Shop until you drop, right here on campus
Whether you prefer to shop online or in person, you can tackle your holiday shopping list with Inside's annual campus gift guide. Campus retailers, groups, units and student organizations offer a variety of gift options, including memberships and gift cards.
Alumni Association
This year's exclusive necktie design is by Vineyard Vines. A limited supply of the 100 percent silk ties is available in the ISUAA online store. ($72-$82)
Athletics Department
Snuggle up with a Cy Pillow Pet from Cy's Locker Room. The plush collectible is a cardinal and gold reproduction of ISU's mascot. ($27-$29.99)
Extension and Outreach
In addition to publications, the Extension online store offers gift items, such as a soft-sided sport cooler. ($15)
Iowa State Center
Give the gift of entertainment with tickets to a show (prices vary) at Stephens Auditorium, or a personalized seat plaque to honor a loved one ($300).
Music Department
Repurposed marching band uniforms comprise three 12-by-14-inch tote bag designs (Cyclones, Braiding and Bird in the Blender). To order, send checks made payable to ISU Bands directly to the music department. ($50)
Reiman Gardens Gift Shop
Iowa State's campanile is one of the featured landmarks in the book, "Santa is Coming to Iowa." The hardcover book is new to stores this fall. ($9.99)
Textiles and Clothing Museum
Treasures of the Textiles and Clothing Museum is a 70-page color catalog, featuring more than 50 objects from the historic and ethnographic collections of the museum. The publication also includes a brief history and overview of the collection and its facilities. ($10)
Trademark Licensing
Show your TWO colors with these uniquely mismatched low-top canvas sneakers. Reversus shoes are available online and at the University Book Store. ($29.95)
University Book Store
Rest easy with this Walking Cy T-shirt pillow, available in the store or online. The 22-by-22-inch pillowcase can be removed and washed. ($32)
Veenker Memorial Golf Course
Stuff stockings with logo golf tees, balls, gloves, hats and more. Stop by the clubhouse pro shop, which is open year round, or order select merchandise online. ($1-$19.95)
Open houses, sales
CODAC Fall Art Sale
Dec. 11-13, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Design lobby
Works in ceramics, prints, photos, jewelry and textiles by students in the integrated studio arts program. A portion of the sales help fund club activities, workshops and guest speakers. Prices range from $5 to $150.
Reiman Gardens gift shop
Stocking Stuffer Night: Dec. 12, 5-8 p.m.
Shoppers will receive a discount on the inventory of unique gift items and stocking stuffers. Refreshments will be served.
The Workspace
Art Mart: Dec. 5-7, MU Campanile Room
Featured items include Gaffers' Guild blown glass, pottery, jewelry, accessories, hand-woven baskets and prints. Purchases support clubs, organizations and local artists.
Holiday Craft Crawl: Dec. 7 (10 a.m.-4 p.m.), The Workspace
Make handwarmers, buttons and magnets at this Memorial Union location, one of five Ames arts organizations participating in the event.
Student Groups
Block and Bridle Club
Summer sausage and cheese gift packages (PDF order form), $4-$21
Forestry Club
Christmas tree and wreath sales, $15-$45
Horticulture Club
Poinsettia sales, $7-$20
Gift cards, gift certificates
Memberships
WinterFest packed with Friday fun
ISU First Lady Janet Leath prepares for the open house at the Knoll, part of Friday's WinterFest activities. Drop by the president's home between 3 and 5:30 p.m. for refreshments and tours of the first floor. Photo by Amy Vinchattle.
Winter has arrived just in time for Iowa State's annual WinterFest celebration. So put on a hat and some gloves, and enjoy an array of family-friendly wintertime activities on Friday, Dec. 6. Most WinterFest events are held in the Memorial Union and are free, unless indicated. A complete list of activities is online.
- University Book Store holiday open house, (7:45 a.m.-6 p.m., UBS), events and specials throughout the store
- Farm House Museum open house, (noon-4 p.m., Farm House Museum), sip hot cider while you experience a 1900s Christmas in Iowa State's first campus building
- Art Mart, (noon-9 p.m., Dec. 5-6; 10 a.m.-1 p.m., Dec. 7, MU Campanile Room), featuring glass, pottery, prints, jewelry and more, proceeds support sponsoring organizations and local artists
- Open house at the Knoll, (3-5:30 p.m., Knoll), enjoy hot chocolate (using a time-tested recipe by former Iowa State first lady, Ellen Parks) and other refreshments with current first lady, Janet Leath
- ISU Foresty Club Tree and wreath sale, (3-6 p.m., Dec. 6; 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Dec. 7; noon-6 p.m., Dec. 8), trees are $25-$45; wreaths are $15-$25
- Campanile tours and carillon music, (4-6 p.m., carillon), tour led by ISU carillonneur Tin Shi Tam, free Cyclone candy canes from members of the Student Alumni Leadership Council
- Eats and treats, sample seasonal beverages (5-8 p.m., MU Market and Café), decorate cookies and drink hot chocolate (6 p.m., MU Commons), and enjoy the MU Food Court all day (7 a.m.-7 p.m.)
- Make and take crafts, (5-9 p.m., the Workspace), create a festive way to display your favorite photo using a wood block, paper and decoupage techniques
- Bowling and billiards, (5-10 p.m., the Underground)
- Card writing for Blank Children's Hospital, (6 p.m., Multicultural Center)
- Crafts and snow globes, (6 p.m, Multicultural Center)
- Andy Albright Jingle Jog 5K, (registration 4-5:45 p.m., MU Gallery/Pioneer Rooms; run begins at 6 p.m.), $20
- Tree lighting ceremony, (6 p.m., inside Beardshear Hall, first floor; enter via the front entrance steps), features live music
- Bingo, (6-10 p.m., MU Sun Room/South Ballroom)
- Magician Norman Ng, (7 p.m., MU Great Hall), enjoy magic, comedy and audience participation
- Karaoke, (7-10 p.m., Maintenance Shop)
- Mentalist Brian Imbus, (9 p.m., MU Great Hall), witness mindreading and illusions
- Ice skating, (11 p.m.-2 a.m., Ames/ISU Ice Arena), free for the first 400 participants; then $1
Business, personal email not a good mix
It may seem efficient to consolidate your email accounts by forwarding personal email to your work account, or vice versa. Don't do it, say information technology services staff. You not only risk exposing your personal correspondence to disclosure, but you may inadvertently violate federal laws or university policy.
Here are some good email tips from ITS' network and communications director Angela Bradley and senior systems analysts Kent Ziebell and Mike Lohrbach.
Ask friends and family to send messages to your personal email account
Friends and family should send messages to you at your Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or some other personal email account. One issue is privacy. Anything that shows up on your university Outlook Exchange account is subject to review under various business and legal processes such as open records, audits and lawsuits. So there's always the possibility that mail sent to or from your @iastate.edu account could be wrapped up in these procedures and possibly disclosed.
Eliminating or minimizing personal email traffic on your university account also keeps you on the right side of university policy, which states that personal use of computers and electronic materials should be restricted to incidental and emergency use.
Use Outlook Exchange for university business
Iowa State owns the data (email) on the ISU Exchange server. That's a good thing for educators, who must comply with various privacy and data protection laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which enforces confidentiality of student information, and export control laws, which regulate the transfer of items including certain technical data outside of the United States or to foreign persons in the United States.
If you do university business on a personal email account, you can't necessarily control who can view that data and where in the world that data is stored. That puts you at greater risk of violating FERPA or export control laws.
Don't assume your personal email is off-limits to public disclosure
Email that's written or received in the course of conducting university business is considered a public record. It doesn't matter if the mail lives on your Outlook Exchange account or your personal email account. It's subject to public records law and obligations to preserve public records.
Mobile devices make for easy viewing of multiple mail accounts
Most mobile devices allow you to maintain separate business and personal email accounts while viewing all your inboxes in one big mail mashup. Look for "all inboxes" or something similar on the mobile mail client.
Honors project graces Design atrium this month
College of Design atrium. Photo by Alison Weidemann.
Landscape architecture senior and Honors student Qiyi Li endeavored to create an installation for her senior Honors project this fall. The result is a stop-you-in-your-tracks project that fills a good piece of the atrium at the College of Design. A Little Dreamer is 28 strings of paper airplanes, each plane folded from an 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of white paper – gathered from recycling bins -- and seemingly in flight.
Qiyi Li
Paper airplanes, she said, evoke a wide variety of childhood memories. Li was raised in Beijing, China, but also spent four of her preschool years in Fukuoka, Japan. She has memories of paper airplanes from both of those cultures. The airplanes, she said, represent different memories and messages for different individuals.
But her installation isn't all innocence. She also wants people to think about waste, particularly paper waste and the trees felled to create paper waste. Her 634 paper airplanes represent five seconds in the logging trade in which, worldwide, 126.8 trees are cut each second to produce paper.
A Little Dreamer
- Through Dec. 21, College of Design atrium
- Senior Honors project by Qiyi Li
- 634 paper airplanes (sheets retrieved from recycling bins)
- 7 fish lines per level connect to each of the atrium's 4 balconies
Associate professor of landscape architecture Michael Martin, who served as Li's independent study adviser, praised her work for altering how people experience the atrium space.
"This is a very narrow vertical channel that's square and linear," he observed. "The curved lines she has introduced reactivate the building. It's a wonderful way to re-experience what's already here."
Li and two friends spent four 12- to 15-hour days over the Thanksgiving break installing A Little Dreamer in the Design atrium. The planes originally were scheduled to be up for a week, but with a nod from college administrators they will remain in place through the college's commencement ceremony in that space on Saturday, Dec. 21.
Tuition rates approved, conditionally
In-state undergraduates again will pay 2012-13 tuition rates -- $6,648 – next year, as approved Dec. 4 by the State Board of Regents. The freeze is conditional and assumes at least a 4 percent increase in general operating funding for Iowa State next year from the 2014 Iowa Legislature.
"We've had a great response from leaders in the House and Senate," said board president Bruce Rastetter, adding that a budget meeting with Gov. Terry Branstad is scheduled for next week. "By all indications, it's been successful so far."
Nonresident undergraduate tuition will go up $334 (1.74 percent) to $19,534. Resident graduate students will pay $142 (1.81 percent) more, or $7,990, and nonresident graduate students will pay an additional $646 (3.2 percent), or $20,804. College of Veterinary Medicine tuition, resident and nonresident, will rise 4.5 next year – to $20,014 and $44,768, respectively.
Mandatory student fees will go up $5.80, to $1,083.40 for Iowa State undergraduates and to $1,037.40 for graduate students, in 2014-15. That includes a $3 increase for student services and a $2.80 increase for student activities. Student fees haven't changed for Iowa State students in three years.
Professional development assignments
The board also approved 37 professional development assignments (PDA) for Iowa State faculty during the 2014-15 academic year. This represents 2.1 percent of eligible faculty members and is down slightly from the current year, in which 45 faculty members were OK'd to complete a PDA. The list of assignments (PDF; ISU list begins on page 30) is on the board's website.
The gender breakdown this year is 24 men and 13 women. Seven assignments are for the full academic year, the others are for a semester. Thirteen of the faculty members previously completed a PDA.
The net cost of the 37 PDAs is about $131,000 ($403,000 in teaching replacement costs minus $272,000 in salary savings for the seven full-year assignments). Some assignments do not bring additional costs when the department can manage a faculty absence by reassigning courses among other faculty.
At Iowa State, any faculty member employed at least half time is eligible to apply for a professional development assignment. There is no requirement for length of service.
Regents efficiency study
Regent Larry McKibben reported that the work of the renamed Regents Efficiency and Transformation Review Committee has begun. Rastetter announced the review in October, with McKibben and regent Milt Dakovich agreeing to lead the review effort. The review will look at academic, administrative and auxiliary units at the regent institutions, with an eye on maintaining high quality while assuring affordability and accessibility. McKibben said an RFP (Request for Proposals) for a consultant to lead the review would go out yet this month, with the goal of having a consultant on board by early February. Associate vice president and chief of staff Miles Lackey is Iowa State's representative to the committee.
Retirement of Patrick Clancy
Patrick Clancy, who has served as superintendent of both the Iowa School for the Deaf, Council Bluffs, and Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School, Vinton, since April 2012, announced his retirement, effective June 30, 2014. Former regent Rose Vasquez will chair a search committee to find Clancy's successor; regent Nicole Carroll will serve on the committee.
New center, program-specific fees, bond sales
In other business, the board approved Iowa State requests to:
- Establish a new center, the Center for Arthropod Management Technologies, in the entomology department. The center is a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center, following that program's consortium model; in this case, industry, government and universities collaborating to develop technologies that better manage arthropod pests. Iowa State is the lead university and the University of Kentucky is a sister institution. Initially, the consortium will have seven industry members: BASF, Bayer CropScience AG, Bayer CropScience LP, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Pioneer, FuturaGene and Monsanto Co.
- Set program-specific fees for 2014-15. Iowa State's only new fee is a $120 orientation fee for international students for services and activities that enhance their transition to the university.
- Hold two bond sales in revised amounts (due to lower than expected interest rates): $8.75 million in dormitory revenue bonds to complete the six new student apartment buildings in Frederiksen Court, and $6 million in academic building revenue refunding bonds to save about $556,000 in interest on two previous academic building bond sales (2003, 2004).
Shakespeare classic plays this month
Dan Poppen and Elizabeth Thompson have the title roles in ISU Theatre's production of Romeo and Juliet this month. Submitted photo.
ISU Theatre will bring William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Fisher Theater for two weekends this month. Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 6, 7, 13 and 14, and at 2 p.m. on Dec. 8 and 15.
Director and theater assistant professor Brad Dell said Romeo and Juliet is one of the most frequently produced plays for a couple of reasons: The universality of its story and the beauty of its language. Set in Mantua, Italy, Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly marry in spite of the fact that their families, the Montagues and the Capulets, have feuded for centuries.
Dell said the language is at the forefront in this production. The staging borrows from Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre experience in London. Scenes transition quickly without significant scenery changes.
Dell said the production and costumes reflect modern times while staying true to the facts of the play, including plenty of sword fighting. ISU Theatre hired theater artist/educator H. Russ Brown, St. Charles, Ill., to choreograph the fight scenes. Brown has choreographed violence for more than a hundred productions across the country, including 17 previous productions of Romeo and Juliet.
The play features two performing arts juniors, Dan Poppen and Elizabeth Thompson, in the title roles.
Tickets are $17 ($15 for seniors, $9 for students) and can be purchased through Ticketmaster, the Iowa State Center ticket office in Stephens Auditorium or at the Fisher door before performances.
Cy-Hawk events scheduled for Dec. 12-13
The 2013-14 Cy-Hawk Series between Iowa State and University of Iowa athletics teams takes a big step forward next week, with three events scheduled in Ames. After six head-to-head competitions, Iowa narrowly leads the series 7-6 (a football win earns 3 points).
On Thursday, Dec. 12, the women's basketball teams will play in Hilton Coliseum. Game time is 7 p.m.; tickets are $12 (reserved) or $10 (general admission), with half-price youth tickets. The game will be streamed live on Cyclones.tv.
On Friday, Dec. 13, the women's swim teams will have a dual meet in the Beyer pool. The first event starts at 6 p.m. and admission is free. At 8:30 that evening, the men's basketball teams will square off in Hilton. The game is sold out, but will be televised on ESPNU.
The gymnastics team will host Iowa on March 7 at Hilton. The final intrastate competition is softball; that game will be played in late April at the Cyclone Sports Complex.
Arts and events
ISU Theatre produces Shakespeare classic with a modern feel.
Cyclones hope to regain the lead in annual rivalry series with Iowa.
