Regents History: June 12-14, 1968
Board Membership
- Stan Redeker, President, Boone
- Casey Loss, Algona
- Thomas Louden, Fairfield
- Ned Perrin, Mapleton
- William Quarton, Cedar Rapids
- Jonathan Richards, Red Oak
- Dannie Rosenfield, Des Moines
- Ralph Wallace, Mason City
- Melvin Wolf, Waterloo
Highlights
Cresap, McCormick & Paget, a New York consulting firm, presented their initial feasibility study on the proposed fourth Regent institution to be located in the Western half of the state. Recommended sites included Atlantic, Harlan, Denison and Carroll and a motion to declare the Western Iowa Institution a four-year, liberal arts university passed 5-2 with two Regents absent. Planning for a fourth public university in Iowa would continue until February 1970, when the project was ended.
Read more on the proposed University of Western Iowa
Samuel L. Becker was appointed as Chair of the University of Iowa Department of Speech and Dramatic Arts. Becker spent more than 70 years at UI, earning three degrees and leading the department (renamed the Department of Communication and Theatre Arts in 1980) until 1981. The Communication studies building was named in his honor in 1993.
The Board adopted a resolution to accept the Henry A. Wallace Papers on behalf of the University of Iowa Libraries. Wallace, who served as the 33rd Vice President of the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was born near Orient, Iowa and earned a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State College (Iowa State University) in 1910. The Henry A. Wallace Collection is housed at UI Libraries to this day.
The Board passed a resolution providing for the issuance of $6.8 million in Field House Auditorium Revenue bonds to be used to construct a Field House Auditorium on the Iowa State Campus. The fieldhouse was part of a larger cultural, educational and athletic complex proposed more than a decade earlier by ISU President James Hilton. Construction on the fieldhouse began just two days after the Board passed the bonding resolution and concluded in 1971 when Hilton Coliseum opened to the public. President Hilton’s multipurpose complex proposal became a reality as the Iowa State Center, which includes Hilton Coliseum, Fisher Theater, Scheman Building and Jack Trice Stadium.
The Board approved the appointment of Virgil Lagomarcino as the first Dean of ISU’s newly formed College of Education. Lagomarcino led the college as dean until his retirement in 1990. Notably, Lagomarcino lobbied for the College of Education to take over the Veterinary Medicine Quadrangle after the College of Veterinary Medicine vacated the building for the newly built VET MED building (Now, Patterson Hall) in the late 1970s. The Quadrangle was then renamed Lagomarcino Hall, a name it carries to this day.
