A black-and-gold 'show' for the fair

Kris Thornburg of the audiovisual Center helps build the University's Iowa State Fair booth.

March days in Iowa don't usually spark memories of corn dogs and biggest watermelon contests, but they did this year for University News Services staff members.

For the first time, University News Services was in charge of the University's 60-foot by 20-foot booth in the Varied Industries Building at the fair, which runs Aug. 8-18.

"Actually, we volunteered to do it when a resignation meant that outreach programs needed to be reassigned," says Linda Kettner, assistant director of University Relations. "My first task was to talk to the University stakeholders for the State Fair, and those who had been involved in the past."

That helped Kettner and George McCrory, whom she named site manager, to develop a new state fair board to be in charge of developing plans. Jerry Best and Diana Brayton of the Audiovisual Center built the booth at the Hillcrest Jewett Lumber Yard in Coralville and General Stores was responsible for getting it to Des Moines and back.

"I can't give Jerry and Diana enough kudos," Kettner says. "This was a huge job."

So when the fair begins its 10-day run, Iowa's presence will have been the work of dozens of people on campus.

The goals for the booth:

• Unify the UI presence, combining the previously separate booths of University of Iowa Health Care, the Hawk Shop, and the University to avoid fragmentation.
  
  
• Make the booth attractive and readily identifiable as The University of Iowa. "That means blatant black and gold," Kettner says.
  
  
• Staff the booth with trained employees who can get the Iowa message across and answer questions accurately. Fairgoers will be able to chat with interim president Willard (Sandy) Boyd; Vice President David Skorton; Barry Butler, dean of the College of Engineering; Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby; and Steve Parrott, director of University Relations, plus staff from University relations, admissions, engineering, financial aid, and other departments. Many students will be present, too.

Another innovation this year is Center Stage Acts-16 "acts" including physics and astronomy professors playing sounds from outer space, Herky and Iowa's cheerleaders, biology professor David Soll demonstrating the acoustic treatment of swine odor, storyteller Steve Thunder-McGuire, and a demonstration of hand book-binding.

Volunteers wearing bright gold shirts will be visible sources of help for fairgoers. McCrory says he had no problem getting faculty, staff, students, and alumni to volunteer, and even though a handful dropped out later, the waiting list has plenty of people.

McCrory will be in Des Moines for the full 10 days, worrying about everything from computer wiring to the children who want photos with the full-size cut-outs of Iowa's coaches that will be prominently displayed. He'll also keep a big supply of Iowa athletics posters, along with temporary tiger hawk tattoos, refrigerator magnets with the football season schedule, and virtual postcards of Iowa campus scenes that fairgoers can send to friends from computers in the booth.

Back in Iowa City, Kettner will deal with press inquiries.

"This has been a wonderful experience for University News Services," Kettner says, "because it pulls in so many people across campus. It's amazing how many people are excited about the fair and happy to be involved in it."

Article by Anne Tanner