News Releases

Professor Mufit Akinc, a faculty member at Iowa State University since 1981, has been named interim dean of the College of Engineering effective July 30. He succeeds Jonathan Wickert, who will assume the role of senior vice president and provost at Iowa State on the same date.

The Iowa State Baja SAE Team's off-road racer has already splashed through Oregon mud. Next up are the trails and hills of Wisconsin. Team members are confident they'll have a competitive racer at the June 7-10 event sponsored by SAE International, formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers.

Laura Doering, longtime staffer in Iowa State University's offices of the Registrar and Admissions, will become the university's next registrar July 1, Vice President for Student Affairs Tom Hill has announced.

Peter Orazem, a University Professor of economics, authored four of the top 15 strategies cited by a panel of leading economists, including four Nobel laureates, at the global Copenhagen Consensus 2012 last month. Orazem's recommendations were on how to improve education in the developing world. The panel was charged with answering the question, "If you had $75 billion to spend over the next four years and your goal was to advance human welfare, how could you get the most value for your money?"

Iowa State University's Gene Takle will tell U.S. Department of Agriculture officials how farmers are adapting to climate changes. He'll say, for example, that wetter springs and summers mean more drainage tile is being buried under fields. Takle will speak during a USDA seminar on June 7 in Washington, D.C. The seminar will be videotaped for later webcast.

The Cyclone Power Pullers have been busy building, testing and refining two 1/4-scale pulling tractors for a May31-June 3 competition sponsored by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. The students like the design and performance changes they've built into the two machines.

Iowa high school dropouts who enrolled in the General Education Development (GED) preparation program during the 2003-04 fiscal year, fewer than a third (31.5 percent or 3,680) earned a GED by the end of the 2009 fiscal year. And only 2 percent (229) completed a community college credential, according to the doctoral dissertation by Andrew Ryder, a research and evaluation scientist in Iowa State's Research Institute for Studies in Education.

Pamela Anthony, who has served as assistant dean of students at Georgia State University since 2003, will begin as Iowa State's dean of students on Aug. 1.