A new University of Northern Iowa project will provide services to install vegetable and pollinator gardens free of charge to residents in the Cedar Valley as part of an ongoing effort to address issues of food insecurity.
The Backyard Steward Initiative is a new program from UNI’s Green Iowa AmeriCorps, based at the Center for Energy & Environmental Education, that kicked off with a training session on garden installation last week.
During this time of national discussion of racial inequality, UNI is uplifting underrepresented voices. The Diversity Is Our Strength project aims to challenge racism and stereotypes about the Cedar Valley in a visible way with a downtown Waterloo mural and accompanying website.
Marvel’s first Latinx writer is on a mission to spread joy and acceptance through her work. A campus visit this spring was rescheduled due to COVID-19, but in this interview with Inside UNI — shared now in honor of Pride Month — she shares her inspiring message and updates on her latest projects.
The speech that won University of Northern Iowa junior Hannah Haisman a first-place finish at a recent national competition was inspired by a lesson learned during a summer internship: “When the going gets tough, the tough stay joyful.”
For Jeremy Rosel, the transition to college life was a bit different than most students.
Instead of dealing with the challenges of leaving home for the first time, he was leaving five years of military service as a combat medic with tours in Iraq and Germany.
It was an abrupt transition. He left the rigid structure of military life to enter the more relaxed atmosphere of a college campus, and he struggled to adapt.
When COVID-19 first started making waves in the United States and colleges across the country began moving to online instruction, Jaycie Vos, special collections coordinator and university archivist at UNI’s Rod Library, turned to the university archives for a sense of what was to come. She searched the stacks for information on how the 1918 Spanish Flu impacted campus life at UNI but didn’t find much.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has shuttered most of the University of Northern Iowa’s campus services, but a small, dedicated group of dining services workers have continued to work through the pandemic to provide three meals a day to the tiny population of students still living on campus.
When the UNI Foundation launched a fundraising campaign last week for a new scholarship to help students facing financial hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the response was powerful.
Within a few days more than 500 people donated a combined $50,000 for the new UNItogether Scholarship, which will help mitigate tuition costs for new and returning students.
