A historic brick building at the heart of campus has been transformed into the University of Northern Iowa’s new front door.
The Admissions Welcome Center, which opened in August, provides prospective students a bright, welcoming space complete with views of the Campanile, monitor featuring the day’s visiting “Future Panthers” and colorful video display highlighting how the university helps students reach their goals.
Growing up just outside the Meskwaki Settlement in Tama, Iowa as the oldest of four siblings, Alma Pesina knew she wanted to go to college. But as the first member of her family to take that step, Pesina sometimes felt like she was on her own.
Growing up poor as one of nine children in Indianapolis’ 64th Street neighborhood, Jamie Chidozie learned young the blunt, destructive force of institutionalized racism. Her father, part of the first generation of Blacks in the U.S. to attend college en masse, earned an accounting degree only to be one of dozens of African-Americans who lost their state jobs soon after in a discriminatory purge, she said.
The Iowa Energy Center announced more than $800,000 in grant funding to two University of Northern Iowa projects working to boost energy efficiency in underserved rural areas and educate the next generation about career opportunities in an ever-evolving energy market.
Although COVID-19 has forced students to keep the residence hall doors of Lawther Hall closed, there are still signs of life taped to hallways in the form of small, origami creations of Baby Yoda.
The characters, from the television series “The Mandalorian,” were created during an origami-folding grab-and-go event, one of several efforts of the dorm’s nine resident assistants to bring students together during a global pandemic that is forcing everyone to stay apart.
With early polling locations in the November general election opening next week, college students across the country are preparing to vote, some of them for the first time.
Issues including the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare, the environment and racial justice have made this an election that some are describing as perhaps the most important in a generation. And with an ongoing pandemic, voting will look much different this year.
She’s a classically trained vocalist who as a grad student co-authored a paper on health issues among Gulf War veterans. Born to a music-teacher mom and college-administrator dad, UNI’s new admissions director Terri Crumley’s life has straddled both worlds in a career that led from The Juilliard School to teaching to admissions posts in Iowa and Wisconsin. Through it all, she kept singing.
As a first-generation, low-income Latino from a single parent household, Jesus Lizarraga-Estrada can relate to the struggles of underrepresented students.
