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Iowa State University
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The Iowa State University of Science and Technology, more commonly known as Iowa State University (ISU), is a public land-grant and space-grant university located in Ames, Iowa, United States. Iowa State has produced a number of astronauts, Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and a variety of other notable individuals in their respective fields. Until 1959 it was known as the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
856, the Iowa General Assembly enacted legislation to establish the State Agricultural College and Model Farm.
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Encyclopedia
The Iowa State University of Science and Technology, more commonly known as Iowa State University (ISU), is a public land-grant and space-grant university located in Ames, Iowa, United States. Iowa State has produced a number of astronauts, Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and a variety of other notable individuals in their respective fields. Until 1959 it was known as the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
History
In 1856, the Iowa General Assembly enacted legislation to establish the State Agricultural College and Model Farm. Story County was chosen as the location on June 21, 1859, from proposals by Johnson, Kossuth, Marshall, Polk, and Story counties. When Iowa accepted the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1862, Iowa State became the first institution in nation designated as a land-grant college. The institution was coeducational from the first preparatory class admitted in 1868. The formal admitting of students began the following year, and the first graduating class of 1872 consisted of 24 men and 2 women.
The Iowa Experiment Station was one of the university's prominent features. Practical courses of instruction were taught, including one designed to give a general training for the career of a farmer. Courses in mechanical, civil, electrical, and mining engineering were also taught.
The domain occupied about 1175 acres (476 hectares), of which 120 acres (49 hectares) formed the campus. In 1914, tuition was free to residents of Iowa. Students from other states paid an annual fee of $50. There were 217 members on the faculty in 1914 when 3,458 students attended the school. In 1923, 7,766 students were taught by a faculty which numbered 567 members. In the period from 1914 to 1923, the following buildings were erected: four women's dormitories, plant propagation building and greenhouse, science building, hospital, armory, animal husbandry laboratory, agricultural engineering building, poultry laboratory, dairy judging pavilion, and sheep, horse, hog, and dairy barns. A library of 250,000 volumes' capacity, a home economics building, and a dormitory for women were under construction in 1924. The president was Raymond Allen Pearson.
Academics
ISU is ranked among the top 50 public universities in the U.S. and is known for its degree programs in science, engineering, and agriculture. Overall, ISU ranks #85 in the U.S. News & World Report ranking of national universities and #38 in the Washington Monthly rankings. ISU is also home of the world's first electronic digital computing device, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, and it is the operating agency for the Ames Laboratory, a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, where the world first mass production of uranium was enabled and started the atomic age. In addition, the university is one of 60 elected members of the Association of American Universities, an organization composed of the most highly ranked research universities in the U.S. that is only open to membership by invitation. ISU is classified as a Carnegie RU/VH institution, i.e., a research university with very high research activity and receives nearly $300 million in research grants each year. The National Science Foundation ranks ISU #94 in the nation in research and development expenditures for science and engineering and #78 in total research and development expenditures. Currently ISU ranks #2 in license and options executed on its intellectual property and #5 in license and options that yield income.
The library contains nearly 2.5 million books and subscribes to more than 32,000 journals, making ISU's library one of the 100 largest university libraries in the country.
ISU is organized into 8 colleges that offer 96 Bachelors degree programs, 115 Masters programs, 83 PhD programs, and one professional degree program in Veterinary Medicine.
ISU consists of the following colleges:
- Agriculture and Life Sciences
- Business
- Design
- Engineering
- Human Sciences
- Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Veterinary Medicine
In addition to these seven colleges, the Graduate College oversees graduate study in all fields.
Athletics
The "Cyclones" name dates back to 1895. That year, Iowa suffered an unusually high number of devastating cyclones (as tornadoes were called at the time). In September, the Iowa State football team traveled to Northwestern University and defeated its highly-regarded team by a score of 36-0. The next day, the Chicago Tribunes headline read "Struck by a Cyclone: It Comes from Iowa and Devastates Evanston Town." The article reported that "Northwestern might as well have tried to play football with an Iowa cyclone as with the Iowa team it met yesterday." The nickname stuck and the Iowa State team had made a name for itself.
The school colors are cardinal red and gold. The mascot is Cy, a cardinal, introduced in 1954. Since a cyclone was determined to be difficult to depict in costume, the cardinal was chosen in reference to the school colors. A contest was held to select a name for the mascot, with the name Cy being chosen as the winner. In early Summer 2007, Cy was voted by fans on the CBS Sports website as the "Most Dominant College Mascot on Earth".
The Iowa State Cyclones play in the NCAA's Division I-A as part of the Big 12 Conference.
The wrestling squad has captured the NCAA tournament title eight times between 1928 and 1987
Fight Song
Notable among a number of songs commonly played and sung at various events such as commencement, convocation, and athletic games.
Iowa State Fight Song:
O we will fight, fight, fight for Iowa State,
And may her colors ever fly.
Yes, we will fight with might for Iowa State,
With a will to do or die,
Rah! Rah! Rah!
Loyal sons forever true,
And we will fight the battle through.
And when we hit that line we'll hit it hard
ev'ry yard for I. S. U.
Student Life
Residence Halls
Iowa State operates 19 on-campus residence halls. The residence halls are divided into geographical areas. Richardson Court (RCA) consists of 12 residence halls on the east side of campus. The Union Drive Neighborhood (UDA) consists of four residence halls located on the west side of campus, including Friley Hall, which has been declared one of the largest residence halls in the country. Buchanan Hall is an upper-division hall that is nominally considered part of the UDA, despite its distance from the other buildings. The Towers Residence Halls (TRA) are located south of the main campus. Like Buchanan, they are reserved for second-year students and upperclassmen. Two of the four towers, Knapp & Storms halls, were imploded in 2005, however Wallace and Wilson Halls still stand. ISU also operates two apartment complexes for upperclassmen, Frederiksen Court and SUV Apartments.
| Union Drive | Richardson Court | Towers | Apartments | Other |
|---|
- Friley Hall
- Helser Hall
- Martin Hall
- Eaton Hall
| Birch-Welch-Roberts Halls Barton Hall Lyon Hall Freeman Hall Linden Hall Oak-Elm Halls | Maple Hall Willow Hall Larch Hall | Wallace Hall Wilson Hall | Frederiksen Court Schilleter Village | Buchanan Hall |
Student Government
The governing body for ISU students is the Government of Student Body or GSB. The GSB is composed of a president, vice president, cabinet, senators representing each college and residence area at the University, a nine-member judicial branch and an election commission.
Student Organizations
ISU has nearly 700 student organizations on campus that represent a variety of interests. Organizations are supported by Iowa State's Student Activities Center. Many student organization offices are housed in the Memorial Union.
Greek Community
ISU is home to an active Greek community. There are 50 chapters that involve 11% of undergraduate students. Collectively, fraternity and sorority members have raised over $82,000 for philanthropies and committed 31,416 hours to community service. In 2006, the ISU Greek community was named the best large Greek community in the Midwest.
The first fraternity, Delta Tau Delta, was established at Iowa State in 1875, six years after the first graduating class entered Iowa State. The first sorority, I.C. Sorocis, was established only 2 years later, in 1877. I.C. Sorocis later became a chapter of the first national sorority at Iowa State, Pi Beta Phi. Anti-Greek rioting occurred in 1888. As reported in the Des Moines Register, "The anti-secret society men of the college met in a mob last night about 11 o'clock in front of the society rooms in chemical and physical hall, determined to break up a joint meeting of three secret societies." In 1891, President William Beardshear banned students from joining secret college fraternities, resulting in the eventually closing of all formerly established fraternities. President Storms lifted the ban in 1904.
Following the lifting of the fraternity ban, the first twelve national fraternities (IFC) installed on the Iowa State campus between 1904 and 1913 were, in order, Sigma Nu, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Beta Theta Pi, Phi Gamma Delta, Alpha Tau Omega, Kappa Sigma, Theta Xi, Acacia, Phi Sigma Kappa, Delta Tau Delta, Pi Kappa Alpha, and Phi Delta Theta. Though some have suspended their chapters at various times, ten of the original twelve fraternities are active in 2008. Many of these chapters existed on campus as local fraternities before being reorganized as national fraternities, prior to 1904.
School Newspaper
The Iowa State Daily is the university's student newspaper. The Daily has its roots from a news sheet titled the Clipper, which was started in the spring of 1890 by a group of students at Iowa Agricultural College led by F.E. Davidson. The Clipper soon led to the creation of the Iowa Agricultural College Student, and the beginnings of what would one day become the Iowa State Daily.
Campus Radio
88.5 KURE is the university's student-run radio station. Programming for KURE includes ISU sports coverage, talk shows, and various music genres.
Landmarks
Iowa State's campus contains over 160 buildings. Several buildings, as well as the Marston Water Tower, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Central campus is a 20-acre lawn and was listed as a "medallion site" by the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1999, one of only three college campuses designated as such. The other two are Yale and the University of Virginia. Thomas Gaines, in The Campus As a Work of Art, proclaimed the Iowa State campus to be one of the twenty-five most beautiful campuses in the country.
VEISHEA celebration
Iowa State is also known for VEISHEA, an education and entertainment festival held on campus every spring. The name VEISHEA is derived from the initials of ISU's original five colleges. Its organizers claim it to be among the largest student-organized events in the world. The 2007 VEISHEA festivities marked the start of Iowa State's year-long sesquicentennial celebration.
Notable people
As with any major public university, many Iowa State University alumni have achieved fame or notoriety after graduating. These people include athletes, film and television actors. USDA buildings and their architectural structures in Washington D.C. bear more names of Iowa State alumni than those from any other university. More than one-third of the Fortune 500 companies have Iowa State alumni in leadership positions.
Iowa State chronology
Events occurring in the same year did not necessarily happen in the order presented here.
| Year | Event |
|---|
| 1856 | Iowa General Assembly enacts legislation for creation of the State Agricultural College and Model Farm | | 1859 | Story County is the chosen county for the State Agricultural College and Model Farm | | 1860 | Construction starts on the first building on campus, Farm House | | 1862 | Morrill Act of 1862 is passed; college to be named Iowa State Agricultural College | | 1869 | First graduating class enters Iowa State | | 1875 | The first national fraternity, Delta Tau Delta, opens at Iowa State | | 1876 | The university cemetery is opened. One of the very few active cemeteries associated with a university campus in the U.S. | | 1877 | The first national sorority, Pi Beta Phi, opens at Iowa State | | 1879 | The School of Veterinary Science is formally organized. It's the first of its kind in the United States. | | 1890 | Student newspaper Iowa Agricultural College Student is founded. Later to be named the Iowa State Daily | | 1895 | Football team nicknamed Cyclones for their performance against Northwestern University | | 1898 | The college is divided into "divisions": Agriculture, Engineering, Science and Philosophy, and Veterinary Medicine | | 1898 | Renamed the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts | | 1905 | First Agricultural Engineering program in the world established | | 1913 | The college roads are paved | | 1922 | VEISHEA is established | | 1922 | Jack Trice is mortally injured during a football game against Minnesota | | 1933 | First statistics laboratory in the U.S. is established | | 1939 | The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) is invented. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first electronic digital computer. | | 1945 | Campus production reaches 2 million pounds of high-purity uranium for Manhattan Project. | | 1947 | Ames Laboratory established by U.S. Atomic Energy Commission | | 1950 | WOI-TV established as the first commercially operated television station owned by a university in the U.S. Station sold in 1994. | | 1954 | Cy becomes the Iowa State mascot | | 1959 | Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visits Iowa State | | 1959 | 10-KW, 150-ton nuclear teaching reactor is built. Reactor decommissioned and removed in 2000. | | 1959 | Renamed the Iowa State University of Science and Technology | | 1959 | Iowa State's divisions become colleges: the College of Agriculture, College of Engineering, College of Home Economics, College of Sciences and Humanities, and College of Veterinary Medicine | | 1962 | Enrollment reaches 10,000 students | | 1966 | Enrollment reaches 15,000 students | | 1968 | The College of Education is established | | 1974 | The Maintenance Shop opens in the Memorial Union | | 1979 | The College of Design is established | | 1984 | The College of Business is established | | 1988 | First VEISHEA Riot | | 1992 | Second VEISHEA Riot | | 1997 | Working replica of Atanasoff-Berry Computer is unveiled, goes on nationwide tour | | 1999 | Central Campus is listed as a "medallion site" by the American Society of Landscape Architects | | 2004 | Third VEISHEA Riot | | 2005 | The College of Education and the College of Family and Consumer Sciences are combined to create the College of Human Sciences | | 2006 | VEISHEA returns after being canceled for 2005; is deemed a huge success | | 2007 | ISU's year long Sesquicentennial celebration is kicked off at VEISHEA 2007 with a 20,000-piece birthday cake | | 2008 | Sesquicentennial of Iowa State |
See also
External links
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