Our Progress

A transdisciplinary faculty team is exploring strategies for preventing rural electric outages — or at least minimizing their impact — as weather events get more extreme and more frequent. The social and economic benefits to maintaining service are significant.

About a third of Iowa’s 99 counties have a community produce garden, tended by local volunteers and ISU Extension and Outreach’s Master Gardeners. Together, they’re tackling hunger relief and nutrition education for clients.

Strategic plan support keeps a vital internship program going at Reiman Gardens while revenue streams bounce back from the pandemic.

Snowplow drivers for the Iowa DOT have long asked for help keeping their trucks in a driving lane in near-zero visibility winter weather. Over the last two years, Iowa State engineers involved those drivers in a navigation system prototype that includes an inexpensive tool that creates the detailed digital maps the system relies on. A second phase will focus on helping plow drivers avoid collisions with snow-covered cars or debris in the roadway.

It’s been a good couple of years. Teaching professor of music, pianist and composer Jodi Goble recently won the 2024 Art Song Composition Award from the National Association of Teachers of Singing, celebrated world premieres for two operas and wrote a song for a 2024 Grammy-nominated album.

For 20 years, field specialists from Iowa State’s Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and Uganda’s Makerere University have partnered with small holder farmers, ag entrepreneurs and youth groups to establish food security throughout Uganda’s Kamuli region. Projects focus on household nutrition, grain storage, entrepreneurship, sustainable feeds for livestock, soil improvement practices, sanitation and other strategies that help local farmers become self-reliant for the long term. A 69-minute video, produced in Kamuli, tells the story.

Cassie Swacker applied what she was learning in her biomedical engineering courses to design personalized devices for patients recovering from brain injuries. 3D printing technology helped her create unique solutions to a diverse range of symptoms.

Academic advisor Andrea Klocke recognizes that a college education is about more than lecture notes and a GPA. Relationships with peers and mentors are integral to the Iowa State student experience, and Klocke is an enthusiastic connector of students, faculty and staff members.

More than 40 Iowa State instructors use open educational resources (OER) in their courses. Some they’ve created, and some they’ve adopted or customized. The bottom line? An estimated $2.5 million in savings for students since 2018.

An experimental marketing course signed on with an existing engineering course about product development. Cross-functional team members learned what’s important to the other side as they moved from product concept to introduction into the market.