History> Modern Foundations

In the Fall of 1994, Trevor Schultz — a recent graduate of the University of California at Davis — started looking at the University of Iowa for graduate school. As an undergraduate at Davis, Trevor progressed from a mere player in the school's annual tournament to a tournament co-coordinator, to executive coordinator while simultaneously establishing the Davis Quiz Bowl club and organizing the first invitational trips for Davis teams. Barely getting a taste for academic competition by the time he graduated, Trevor was hungry for more.

He sent off an email to Eric Hillemann, the coach at Carleton College. "Does Iowa have a program?" Trevor inquired. Eric replied that Iowa did compete in CBI Regionals, but not many other tournaments outside the CBI R10. Eric put Trevor in touch with Robin Hanson, the current program coordinator for College Bowl and an executive in the IMU marketing department. Trevor had news for Robin: he had just been accepted to the University of Iowa for graduate school and he was interested in starting a quiz bowl program.

About the same time, Trevor happened to run into Robert Trent via email. Robert had made a post to the alt.college.college-bowl newsgroup responding to another post. Trevor, also a reader of the newsgroup, contacted Robert from California and asked why Iowa did so poorly at CBI Regionals that year (1995 — the Iowa State-hosted regional where the Erwin-led Iowa team finished last). Robert, a former ACF National champion from the University of Tennessee and supreme master of all arts liberal, replied that he had no idea that Iowa had any College Bowl team or program. The two agreed over e-mail that this was about to change.

Robert got in touch with Robin and after frequent communications with Trevor from California, Robert approached Robin and Jean Kendall, a top-ranking IMU staffer, and successfully secured a sizeable budget for the coming year. By May of 1995, everything was in place: Trevor would be attending Iowa, the Quiz Bowl team would have a budget, and both Trevor and Robert would be able to continue their careers. The Midwest would never be the same...