(Radio Iowa) – July is National Ice Cream Month, but the Iowa State University Creamery makes the frozen treat year-round, offering new and classic flavors to customers on the Ames campus while providing a learning opportunity for students. Sarah Canova, the Creamery’s business administrator, says they produce about five-thousand gallons of ice cream every year, in addition to 600 pounds of cheese.

“We make it a fun time here. If we’re making ice cream, there can’t be that much stress, because everybody loves ice cream,” Canova says. “Everything in the creamery, because we’re so small scale, is labor intensive, so when we make ice cream at the Creamery, we make it from scratch. We make our own base formulas, which is unique. We don’t buy a pre-made mix from the grocery store.” While most of the ice cream is sold in the Creamery’s retail store in the Food Sciences Building, customers can also buy it at the cafes in the Student Innovation Center and in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

The Creamery also launched an online store in May to provide direct-door service. “The mission of the Creamery, first and foremost, is to educate students,” Canova says. “We, of course, sell our ice cream to gain back some money from the costs of the supplies and paying these students, but we need to educate them and give them that hands-on learning experience.” Among the students working in the Creamery, Hannah Even, an I-S-U junior majoring in culinary food science, says her friends are only focused on one aspect of the job.

Student-employees at the Creamery (ISU photo)

“Everyone brings up the eating of the ice cream,” Even says. “Everything else that happens, like all the cleaning we have to do, because it’s so hygienic, and the food safety stuff, they don’t care about that. They’re like, ‘You get to eat ice cream all day!'” With the goal of becoming a product developer chef, Even says her dream job would be to work with ice cream and make new flavors for Wells Enterprises. She enjoys thinking up new flavors and then creating them.

“Getting to make it myself is much better than reading, even though I was fascinated learning about it in my classes,” Even says. The Creamery at I-S-U is among only about 20 on-campus creameries in the U-S, the majority of which are at land-grant universities.

DES MOINES – The State Historical Society of Iowa has awarded nearly $600,000 in grants to preserve Iowa’s historical collections and country schools, invest in communities through historic preservation, and promote Iowa history.

The grants support 26 projects in 24 Iowa communities, from Orange City to Burlington and Greenfield to Decorah. Funding comes from the State Historical Society’s Country School Grant Program and the Historical Resource Development Program, funded through the Resource Enhancement and Protection (REAP) program. See the entire list, HERE.

In the category of Documentary Collections, The Creston Historic Preservation Commission/Union County Historical Newspapers Digitization Project, received a $12,270 grant. Creston and Afton newspapers from around 1878 to 1925 are saved on microfilm but are not online. This project will digitize these historic newspapers and make them available and searchable on the local public library website.

In the Historic Preservation category, the Greenfield Historic Preservation Commission received a $3,854 grant for the Tastee-Freez/Tiger Drive-In National Register Nomination Project. This project will enable the Greenfield Historic Preservation Commission to hire a historic preservation consultant to research and prepare a nomination for the Tastee-Freez/Tiger Drive-In in Greenfield, Iowa, to the National Register of Historic Places.

Tastee-Freez, Greenfield, IA

State Historical Society of Iowa Administrator Susan Kloewer said “Today’s grant recipients have a strong connection to the history of our state and we’re delighted to partner with them to preserve our past. Their passion and commitment to Iowa history will inspire the next generation of Iowans to make sure our state’s legacy lives on. Congratulations to this year’s grant recipients.”

The Country School Grant program helps to preserve or maintain Iowa’s one- or two-room country schools or to provide historical interpretation or educational activities related to the school.

The Historical Resource Development Program grants help preserve, conserve, interpret, enhance and educate the public about historic preservation, museum collections and documentary collections.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congressman Zach Nunn is sponsoring a bill that would require new public disclosures from two companies that have an outsized role in the investing world. Nunn’s legislation targets two firms that control shareholder votes and guide public firms’ investments that promote environmental, social and governmental or E-S-G priorities. “Under current law, investment managers may actually decide to invest based on a company’s policies or even their political views rather than focus on maximizing return for investors,” Nunn says.

Some states have passed laws that forbid state contracts with companies that follow what’s called E-S-G investing. Iowa legislators considered a ban on companies, including banks, that do not invest in the gun industry, agriculture or the petroleum industry. Nunn, a Republican from Bondurant, says his bill does not call for that, but would require disclosure when those kind of policies are pursued for investments.

“If you were a family who had a very strong moral or even a political belief, you may not know that you’re actually funding something on the complete on the other side of the aisle,” Nunn says. “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, we’ve got to have some transparency in here and, most importantly, I don’t want two companies making these decisions and then everybody else basically carbon copying their recommendations because they’re not doing the due diligence to really realize where those portfolios are going.”

Nunn is a member of the House Financial Services Committee. Firms that handled shareholders’ proxy voting were initially seen as a way for investment advisors to avoid conflicts of interest. The two firms involved have argued new regulations, in general, add an unnecessary speed bump to the process of shareholder votes.