Looking in at Iowa

From Journal Gazette/Times-Courier (Illinois):

… Van De Velde has experience as a major college AD in 2000-06 during the time Iowa State received negative publicity when basketball coach Larry Eustachy’s problems with alcohol [LINK] led to him being ousted.“Whenever you’re in a leadership role you have to make difficult decisions, you do that with the student-athletes best interest and when you do that you can’t go wrong,” Van De Velde said.Van De Velde soon departed from Iowa State as well.“I felt in five years I had done our work there and accomplished our goals there and it was time to turn the page and take on a new challenge,” he said. …

[Finalist Jean] Berger has been with Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, since August 1991, and currently serves as associate athletic director for student services/senior woman administrator.  …

About former Iowa Rep. Jim Nussle, from New York Times:

Mr. Nussle, whose formal title is director of the Office of Management and Budget, seemed to be in line for a hostile reception, given that the president’s budget would increase the yearly deficit and add to the growing mountain of overall debt.

“We’ve seen this script before,” Senator Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who heads the Budget Committee, said. “And it is a script and a play that leads us to, I think, an unfortunate ending — more deficit spending, greater debts and, unfortunately, a fiscal circumstance that will leave the next president inheriting what I believe will be a fiscal meltdown.”

“I think you have a pretty difficult task of defending what I see as the indefensible, but take a shot at it,” Mr. Conrad said, to laughter.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Mr. Nussle replied, saying he had fond memories of playing Mr. Conrad’s role and being able to grill witnesses. Mr. Nussle used to be a Republican congressman from Iowa and headed the House Budget Committee, which assured him a friendly reception even as the proposed budget that he was arguing for was being ripped by Democrats. …

New York Times link here:

AFTER 28 years at an electronics plant in her hometown, Mount Pleasant, Iowa, Toni Cory found herself out of a job when the plant closed. Instead of looking for another manufacturing job, she vowed to start a dog day-care and kennel business.

Although she had dogs of her own, she had no clue where to start. To help, she called on VocationVacations, a company based in Portland, Ore., that enables the curious to spend time trying out potential new jobs. The company hooked up Ms. Cory with Dawn Walton, an owner of the Dog Zone, a dog day care business in nearby Cedar Rapids.

There, Ms. Cory had an experience she says she will never forget. …

The Gazette published a similar article in 2005,  ‘Vacations’ allow peek at jobs.