Regents History: May 9-10, 1949

Board Membership
Henry Shull, President, Sioux City
Halstead Carpenter, Monticello
Lester Gillette, Fostoria
W. Earl Hall, Mason City
Dorothy Houghton, Red Oak
Arneda Kyseth, Clarion
Roy Louden, Fairfield
Richard Plock, Burlington
W.S. Rupe, Ames

Meeting Highlights
Two change orders were approved for Iowa State’s forthcoming Electrical Engineering Building. Notably, the brick that would make up the face of the building was to be ordered from Des Moines Clay Company and upgrades to electrical wiring and switches were approved. ISU’s Electrical Engineering Building opened in 1950 and was named Coover Hall in honor of longtime department chair Mervin S. Coover in 1969. The building, and the bricks, remain in operation to this day.

The Board leased 13.5 acres of land south of the Iowa State Teacher’s College (UNI) campus to Clyde Starbeck. Starbeck intended to use the land as pasture and to grow corn on the southwest corner, but the Board canceled the lease in 1951. Clyde “Buck” Starbeck was the head football coach at Iowa State Teacher’s College from 1936 until his death in 1957. He was inducted into the UNI Athletics Hall of Fame in 1985. Starbeck Circle, south of University Avenue and part of the site of the lease in question, was named in his honor.

The Board approved the appointment of Myrtle Kitchell as professor of nursing, director of the School of Nursing and dean-elect of the College of Nursing. Kitchell (later Aydelotte) would lead the UI College of Nursing’s transformation from a school into a College. Her 1960 report An Investigation of the Relation Between Nursing Activity and Patient Welfare influenced nursing practices for decades. She would later become CEO of the American Nurses Association from 1977-81. The Myrtle Kitchell Aydelotte Endowed Research Fellowship in the UI College of Nursing was established in her honor in 1993.