A world-renowned poet, Pulitzer Prize winner and the first woman to be named Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress discovered her calling at the Iowa State Teachers College.
What started as a part-time campus job turned into an unforgettable lifelong career, helping to shape the University of Northern Iowa Book Store and giving back to the university for decades.
Nearly 2,000 faculty, staff and students from UNI joined organizations and businesses from across the Cedar Valley to assemble more than 70,000 food bags during the 2026 Pack the Dome event.
When the Iowa State Normal School opened in 1876, David Sands Wright taught the first class ever at UNI, and continued to teach for more than 50 years.
An Iowa farmer turned acclaimed poet, “the Midwest’s Robert Frost” wove farm life into 600+ poems, taught at UNI for 34 years, and left a lasting legacy with the Hearst Center for the Arts.
