University Of Iowa

INSIDE ROOM 309,a third-floor classroom in concrete-and-brick Van Allen Hall on the University of Iowa campus, Ken Nishikawa was standing at an old-fashioned blackboard. He was lecturing to a weekly graduate seminar in plasma physics when Dr. Lu Gang's first shot rang out. * At first, some of the graduate students in the room thought it might be a firecracker. It was Friday afternoon, last Nov. 1, and one of the students later recalled thinking it must be some sort of prank.

Dave Treen Ex-governor of Louisiana Dave Treen, 81, who in 1979 became the first Republican governor of Louisiana since Reconstruction but lost a reelection bid to the controversial Democrat Edwin Edwards four years later, died Thursday of complications from a respiratory illness, said his son David Treen Jr. Treen did not have to face Edwards in 1979 because the popular governor couldn't run for three consecutive terms....

The hot-pink toilet seat covers imprinted with the Hawkeye football mascot sold out weeks ago. Gone, too, are the blush-colored sun visors, the ladies' rose-toned underwear, the mauve-stained coffee cups and the salmon-tinted baby clothes. But there are plenty of T-shirts for football fans in bubble-gum hues, with slogans such as "Locker Room Defense Fund" and "Give That Academia Nut Her Pink Slip."

AFTER 35 years in the trenches as an English professor at Citrus College in Glendora, author Dale Salwak has learned a few things. In his latest book, "Teaching Life," he assembles an epistolary memoir intended as a guiding light to neophyte academics. The letters are all addressed to "Kelly," the pseudonym Salwak has given to a student who died in a 1978 car accident en route to a meeting with him.

A major snowstorm destroyed the University of Iowa's $2.1-million plastic-like dome that covered its football practice facility, leaving the team without a covered field to practice on as it prepares for the Rose Bowl. To repair the dome, crews will have to wait until temperatures warm to at least 50 degrees for the fabric to be pliable.

Acie Earl, the University of Iowa's leading scorer and rebounder, pleaded innocent to a charge of simple assault filed by a 17-year-old girl, who said she wants the charge dropped. Earl, a 6-foot-10 sophomore, was charged late Sunday morning after an altercation with the girl.

Quarterback Dan McGwire on Tuesday said he will not return to the University of Iowa for the spring semester because of dissatisfaction with the Hawkeye football program. "I'm just very unhappy back there, and I'm just glad to get out," McGwire said by telephone from his home in Claremont, Calif. McGwire, a sophomore, said he wants to transfer to San Diego State, where he would have to sit out a year before being eligible. "I made contact with SDSU. SDSU made no contact with me.

The state has agreed to pay $925,000 to unwitting subjects of an infamous 1930s stuttering experiment -- orphans who were badgered and belittled as children by University of Iowa researchers trying to induce speech impediments. Johnson County District Court Judge Denver Dillard issued an order approving the settlement, which still must be ratified by the State Appeal Board. The six plaintiffs said the experiment left lifelong psychological and emotional scars.

A student upset about not getting an academic honor shot four persons to death Friday at the University of Iowa before fatally shooting himself, a school official said. The dead included faculty members and the student who had won the honor. Two others were critically wounded, authorities said. The gunman was identified as Gang Lu, a graduate student in physics from China, Ann Rhodes, vice president of university affairs, said.

"I know I am strange," admits Hannah, a character in Lee Montgomery's "Whose World Is This?" "When I stare out my window sometimes, I see heaven, and from there I see the world wrapped in a tiny ball . . . in the corner room of a blue cabin with white shutters, and from there I see rich, luscious valleys where rivers wind around the earth like candy ribbons, their banks crumbling and sweet as chocolate layer cake." Like all the women in these stories, Hannah is in pain.

The state has agreed to pay $925,000 to unwitting subjects of an infamous 1930s stuttering experiment -- orphans who were badgered and belittled as children by University of Iowa researchers trying to induce speech impediments. Johnson County District Court Judge Denver Dillard issued an order approving the settlement, which still must be ratified by the State Appeal Board. The six plaintiffs said the experiment left lifelong psychological and emotional scars.

The hot-pink toilet seat covers imprinted with the Hawkeye football mascot sold out weeks ago. Gone, too, are the blush-colored sun visors, the ladies' rose-toned underwear, the mauve-stained coffee cups and the salmon-tinted baby clothes. But there are plenty of T-shirts for football fans in bubble-gum hues, with slogans such as "Locker Room Defense Fund" and "Give That Academia Nut Her Pink Slip."

From Sioux City to Davenport, across bent grass and vast expanses, the prevailing wind here blows understatement: * Keep expectations slightly lower than the corn. * Work hard but don't get worked up. * Don't run your mouth -- if you build it, remember from the movie, they will come. * And never take anything for granted -- especially in football. In 1924, Iowa thought it had landed the rainmaker of coaches until news leaked of the secret negotiations.

Lan Samantha Chang, a Harvard University professor and award-winning fiction author who specializes in stories of Chinese Americans, has been named director of the nation's most prestigious writing program, the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop. A student at Iowa in the 1990s and later a teacher there, Chang succeeds Frank Conroy, the longtime director who announced last summer that he was retiring and died of cancer last week, at 69.

Author Richard Bausch sits at a small rectangular table facing four curved rows of chairs holding some of the best writing students and instructors in the country. It's evening, and outside the frigid Iowa River flows through inky blackness as Bausch begins reading a short story about illness and death, bravery, and the thousand-cut pain of love splintering into nothingness. This is not your usual job interview.

Three University of Iowa basketball players were enrolled in drug treatment programs last summer at a cost of more than $16,000, according to the Des Moines Sunday Register. University officials, citing a federal statute and confidentiality policies, refused to identify the players, and Coach Tom Davis declined to comment. The treatment took place in August and September at the Hanley Hazelden drug and alcohol treatment center in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Over the next month, a series of public readings will take place at the University of Iowa, for authors including such prizewinners as Richard Bausch and Ben Marcus. But these will be no ordinary readings. They're auditions, part of an extensive process for filling one of the most influential positions in the academic and literary world: director of the school's famed Writers' Workshop.

Iowa basketball star Pierre Pierce was kicked off the team Wednesday while under investigation by West Des Moines police for intent to commit sexual abuse, burglary and other crimes at the home of a former girlfriend. The 21-year-old Pierce, who averaged 17.8 points this season, met for more than two hours Wednesday with investigators who are considering whether to file criminal charges against the junior guard, Pierce's attorney, Alfredo Parrish said.