa City, the campus, students, and a collection of portraits.

The original collection is housed in the Department of Geoscience and consists of more than 10,000 glass plate negatives. Julia Golden, curator of paleontologic collections, created the database and the web site.

The Calvin Project was made possible by grants from the State Historical Society of Iowa Resource Enhancement and Protection-Historical Resource Development Program and the UI Arts and Humanities Initiative, with additional support from the Department of Geoscience.

Division of Performing Arts to Inter-act More Gracefully

Linda Maxson, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, announced the formation of a new unit in the college: the Division of Performing Arts, combining the Department of Dance, the Department of Theatre Arts, and the School of Music.

The closer interaction of dance, music, and theatre arts within the Division of Performing Arts is expected to give added stature and visibility to these programs. The division also is planning a more integrated performance schedule for the three departments and more coordinated educational programming for the state and region.

Professor David Nelson, head of the School of Music since 1991, was selected by the combined faculty of those areas as director of the new division.

Funnels, Fossils, and Fungi

The Museum of Natural History sponsored several field trips as part of the "Afternoon with a Scientist" public education and lecture series. This year participants explored the Devonian Fossil Gorge: A Window to Iowa’s Ancient, Shallow Tropical Seas; Iowa Tornadoes: Their Science and History; and the Great Annual Morel Search. These programs are free and open to the public and are part of an annual series that supports other local organizations in their educational outreach efforts.

Conserving Culture

Bonnie Sunstein, associate professor of English and education, received a grant from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation for the creation of a web site "FieldWorking Online: A Web-Community Archive for Cultural Conservation."

She hopes to use the site as a virtual gathering place where K-12 students and teachers, college students, and researchers can share projects and ideas about ethnographic fieldwork.

"This project will provide an electronic community where people can share local traditions and histories from around America. It will help local communities document their diverse traditions, thereby conserving culture all over America," she says.

Sunstein has taught courses and workshops in ethnographic fieldwork across the country and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and has written several books and articles about documenting community and culture.

International Human Rights Day Conference: Out of the Classroom and into the Community

This year’s International Human Rights Day conference challenged middle and high school teachers to create new and effective ways of increasing student awareness about human rights issues. Ravi Nair, a consultant to the United Nations and visiting faculty member of Yale University, led the conference, which also helped teachers discover how to discuss various aspects of human rights–from discrimination and poverty to racism and health issues–and find ways to carry what they learned into the classroom and community.

Nair, an Ida Beam visiting professor, serves on the executive committee of the Geneva-based International Service for Human Rights.

Community and UI conference cosponsors included the Center for Human Rights, the College of Education Diversity Committee, the associate provost for health sciences, the Office of Affirmative Action, the Office of International Programs, the Stanley Foundation, the Iowa City Human Rights Commission, the Grant Wood Area Education Association, and the Iowa City Community School District.

Iowa Doctors Pivotal in Moscow Family Medicine Clinic

Throughout the next three years, as many as 10 UI-associated family physicians will travel to Moscow for three-week stays to serve as consultants and provide training in family medicine to Russian doctors and medical residents. The Russian-American Family Medicine Center and the Medicina Clinic already have begun a family medicine training program; UI physicians help train those residents at the new Russian-American Family Medicine Center, which is developing as a model for transforming health care delivery in Russia.

The effort is a collaboration between the Medicina Clinic, the Russian State Medical University, and the University. The center will serve Russian citizens as well as Americans and other foreigners living in Russia.

Plans are to develop a course on Russian and international medicine and provide opportunities for UI medical students and residents to travel to Moscow and receive training in international medicine at the center.

Assembling a Democratic Curriculum

In the Republic of Georgia, democracy is still in its infancy. Since declaring its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has been beset by civil conflict, massively negative gross domestic product growth, and hyperinflation.

Despite the turmoil, one thing that has remained constant is the value placed on education by the republic’s citizens. Which is why a delegation of seven educators from Georgia–a country with a nearly 100 percent literacy rate–spent three months at The University of Iowa developing their country’s first-ever comprehensive civics curriculum for ninth-graders.

Working under the guidance of faculty and staff in the College of Education, the educators conducted in-depth research using University computer and library facilities, sat in on University and local K-12 classes, consulted with educators, and traveled to several educational and cultural sites around the country.

Their primary objective has been to assemble a civics curriculum that covers such subjects as democracy, human rights, constitutional issues, citizenship, and social problems, a curriculum that could replace older materials obtained and translated from neighboring Russia. The group also has drawn up guidelines for employing more interactive methods of teaching in the classroom.