Once Upon a Lab

102 Years of Stories from IIHR

bY JaCQUELINE HaRTLING STOLZE

As children, most of us begged and pleaded with our parents to tell us just one more story, especially at bedtime. That love of stories — both the telling and the listening — has been part of the human experience since our ancestors gathered around a fire to share tales during long winter nights.

As IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2022, we decided to use this issue of IIHR Currents to gather as many stories as we could about the lab, its people, and its history. We talked to alumni, faculty, staff, and students, and by listening to their stories, we honor and respect them as individuals and also preserve our collective history.

These are the stories you’ll find in this issue of IIHR Currents — enjoy! And if you have an IIHR story to share, please send it to us at iihr@uiowa.edu. We’ll document it in the IIHR Archives and perhaps share it in a future publication.

Craig Just

Mr. Fix-It Goes to College

Craig Just and his wife, Tracy, enjoy a warm fall day on their boat.

You won’t hear associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and IIHR Research Engineer Craig Just brag about his PhD in environmental engineering.

Like most Iowa farm kids, he learned to be selfsufficient early on. “We’d build a fort or maybe a hay bale castle,” Just says. “We had a go-kart, and the chain would come off. So we’d have to fix it.”

Just knew from a young age that he was drawn to mechanical things — motors, electricity, and gadgets. His dad ran a trucking business, and the two of them spent weekends together in the shop, repairing whatever needed fixing. Just loved lending a hand. That early experience gave him a taste of what it takes to be a “fixer.”

Just admires people like his dad — the people who can fix anything, solve any problem. They keep the world running.

“My dad is a thousand times smarter than I am,” Just says. “He can do everything. I just went to school a lot longer than he did.”

Just still isn’t sure he’s supposed to be a PhDtrained research engineer. There’s a part of him that longs to be the guy with grease under his fingernails, the guy who keeps things running — sometimes with baling wire and duct tape.

At the end of the day, Just explains, those folks go home knowing they did their jobs and did them well.

“I’ve always known I like to make things and fix things,” he says. “I like those practical outcomes.”

Just graduated from high school in Eagle Grove, Iowa, where he was an All-State tenor and played drums for a college bar cover band known as “Champagne for Breakfast.” Later on, he sang in a church praise band.

Just also asked out his wife, Tracy, via a note passed in band class. He was only 15, and she was 18 — an older woman.

“Yeah, pretty bold,” Just laughs. For a few excruciating hours, he heard nothing but silence. When the reply finally came, the first words were, “I’m sorry.”

Rejection? No, she was just apologizing for the slow reply. The pair became high school sweethearts and eventually married in 1990 and raised two children, Parker and Michaela.

THE aCCIDENTaL PROFESSOR

Meanwhile, Just earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry at the University of Northern Iowa. He came to the University of Iowa (UI) in 1993 to serve as the lab director for the Environmental Engineering and Science graduate program at the UI College of Engineering.

Pursuing a college degree wasn’t something his family necessarily expected him to do. “I think just out of sheer arrogance, I went to college. I was certainly motivated but not that well informed about higher education. Somehow, I made it through that first year.”

Just says he got interested in environmental engineering by attending the weekly Friday seminars to learn more about what his graduate students were doing in the lab. “I thought I could do a better job if I knew what the heck it was they were trying to achieve,” he says.

What he heard piqued his interest, especially the application of chemistry to clean up hazardous contaminants in the environment.

“That was really appealing to me,” Just says. So, in 1996, he began work on a PhD while continuing to serve as full-time lab director. His advisor, Jerry Schnoor, supported him through the five-and-a-halfyear quest for a PhD. “I’m very grateful that the group was nurturing in that way and would allow me to kind of peck away at it,” Just says.

After graduation, he served as an IIHR research scientist/engineer until he was appointed to a tenuretrack faculty position in 2012.

But Just was teaching long before he was officially part of the faculty. “I consider myself an accidental professor,” he says. As lab director, he created a course called Design with the Developing World.

“Students wanted to have more of an international perspective,” he explains. It was a popular course that attracted 50 or 60 students from across campus every time it was taught.

“I loved that course,” Just says. He put it on his resume later on, when he wanted to join the faculty.

Just prides himself on his teaching and works hard to carry on the traditions of Schnoor and others in the department. “I take my teaching really seriously,” he says. “I always want to be a good teacher, and man, it’s hard to do while keeping up with research and mentoring.”

THE SWEET SIDE

Just’s research varies widely, encompassing everything from mitigating the impacts of farm drainage practices to flood resilience. He’s in the midst of a multimillion-dollar project to support improved wastewater treatment in Iowa communities: the Iowa Wastewater and Waste-to-Energy Research Program (IWWERP).

Although the project works with communities of all sizes, Just’s particular passion is helping the small towns that might not have the financial resources to meet state and federal wastewater treatment requirements. “They’re not going to get left behind, that’s for sure. Not in my program!”

It all fits perfectly with his Mr. Fix-It philosophy.

“There are lots of moving parts,” he explains. “There’s water flowing. There are bacteria and solids moving. There are pumps.” He loves being the guy who knows how to keep all the parts working together. Just’s wastewater treatment methods harken back to what drew him to environmental engineering in the first place: using green technology to clean up environmental contaminants. “The idea that we can use bacteria to treat our waste just kind of blows my mind,” he says. “As humans, we can harness Mother Nature, put it in a tank, and have it do our bidding.

“I think that is the sweetest side of what we can do as humans.” Where once people died of water-borne illnesses such as typhoid, dysentery, and cholera, modern wastewater treatment has made those illnesses almost a thing of the past.

“Hey, we can do this,” Just explains. “That’s really fascinating to me.”

CaN-DO aTTITUDE

Just enjoys traveling around the state to meet with the operators of small-town wastewater treatment plants. “These towns — they have a bunch of my dads out there, right? You don’t have to be a PhD to run a wastewater plant in Iowa. But you do need to have a PhD in duct tape and baling wire just

TOP RIGHT: Craig Just explains a conservation drainage strategy at the Johnson County Poor Farm.

bOTTOM: (R TO L) Go Hawks! Craig Just with wife Tracy, son Parker, and daughter Michaela.

to keep those things going because we just don’t invest like we should.

“These operators are really geniuses at keeping these things going, as far as I’m concerned,” Just says. Yet it’s sometimes still not enough to meet the requirements. His idea is to partner with that cando spirit.

“They want to get it to work, but they just don’t have all the resources they need to make it happen.” He’s happy to partner with small-town wastewater treatment operators and to provide some tech support and a couple nifty ideas here and there.

It all fits with his concept of what it means to be an environmental engineer. “We’re the most collaborative form of engineering,” Just says. Environmental engineers in general are good at quite a few things. They’re aware of the power of duct tape and baling wire, supported by human determination and ingenuity.

If he had to choose another career, Just says, he would be a wastewater treatment plant operator. “I long to be on the operation side,” he admits. “It’s so satisfying to really get to know a facility, to optimize it.” And when something unexpected happens, such as a flood, to be that person who can bootstrap things together and keep it working — that’s the payoff.

“I just really love that kind of troubleshooting,” Just says.

Michael Thorn

The Adventures of an Englishman at the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research

Michael Thorn came to IIHR in 1966 and discovered a lifelong passion and fascination for civil engineering hydraulics.

In 1966, when IIHR graduate student Michael Thorn and his friends wanted a beer, they had to find their way to downtown Iowa City and Joe’s Place — a smoky, atmospheric bar that’s been a favorite with UI students since 1934.

“If you wanted to buy anything other than beer, you had to go down to the state liquor store, where you were made to feel sinful.”

It was 1966, and college campuses across the country were poised for revolutionary changes in student life and behavior that would include coed dormitories and radical protests. But that was still in the future when Thorn arrived at the University of Iowa from his home in England. At Cambridge University, where he had earned his undergraduate degree, it was quite normal for students to have a beer in the courtyard or go to a sherry party — but not at the University of Iowa.

“We think we’re similar because we speak the same sort of language, but actually the culture is very different,” Thorn says.

Thorn came to the University of Iowa as a Rotary Foundation Fellow on a one-year study-abroad scholarship. He was interested in graduate study in hydraulic engineering — a course of study that wasn’t available in the U.K. at that time. Thorn also knew exactly where he wanted to go — the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research, as IIHR was known in those days. At Cambridge, Thorn had been inspired by watching the world-famous fluid mechanics films created by former IIHR Director Hunter Rouse.

The only flaw in this plan was leaving behind his fiancée, Heather, for an entire year. However, she had her own postgraduate studies to keep her busy, and together they decided that he would spend a year abroad. Still, it was hard to be apart for so long, with no cell phones or FaceTime to help them stay connected.

They communicated exclusively by letter for an entire year. “Telephone communication was extraordinarily expensive, so we didn’t ever speak on the phone. We had a year, and the box of letters is still somewhere up in the loft.”

Thorn arrived in Iowa in the autumn and was surprised and delighted by the fall colors, which were new to him. Winter was a different kind of surprise. “Quite a shock, really,” Thorn says. “It was a lot of snow.” He had brought a warm winter coat from home, but he had to buy himself a fur hat with earflaps to survive the cold.

Fortunately, the reception at IIHR was warm enough to make up for the weather outside, especially from faculty member Joe Howe. “He was a delightful chap. He was extremely welcoming.” Howe, a member of the Iowa City Rotary Club, helped Thorn find his way.

Thorn had no trouble making American friends. Thanks to Howe, he settled into his new environment quite quickly. “I was made so welcome by everybody I met in Iowa City.”

In those days, the shop was on the first floor of the lab, with all the equipment, flumes, and activity that entailed. The new IBM 1800 mainframe computer — programmed with punch cards — resided one floor up. The computer, like Thorn, arrived in 1966.

This was cutting-edge computing, and it signaled a transformational new approach to engineering. For Thorn, it was a big step forward from the computer he had worked with at Cambridge — a huge, slow machine based on electronic valves and iron memory cores and programmed with punched paper tape.

Michael Thorn (back row, third from left) with classmates in Professor Åke Alin’s (center) course on dams and reservoirs.

The chief minder of IIHR’s computer was faculty member Jack Glover, who became Thorn’s MS project advisor. The project demonstrated the ability to connect a pitot tube in a flume running on the ground floor of the lab to the computer upstairs. He wrote a program that could sense the pitot reading, calibrate it, and print out the result for a velocity traverse of the flume — an early development of online data collection.

Glover offered him the opportunity to stay on at IIHR for a PhD, but Thorn was anxious to get home to his fiancée in London. Also, his Rotary Fellowship required him to return to his home country.

But he made the most of his time at IIHR, taking the maximum allowed credits each semester. One class Thorn particularly remembers is Royce Beckett’s Numerical Calculations course. Students had to complete each assignment successfully in no more than five attempted computer runs. “Coding was very carefully scrutinized for errors before each run!” Thorn recalls.

Thorn was at IIHR for the last year that Hunter Rouse taught his famous and demanding Fluid Mechanics course. Thorn credits Rouse with giving him a thorough understanding of the subject. “He wanted you to understand the fundamental principles,” he says. “He wasn’t bothered about you learning equations. What he wanted you to do is to get what I call a feel for the subject. And that’s been a real help and strength for me over the years I’ve worked in this field.”

Rouse taught from his classic textbook, Elementary Mechanics of Fluids (not elementary at all, Thorn says), and expected that his students would have read the assigned chapter in advance. After discussing the chapter’s concepts, Rouse would pull out a deck of cards and shuffle them. Each card bore a student’s name. He’d turn over the first card and ask a question of the lucky student. If the first student couldn’t answer correctly, Rouse turned over another card and asked the next student — and on, and on, as long as necessary.

“You never knew when your next turn would come, especially as he reshuffled the pack at its end,” Thorn recalls. “It wonderfully concentrated mind and attention!” Later in his career, when Thorn was invited to become a Royal Academy Visiting Professor at Plymouth University, he created his own deck of Rouse-style cards for teaching. Thorn says it was just one of many valuable concepts he learned from Hunter Rouse.

After earning a master’s degree, Thorn returned home to England, where he took a position at the Hydraulics Research Station at Wallingford in Oxfordshire. He had been in the position for only six months when he was asked to go to Iran and sort out a malfunctioning dam spillway. The spillway was still under construction, but a model study had shown it did not work correctly.

Thorn’s wedding was only four weeks away, but the problem was urgent, so he flew off to Tehran. “The thinking was, we’ve got this young graduate guy with his Iowa degree — we’ll send him.” It was difficult because construction continued even as Thorn was attempting to sort out the problem.

“You couldn’t change the layout and design of the dam,” Thorn says. Remembering what he had learned in Åke Alin’s course on dams and reservoirs at Iowa, Thorn was able to solve the problem successfully. Years later, he learned that the spillway had performed perfectly during a flood.

“That was all thanks to what I’d learned at Iowa,” Thorn says. “Both the feeling for what water does and also the practicalities of Åke’s course.”

Thorn remembers that Alin smoked a pipe that reeked to high heaven. One day during an exam, Thorn says, Alin suddenly ran out of the room, trailing smoke in his wake. “He had this habit of putting his pipe in his pocket when he wasn’t smoking it. He rushed out of the room with his pocket on fire! His pipe was in the pocket, and he forgot about it.

“He was one of those great characters you’d never forget.”

Thorn’s career focused on the general field of sediment transport in estuaries, including sediment movement, dredging, and navigation in estuaries and ports. His work carried him around the world, including a stint in Hanoi in North Vietnam to restore the navigation channel to the port of Haiphong. In 1982, the Vietnam War was part of the not-so-distant past. But Thorn says he found the people resourceful, hard-working, friendly, and welcoming. “From the personal point of view, I found that the most satisfying of the projects.”

In 2000, Thorn retired from HR Wallingford and set up his own business, Wallingford Research Consultancy. He later became involved in PIANC, the World Association for Waterborne Transport

RIGHT: Michael Thorn, now retired and a resident of Cornwall in the south of England, says the area offers enough estuaries and beaches to keep a hydraulic engineer happy! Here, he and his wife Heather pose on one of Cornwall’s beautiful beaches.

Infrastructure. This international association of governments provides technical support for the development of ports and waterways. He was also quite involved in the work of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and received a Gold Medal from ICE for his dedicated and valuable service.

Thorn says he found his career extremely rewarding. “My passion and fascination for civil engineering hydraulics, inspired during my year at IIHR, remains undimmed!”

Today, Thorn is retired, and he and his wife Heather live in Cornwall, a scenic coastal area of the U.K. He plays the cello with the Penzance Orchestra and several other local ensembles. The couple has three children: Rachel, Hillary, and Robyn, and eight grandchildren.

Cornwall provides plenty to keep this hydraulic engineer happy. He recalls that as a child, he was never happier than on a beach with a stream running across it. “I would spend hours damming it, diverting it, creating networks of channels and wide sandy deltas. Perhaps that was the first spark of my interest in this subject!

“I should add,” Thorn says, “that I still do this with our grandchildren on the Cornish beaches!”

Michael Thorn (right) with then-IIHR Director John Fisher Kennedy in Leningrad in 1990 at the International Commission of Experts meeting to review the incomplete Leningrad Flood Protection Barrier. The bottles on the table contained a metallic-tasting mineral water, no vodka, Thorn says.

Ceyda Polatel

The Magic and Mystery of Hydraulics

Ceyda Polatel remembers the precise moment she knew she wanted to be a hydraulic engineer.

She was in Nuray Denli Tokyay’s hydromechanics lab at the Middle East Technical University (METU), observing a demonstration of hydraulic jump.

Polatel watched, mesmerized, as the flow of water leapt in the flume. “It was almost — I don’t want to say magical — but it really makes you want to learn more about it because it is so mystifying,” she says.

“That was it! That was the moment I knew I was going to be a hydraulic engineer.”

VISITORS FROM IOWa

Polatel is a native of Turkey. Her family was nomadic until her grandmother’s generation settled in a small Turkish town. She was born during a military coup in Turkey, and the family had to relocate to the capital city, Ankara. Polatel grew up and attended school in Ankara, where she was an excellent student, particularly in math.

Polatel qualified to attend METU, Turkey’s most prestigious engineeering school. Tokyay was the first woman to earn a PhD in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa while conducting research at IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering (IIHR); she taught Polatel in METU’s civil engineering program.

Thanks to Tokyay, Polatel developed a great opinion of IIHR. “She would tell stories of Iowa — the lab, the daily life, the people, and everything.

“She was an inspiring educator who turned out to be a huge influence in my life,” Polatel says.

Polatel earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering at METU and was looking around for a PhD program in hydraulics.

At that most opportune moment, two visitors arrived at METU — IIHR Director V.C. Patel and P. Barry Butler, who was dean of the University of Iowa

(UI) College of Engineering. Polatel was already interested in IIHR but meeting the lab’s director and the dean in person made her decision to apply that much easier. She now knew two people at Iowa, which she had heard so many good things about.

“It was meant to be!” Polatel says.

Even though she was still learning to speak English, Polatel says she felt comfortable and confident immediately upon her arrival at IIHR. “Knowing someone in the country helped me transition to life in Iowa so easily,” she explains. “I remember that when I finally jumped on a plane and arrived in Iowa, I didn’t feel out of place at all.”

Turkey is a place where people pride themselves on their hospitality, but even so, Polatel was impressed by how friendly Iowans were. “It was super helpful to start the American life in Iowa,” she says. “Iowans are so welcoming, so forgiving of the difficulties that come with being a foreigner.”

UNCERTaINTY aND UPHEaVaL

Polatel arrived in Iowa City in August 2001. Less than a month later, terrorists flew two commercial airliners into the twin towers in New York City and another plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Thousands died, and the United States entered a period of great uncertainty and upheaval.

As a native of Turkey, a middle eastern country, Polatel might have had reason to feel unnerved by the atmosphere in the United States after the attacks.

For her, it offered another reason to love Iowa.

“It was a bit of a shock to the system,” she says. But in Iowa, she never felt singled out or discriminated against. “It was almost like people were working even a little harder to avoid making me feel alienated,” Polatel explains.

Through a program sponsored by UI International Programs, Polatel got to know several families in Iowa City. They invited her to their homes for dinner and special occasions, such as Thanksgiving. “They wanted to show American life. They wanted to learn a little more about me.”

Ultimately, Polatel became friends and stayed in touch with some of these families for many years. “Being in Iowa had many advantages,” she says.

aDVICE THaT FITS ON a POST-IT

At IIHR, Polatel worked with advisor V.C. Patel to complete her PhD project on Large-Scale Roughness Effect on Free-Surface and Bulk Flow Characteristics in Open-Channel Flows. In fact, she was his last PhD student before retirement. As an experienced mentor, Patel didn’t waste any time or words as he guided Polatel through her PhD.

In fact, Patel’s advice was so pithy and to the point, she keeps a quote from him on a post-it note on her desk. “I still use it today when I am writing reports,” she says.

“He was very brief and pointed in his advice,” Polatel explains. “He would listen more than he talked.” As Polatel spoke, Patel processed what he heard and then offered his very concentrated and pertinent suggestions.

SaVING THE EVERGLaDES

Today, Polatel works as lead hydraulic engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in Jacksonville, Fla., focusing on a large restoration project in the Florida Everglades. This complex environmental restoration effort is the largest project of its kind in the world. It is possible, Polatel says, to spend one’s entire career on the various elements of this massive, overarching effort.

As lead hydraulic engineer, she concentrates on the various modeling components, creating an integrated numerical modeling tool that better reflects the natural world. Although the challenges are huge, she’s excited to be part of such an important endeavor.

“I am certainly in the right place to contribute as much as I can,” Polatel says.

Without a doubt, climate change is a huge driver of the evolving environment in Florida, Polatel says. She feels the urgency to make progress, but also the pressure to get it right. It’s a balancing act, she says. “Mistakes are obvious, costly, deadly,” she says. “Failure — we don’t have that luxury.”

aRTISTRY WITH WORDS

In her free time, Polatel loves spending time with family members who have moved to Florida from Turkey. Every weekend, she takes part in large family dinners. She also enjoys mentoring her younger cousins who are pursuing various degrees and careers in the United States.

Polatel also likes reading and writing, and she doesn’t limit herself to technical reports. In fact, she is working on a collection of vignettes and poems. “It took me many years to accept my non-native English as my writer’s voice,” she says.

Marlene Janssen

For the Fun of It: Working at IIHR

Marlene Janssen exaggerated her age to get her first job at the University of Iowa.

Janssen was only 13 — just two months shy of the legal working age of 14 — when she and her sister and a friend signed up to work at graduation, collecting caps and gowns after the ceremonies. When the graduates turned in their graduation regalia, Janssen and her co-workers gave them their diplomas in exchange (in those days, caps and gowns had to be returned before the diploma was awarded!).

She earned $2.

“I just lived in fear for years,” she says. Despite this shaky start, Janssen would go on to a long and remarkable career at the university, serving for almost three decades as a top administrator at IIHR.

LEaPING INTO THE UNKNOWN

Janssen grew up on a farm near Iowa City and attended a one-room country school from kindergarten through 8th grade. She went on to attend high school at University High on the University of Iowa (UI) campus (now North Hall).

Janssen’s first full-time job at the UI was in payroll. After a few years, she moved on to a position in personnel, where one of her duties was to update job postings.

That was how she learned about an opportunity at the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research, as IIHR was known in those days. Her co-workers in personnel all

Marlene Janssen with Shop Director Dale Harris.

seemed concerned that someone else would apply for the job.

“I thought, ha! They’re taking me for granted.” So Janssen applied herself.

At the interview, Janssen remembers that thenIIHR Director John Fisher Kennedy showed her a typewriter, one of the newfangled IBM Correcting Selectrics that were state of the art in 1975. He demonstrated how to use it and asked if she thought she could manage it. She responded that yes, she thought she could.

“But in the back of my mind, I thought, I won’t be doing that for long.”

She was right. Before long, things fell into place, and Janssen’s responsibilities at the lab grew. One day, when a co-worker’s typewriter broke, Janssen picked up her own IBM Correcting Selectric and plopped it on her colleague’s desk.

“That was it. I was done with that.”

Janssen became Kennedy’s assistant and later the chief administrative assistant for the entire lab. When she started, the world of hydraulics was a big unknown to her. Kennedy insisted that Janssen take care of all his correspondence, which gave her the opportunity to learn about his research and his thoughts.

“I could better assist him, knowing what his approach was to things,” she explains.

bOUNDLESS ENERGY

IIHR was a fun place to work. Janssen gives the credit to Kennedy, who set the tone. “He had such a great sense of humor,” she says. “He just loved to laugh.”

Kennedy had a quick wit. He also loved to sing, especially musicals. It wasn’t unusual for him to spontaneously launch into song around the office. The music of Cole Porter was a particular favorite.

It was just part of the fun of it.

Kennedy also had a competitive streak, Janssen says. “He made everything into a race or competition.” The classroom was on the third floor and his office was on the fourth floor. As she sat at her desk, Janssen could hear him open the door and bound up the stairs to get to the top before the door swung shut.

Kennedy was also a runner. He frequently invited visitors to join him at the Fieldhouse for a run. Most declined, but on one occasion, Kennedy invited someone who turned out to be a regular runner, not to mention considerably younger.

“He just really was concerned that he wasn’t going to be able to keep up with this younger guy,” Janssen remembers.

When the day came and Kennedy returned from the Fieldhouse, Janssen asked him how it went. “I did fine,” he said. “I stayed on the inside and I asked very short questions that required very long answers.”

It took a lot of energy to be Jack Kennedy, Janssen says. “It was boundless. He drove himself.”

Kennedy was an effective leader and advisor, Janssen says, who knew how to challenge people to do more than they thought they could..

Kennedy would watch to see how well they coped, ready to advise. He only challenged people this way when he had confidence that they could handle the situation.

“He didn’t set people up for failure,” Janssen explains.

He used this technique with research engineers to engage them in new areas of research outside their expertise, but also with Janssen — often, she says.

She recalls one occasion when Kennedy had negotiated with the UI treasurer for financial support for some project or other. Kennedy insisted that Janssen call the treasurer and ask him when he would transfer the money.

“I knew the request was premature,” she says. But Kennedy kept asking her about it. Reluctantly, she made the call. “The treasurer rather condescendingly told me, ‘Well, Dr. Kennedy knows that this has to have [Board of] Regents approval first.’

Kennedy got a big laugh out of Janssen’s temerity. “By the time he retold the story, he had it that I went to the treasurer’s office with a money bag in hand, expecting to collect the cash.

“In this case, I think I’d been set up,” Janssen says.

a CaST OF CHaRaCTERS

Janssen knew Hunter Rouse, too, although he had moved on to new responsibilities when she arrived at IIHR. His style was more formal than Kennedy’s, but Janssen remembers at least one unintentionally funny exchange. Someone had started bringing Janssen rocks, which she displayed on the corner of her desk. Her collection grew as more people brought her souvenirs from their travels.

“People assumed I liked rocks,” she says.

One day, Rouse noticed Janssen’s collection and commented that he couldn’t think of a female equivalent for “rockhound.” The silence dragged out for a few awkward beats, and then Janssen replied, “I think I know, but I don’t want to say.”

Rouse chuckled but he seemed embarrassed, Janssen remembers.

TOP: Marlene Janssen, lady rockhound? Janssen kept a collection of rocks on the corner of her desk that grew as her colleagues brought back specimens for her from their travels.

Janssen’s office was next to Lou Landweber’s, and she got to know him well. “He was such a sweet man,” she says.

“He had a yellow legal pad with a lead pencil and an eraser. Those were his tools,” Janssen says. Landweber would sit and gaze out the window. When she asked him what he was doing, he would reply, “I’m doing research.” He’d figure it all out in his head and then write it down.

When a staff member needed help with her elementary math class, Landweber offered to tutor her. They worked together every day over the lunch hour. “Here’s this world-renowned hydrodynamicist and mathematician, helping her with basic algebra,” Janssen recalls.

“He was just a really good man.”

a bRUSH WITH MCCaRTHYISM

Landweber came to IIHR in the 1950s after an unfortunate incident at his previous job. At the time, Senator Joseph McCarthy was leading a fear-inspiring crusade against supposed communists in government and other avenues of American life. He ruined many careers with his frequently unsupported allegations.

Janssen recalls the story this way: Landweber, who at the time was working at one of the leading naval basins in the country, was asked to hold some flyers an acquaintance was handing out. Someone photographed Landweber holding the flyers, which allegedly promoted “un-American activities.” That was all it took — he lost his job.

Fortunately for all concerned, Hunter Rouse stepped up and offered Landweber a position at IIHR.

“Lucky for us!” Janssen says. Landweber converted the lab’s old research channel into a ship towing tank, which is still one of the world’s most advanced. He initiated a new line of research at IIHR, ship hydrodynamics, which continues to thrive today.

Landweber almost opened up yet another new area of research, decades ahead of his time. Janssen remembers a senior staff meeting where Kennedy was pressing researchers to think ahead to what the next big cutting-edge research area might be.

Landweber spoke up and said, “Windmills.”

“He was generally pooh-poohed,” Janssen says. “I think about that every time I see these fields of windmills we have in Iowa today.”

Working at the hydraulics lab, Janssen says, was like being part of a family.

“For the most part, a functional family,” she laughs. “I think people had a certain respect and camaraderie with one another.”

She remembers lab picnics and Christmas parties. “They were just for the most part hilarious,” she says. “It was so fun.” Janssen says that Kennedy and his family were unfailingly generous and gracious to the people who worked at the lab. They even hosted holiday parties at their home until the staff became too large.

And as with any family, there are sad times as well as happy.

“I remember when Dr. Kennedy died,” Janssen says. “It was just such a devastating loss.” Still, the IIHR family stuck together. “Everybody was emotionally invested in trying to make things work,” Janssen says.

“I have often thought of the three directors with whom I worked [Jack Kennedy, Interim Director Rob Ettema, and V.C. Patel] as having unique gifts that they imparted to others.”

All three leaders had a keen intellect and were very generous, Janssen says. She remembers Kennedy particularly for his restless intellect and his quick embrace of new possibilities and new challenges. “He was exuberant in his interactions with people.”

Rob Ettema, who stepped up to serve as interim director before and after Kennedy’s death, represents heart, Janssen says. “He had a big and forgiving heart and he cared deeply for IIHR and its people.

“Patel was spirit – he was on a serious personal spiritual journey and encouraged others to identify their passion and to pursue it,” Janssen says.

She adds, “The people I worked with at IIHR were really wonderful, each in their own way.”

In 2004, Janssen retired early to serve as a United Methodist minister, work that she found very rewarding. She retired again after 15 years in the ministry.

What she remembers most about IIHR is the people. “Such fine people,” Janssen says. “When I retired, that was actually my only regret. I knew that there would be people that I cared for a lot that I’d never see again.”

Flumes, floods, and flowers: Twila Meder took it all in stride.

Water Everywhere

Twila Meder

Twila Meder’s welcoming smile and warm greetings helped create a strong community at IIHR.

Twila Meder was working at her desk at Stanley Hydraulics Lab when the phone rang.

“Somebody said, ‘One of the flumes is overflowing!’” Meder remembers.

She jumped up and ran downstairs to find water gushing out of the flume on the second floor. “It was going everywhere,” she remembers. “It was actually running down the steps to the first floor.”

Meder didn’t know how to turn it off. “I had no clue,” she says. It was Fred Stern’s experiment, so she called him. A student was supposed to be supervising it, Stern said, but that student was nowhere to be seen.

Meder grabbed a big, wide broom and started pushing water down the steps and out the front door. “I can very distinctly remember having the front doors propped open and sweeping water out the door and down the steps,” she says.

“You just hoped there wasn’t somebody walking by as you made that push,” Meder says. “It was water everywhere.”

She adds, “OK, it’s a hydraulics lab — it seemed very appropriate, but nobody wanted to walk through the water, right?”

GO NORTH

An Iowa City native, Meder graduated from City High. She started her first job when she was still in high school, working as a secretary at the Johnson County Social Services office. After a few years, she got married and left to have a family. She and her husband Tom raised three kids at their home in North Liberty: Tim, Teresa, and Tracy. Today, they have seven grandchildren as well.

At that time, North Liberty was a small, quiet community, and the Meders lived on a gravel road near the edge of town. The kids could run off to play in the creek with their friends without any worries. “They’d come back just muddy, filthy,” Meder says. “You’d have to hose them off outside.”

She adds, “But you didn’t have to worry about them, either. They were down there with their friends.” If

the kids weren’t at the creek, they were in the family’s yard, playing tetherball or having fun on the swing set with their friends. “I either had nobody there or a yard full of kids.”

TWENTY-FOUR YEaRS

When her children were grown, Meder decided she wanted to go back to work. She got a job in the business office of the University of Iowa (UI) Hospitals. After about a year there, the office reorganized, and everyone got a new job.

“I went to my boss and said, ‘OK, is this what I’m going to be doing?’” Meder remembers. “She said, ‘It’s your new job.’

“I said, ‘In that case, I’m looking for another job.’”

Meder went to the UI employment office and scanned the job listings. She saw an opening at IIHR and applied immediately. Before long, she had an interview.

When Meder walked into the hydraulics lab for her interview, she found herself looking at a huge flume and nothing that looked remotely like an office or a reception area.

After searching around a bit, she found a directory and realized she needed to go upstairs to get to the main office. There was an elevator, although it, too, presented a challenge. It was a freight elevator with a gate you had to close behind you. If you closed the gate too hard, it could bounce back open a little bit. When that happened, the elevator was stuck.

Fortunately, Meder made it to the main office for her interview. The very next day, the phone rang. “Do you want the job?”

“I said, ‘Absolutely!’” Meder says.

As receptionist, Meder was the first person people met when they came to the hydraulics lab. She also performed secretarial duties for faculty. Just before desktop computers came on the scene, the office staff used a word processing system known as NBI — “nothing but initials.” The machines were huge and noisy. Faculty would write out everything by hand on yellow pads, no matter how long the report was (“They went through yellow pads like you wouldn’t believe!”). Then Meder and the other office staff would enter it into the word processor.

HERE YOU GO!

The hydraulics lab was one of the first departments at the university to get desktop computers for office use. The new Mac computers arrived on a Friday. “They set them on our desks, and said, ‘Here you go!’ And then walked off.”

Meder and her co-worker Karen Gee had no idea how to make the computers work. They came into the office on Saturday and spent the day learning about the new computers.

“Of course, the first thing is, how do you turn it on?” Meder says. And then, what next?

“Luckily, at that time, computers actually came with a manual,” she says.

It was a steep learning curve, but after that day they had some idea of how to proceed. On Monday, they had to start using the computers in earnest. “That’s the way it was. There was no going back,” Meder says. They didn’t think about being on the cutting edge of the computer revolution. “At the time, it was more like an inconvenience,” she says.

WELCOME HOME

Meder’s favorite part of the job was interacting with IIHR students and making them feel at home. “That was my thing,” she says. “To make sure they felt as if they were part of IIHR from day one.”

Meder took photos of all the new students (usually about 20 or 30), wrote down their names, and mounted the photos behind her desk where they were out of sight. “My goal was to learn the names of those students as quickly as I could to make them feel like they belonged.”

With students from many countries scattered in buildings around campus, Meder had to be inventive to get to know them all. When her duties took her out to make the rounds of IIHR’s buildings, she would check in on the students there.

“You know — how are you doing over here? What do you need? Is there anything we can do to make things better?” she says. “Just trying to connect with them.

“It was exciting and it was fun,” Meder says. “You had to learn to listen, to pay attention to what they were saying.”

It wasn’t just students that Meder nurtured and cared for. One of her best-loved duties was the small flower garden she planted and cared for along the sidewalk just south of the lab. People would often stop and thank her for beautifying this small bit of campus — and not just people she worked with at IIHR.

In her 24 years at the lab, Meder says she found that she liked the people she worked with as well as the job. She’s not one to stay where she’s not happy. “I’m not afraid of quitting a job and moving on,” Meder says.

“If I hadn’t liked the job, I wouldn’t have stayed for 24 years.”

Larry Weber

Choosing to Lead

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Larry Weber realized there was only one choice: Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

THIS PaGE: Then-IIHR Director Larry Weber poses in front of a model of the Priest Rapids Dam.

FaCING PaGE: Working with IIHR researcher Jacob Odgaard, Weber helped develop fish passage research into a thriving area of study at the institute.

The morning sun sparkled on the Iowa River, reflecting blue sky overhead. Larry Weber walked along the river, arriving at work early on that spring day, as he often did. Weber had been appointed director of IIHR not many months earlier.

As he walked, the lab loomed larger and larger until it almost blocked out the sky.

Out of nowhere, a thought hit him: “My god, what have I done?” All his insecurities came to the surface. “I am now the director of this place with this historic program, and if it fails under my watch, what a shame that would be.”

At the time, he was struggling with how to handle IIHR’s financial troubles and cultural issues, not to mention his own feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.

“I thought of all the reasons why I was going to fail.”

As he walked on, a flash of clarity came to him: he could focus on all the problems, or he could face his fears and get on with the job.

“There’s only one way this fails. If it fails, it’s on me and only me. It’s not because people were not nice to me, and it’s not because of funding issues or

relationship between the institute and the college — it’s just me.”

It was a turning point, Weber says. He realized at that moment that there was only one choice. “Either lead or follow or get out of the way. I chose to lead.”

From that moment on, he was able to move past his fears (most of the time) and let the external factors take care of themselves. If his skills were up to the task, the job would get done. And if they weren’t, he’d find something else to do. He let go of his worries and the negativity.

“I really took that to heart.”

babY 1, GRaNDMa 0

As a baby, Larry Weber drove his grandmother out of the house, permanently and much to his mother’s delight.

His story starts on a small farm near Dyersville in Northeast Iowa, where Weber was born to a family that had often struggled to make ends meet. Weber’s father Art, the oldest son, quit school after the eighth grade to help out on the family farm. When Art’s father (Larry’s grandfather) died unexpectedly in 1951 due to a sudden illness, Art took over the farming operation at the age of 15. With significant help from his uncles, Art was responsible for the farm, which supported his family of six.

In his 20s, Art met Joan Funke at a community dance, and the two married in 1963 and set up housekeeping in the family farmhouse, where Art’s mother Marcella was still in charge. The newlyweds settled down to farm and raise a family. When baby Larry arrived, his colicky cries and persistent fussiness drove his grandmother to distraction.

“Can’t you make him be quiet?” Grandma Marcella demanded. Eventually, she moved out of the farmhouse to her own home in town.

“I don’t know if it was weeks or months or how long it was,” Weber says. But the change certainly suited Weber’s mother Joan, who was ready to run the house on her own terms and raise her family without supervision.

“That’s probably the funniest story of my childhood,” Weber says.

aN IOWa FaRM bOY

Weber worked hard on the farm from a young age. “I was at my dad’s side from early childhood until I left,” Weber says.

The family was always well-fed because they could eat what they raised on the farm. But there wasn’t much money for extras for Larry or his two sisters.

Weber remembers one of his best Christmas presents growing up was a Western Dubuque High School gym bag. It was a tubular duffel bag with straps and one zipper down the middle. It was a simple thing that probably didn’t cost $20. “But it made me feel so happy because it was one of the few times that I really felt like I fit in at school,” he says. “I never got to play any sports because I had to go home and work on the farm,” Weber says.

THE LURE OF HaWKEYE FOOTbaLL

Weber says his father likely expected him to take over the farm. But the farm crisis of the 1980s and summer jobs in construction motivated Weber to enroll at the University of Iowa (UI) after high school graduation — that and a love of Hawkeye football.

“That’s an absolutely serious statement,” Weber says. “I wanted to come down here to go to football games and study engineering.”

He expected to graduate and go to work in construction. Later, his plans evolved to focus on a career in engineering consulting.

But then Weber discovered hydraulics.

As a child, Weber loved playing in the creek on the farm whenever he got a chance. He was fascinated by the flowing water and the way it endlessly rearranged and rebuilt the sandbars. “Kind of serendipitously, I ended up here at the hydraulics lab working in the ice lab as an undergraduate,” Weber says. He enjoyed that work and stayed on to complete a master’s degree and later a PhD, working with Wilf Nixon.

Weber enjoyed the ice mechanics world, but he never saw it as something he would continue over a lifetime. The idea was that he would go to work in industry.

But as Weber was completing his PhD, he had the opportunity to stay on at IIHR and work with Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Jacob Odgaard on fish passage research for the hydropower industry in the Columbia River Basin. The research focused on structures that allowed fish, particularly salmon, to move safely through the large hydropower dams that had altered the salmon’s migration pathway.

Weber had found his passion in this interface with industry, solving real-world problems and providing a product that IIHR could deliver better, and perhaps faster, than anybody else. And they did it all while also involving graduate students and postdocs and engaging in the broader academic community.

“I love that work,” Weber says. “Being involved in this complex, engineering, hydrologic, biological project is really interesting.”

The opportunity to work with Odgaard was another lucky break. “He was so generous with sharing credit and giving me the opportunity and the responsibility to kind of take that project and just run with it.

“Jacob is someone whom I’ll always have the deepest respect for.”

HYDRaULICS HERO

Weber considers former IIHR Director John Fisher Kennedy — also not one to shy away from a challenge — his role model at IIHR.

Weber admired Kennedy’s ability to bridge the gap between academia and industry. “That was something that I really valued in him and valued in my directorship,” he says. “I think there was perhaps some commonality in the way he ran the lab in the way I ran the lab.”

Kennedy’s priority was on applied research that solved real-world problems for industry. This meant constructing a different kind of lab, building not just a physical infrastructure, but also a human infrastructure that could meet those needs.

HaLF a STEP aHEaD

Weber had met his wife-to-be, Miechelle, in the fall of their freshman year at the university, when they were both living in Burge Residence Hall. They dated for three years and married in 1988 — maybe just a tad before they were ready, as both readily admit.

Ready or not, Larry and Miechelle began their married life together as undergraduates. Miechelle earned a degree in radiologic technology and went on to work as a sonographer at the UI Hospitals’ OBGYN department, while Larry finished his fifth year as an engineering undergraduate and later earned master’s and PhD degrees in civil and environmental engineering. They would go on to raise two sons, Benjamin and Michael. Besides faith and family, Larry and Miechelle share a love of the outdoors and for the woodland property they are restoring near Iowa City.

Weber says he might also have been a bit ahead of himself when he took on the directorship of IIHR at the relatively young age of 38. “It’s just always felt like I’m half a step ahead of myself, jumping in before I’m probably ready,” he says. “But you take those challenges on. I was never one to shy away from anything.”

A young Larry Weber found opportunity beyond his most optimistic dreams at IIHR.

“A lot of folks from industry came to Iowa. They came to Jack. You couldn’t separate Jack from the lab,” Weber says.

“He ran it a bit like a business.” Weber laughs when he remembers an anonymous comment on his third reappointment review: ‘Well, you know Larry runs IIHR like a business ... Like it’s his business.’

It probably wasn’t really meant as a compliment, but Weber takes it in stride. “You know, guilty as charged,” he says. “I developed a lot of research and brought a lot of funding here. I built a team and supported an awful lot of folks here for a lot of years.”

a FLOOD OF OPPORTUNITY

Just a few years into Weber’s tenure as director, IIHR faced a new threat: the devastating flood of 2008 that caused almost $1 billion in damages to the UI campus.

Weber says he wasn’t just worried about the building during the flood, but also about a possible existential threat to the institute.

It was yet another challenge for Weber, as he considered how best to protect IIHR and whether to flood the basement of Stanley Hydraulics Lab proactively to try to save it. Eventually it became a moot point when the university mandated the evacuation of the building. The basement flooded when the power was turned off, although Weber took the first shift for a team that kept gasolinepowered sump pumps running for weeks to protect multimillion dollar tow tank equipment in the building’s lower level.

But as it turned out, the results of the flood were positive as well as negative. “So much grew out of it,” Weber says. “It unified the lab. We had a common purpose. We were able to work with intention. It allowed me and my skills to work in the legislative environment and strategic framing processes.”

Perhaps the most impactful result of the 2008 flood has been the Iowa Flood Center (IFC), co-founded by Weber and his colleague Witold Krajewski. “Once we joined forces, we were a force to be reckoned with, right? The two of us together, for sure. That was wonderful,” Weber says.

The IFC is the first academic center dedicated solely to the study of flooding, and it has helped Iowans become better informed and more flood resilient. The center is also a key player in the Iowa Watershed Approach (IWA), a five-year, $97 million project that Weber conceived and leads. The IWA is a collaborative project to build distributed storage structures (farm ponds, wetlands, etc.) throughout nine Iowa watersheds to reduce the impacts of flooding downstream while also improving water quality and providing other key benefits.

The IFC is just one of the innovative new research directions that emerged during Weber’s tenure. “This creative way of building an organization — it allowed me to work in the way that I work the best,” Weber says. The lab expanded and grew to a level that would have been unimaginable when he was first appointed.

“If somebody would have said, ‘You’re going to create a nationally recognized, state-funded flood center, co-found the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, bring the Iowa Geological Survey here, and organize a grant for a hundred million dollars.’ People would have said, ‘You’re crazy. Just crazy.’”

Without question, Weber says, the best years of his professional life were as director of IIHR. “I think what we accomplished during that period was just amazing. I mean, programs across the country would have loved to have had that energy and synergy and can-do spirit.”

He’s proud of what the IIHR team has accomplished, and proud to have served as its leader for 13 years. He’s had opportunities to move on, but Iowa has a tight hold on him. “We’re so deeply rooted in Iowa City and Iowa,” he explains. “Our timber property is close by. I’ve got this incredible job.

“Why would I ever leave?”

Larry and wife, Miechelle, pause for a photo on the woodland property they are restoring near Iowa City.

Stan Stutzman

Just a Kid at Heart

Stan Stutzman makes sure to have fun, no matter what he’s doing.

Stan Stutzman shrugged into his winter coat, hat, and mittens and ran out the farmhouse door, carrying his lunch pail and schoolbooks. His one-room country school near Kalona, Iowa, was only an eighth of a mile away — just a quick walk through the snow.

But Stutzman had other plans.

He hopped on his sled and zoomed down the hill, pulling up by the little schoolhouse in a small puff of swirling snow.

“It was all downhill,” he remembers. In the winter, he sledded to school most days. Stan and his friends would go outside at recess to sled whenever they could. They never stayed inside if they could help it. If it was too cold and wintry to be outside, they played ping-pong in the schoolhouse, Stutzman says.

a DOLLaR a DaY

Today, Stutzman lives in Frytown, Iowa, just a few miles from his boyhood home. As the 13th of 14 children, Stutzman helped a neighbor with farm chores because his older brothers and sisters had everything under control at the Stutzman farm. He earned a dollar a day for his work at the neighbor’s place — making hay, milking, and gathering eggs.

“That was good money back in those days,” he remembers.

Stutzman enjoyed the one-room country school, where a single teacher taught all the grades. “We grew up that way, so we didn’t think anything of it.”

When Stutzman finished the eighth grade, he went to work. His first job was driving a truck, and then he worked at a local feed mill. After a few years, he switched to maintenance and learned to weld, with help from one of his Amish neighbors.

Stutzman’s welding abilities would serve him well throughout his career.

IT STaRTED WITH a WHITE SHIRT

Professor of Fluid Mechanics and IIHR Director Hunter Rouse was fussy about his white shirts. They had to be washed, pressed, and starched just so.

Rouse paid Eliza Martin (Stutzman’s grandmotherin-law), to “do up” his shirts every week. Before long, Stutzman’s wife Shirley was also babysitting for the Rouses’ children.

In 1959, Rouse and his wife went to Germany on sabbatical. While they were gone, Shirley took care of the house, and Stan mowed the yard.

When Rouse returned, he called Stutzman in for a chat. He met with Rouse and shop manager Dale Harris, who offered him a job at the hydraulics lab. It was the start of Stutzman’s long career at IIHR, including 25 rewarding years spent working with Harris.

It was February 1960. Stutzman spent his first day on the job puttying windows. In the winter, he plowed snow off the sidewalks. But for many years, Stutzman spent most of his time welding.

“I did a lot of pipe welding,” Stutzman says. “River models take a lot of piping.”

MODEL WORK

Stutzman especially liked working on the models: river models, dropshaft models, and fish passage models, including a screen test model for the Columbia River.

The latter was part of a fish passage project for one of the hydropower plants in the Pacific Northwest. Stutzman remembers that IIHR Director John Fisher Kennedy (Rouse’s successor) pushed the IIHR staff to develop the screen test model in only a week’s time.

“That got us into that Columbia research,” Stutzman says. IIHR got a contract to investigate the screens, which guide young migrating salmon safely away from the hydropower turbine intakes. Fish passage research continued for decades at IIHR. Years later,

LEFT: Stutzman shows off his property near Frytown, which features several beautiful homes, ponds, and a windmill.

bELOW: Stan Stutzman (foreground) on the job at IIHR

Stutzman worked with Larry Weber on additional Columbia River fish passage projects.

One of the first projects Stutzman worked on was the meandering bends model that they built in the old West Annex. It was constructed entirely from poured concrete. This was the first model that used computers to gather data, under the supervision of Jack Glover. Stutzman remembers the boxes and boxes of cards required by the early computer.

When Jim Goss took over as shop supervisor, he asked Stutzman to be his assistant. That involved doing purchasing for all the lab’s projects. “That was my main thing,” he says, and it was work he enjoyed. He worked with Goss for 18 years. “We were a good team,” Stutzman says. “It was wonderful.” Stutzman and Goss sometimes did fieldwork, including taking river measurements for Tatsuaki Nakato.

Stutzman also pitched in wherever he was needed. He liked the variety. “That was what was nice,” Stutzman says. “I didn’t just work in welding. I’d work with whoever else needed help.”

For instance, Stutzman was also part of a crew that built and installed flumes for clients around the country, including Penn State University; Lafayette, La.; Milwaukee, Wis.; a 100-foot flume at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Howard University in Washington, D.C. Stutzman was part of a three-man team that spent three weeks in D.C. installing the flume at Howard.

FRIENDS aND CO-WORKERS

Stutzman says he appreciated the people he worked with at the lab — for instance, Hunter Rouse, the man who gave him the job. Rouse ran a tight ship, Stutzman says, but he was fair. No one was allowed to eat or drink at his or her workstations — that’s what the break area was for. And the only time they were allowed to listen to the radio while working, Stutzman says, was when Mid-Prairie went to the state basketball tournament.

Then there was Lou Landweber. “I liked Lou,” Stutzman says. “He was such a kind man. And of course, he had that big smile.”

Landweber’s ship hydrodynamics research in the tow tank required wooden ship models built precisely to specifications. Stutzman assisted expert carpenter Bob Hamer to build and finish the models.

Stutzman also remembers Rex Elder, a frequent collaborator with IIHR researchers. “He was super