College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Golden anniversary

It's been 50 years since Lois Tiffany first joined the faculty at Iowa State University
It's difficult to know where to start with Lois Tiffany's life at Iowa State University.

It would be easy to start at the beginning. The future Distinguished Professor of botany began her academic career just a few miles from her Story County hometown of Collins. She received her bachelor's degree at Iowa State just as World War II was winding to a conclusion.

It would be easy to focus on Tiffany's decision to obtain both a master's and Ph.D. in botany from Iowa State during a time when she was one of the few women in these advanced courses.

It would also be easy to look at her early struggle as a female faculty member when her department chair actually suggested that she work for free because her husband had a job. Or the challenge of teaching World War II veterans who were all older than she was.

And it would be easy, and appropriate, to discuss her lifetime research efforts in botany, particularly with fungi.

But to really understand Lois Tiffany, you really should look at what she is still doing as a faculty member in the department of botany during the 2001 spring semester, her golden anniversary as a member of the Iowa State University faculty.

"I'm still a workaholic and I enjoy, no truly enjoy, doing quite a number of things that relate to my research and teaching," she said.

"I recognize that someday I'll have to retire. I'm not totally out of my mind. But right now there is always something new to deal with - some new challenge that continues to be intriguing to work on."

One of those intriguing research topics for Tiffany is the various aspects of fungi involving plant parasitic fungi, mycorrhizal associates and saporbes.

"The relationships of fungi with other organisms, particularly those between plant parasitic species and their hosts, are a basic interest of mine," she said.

Currently Tiffany and her research group are working intensively with plant parasitic fungi of tall grass prairies and on truffles of Iowa. She also continues to teach and conduct fieldwork, particularly at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory on the west shore of West Okoboji Lake.

And every spring her phone rings off the hook as Iowans start mushroom hunting.

"I have already had my first phone call," she said during an early March interview, "wanting to know when the morels are coming up."

Tiffany and longtime colleague George Knaphus conducted research on fungi diseases ("very little work has been done on fungi diseases that cause problems in prairie plants," she said) and did a ten-year study on morels from 1984-94. The "ten-year great Iowa morel hunt" attracted a lot of attention throughout the state and was published in Iowa Conservationist magazine.

"We had people sending in morel samples to us themselves or taking them to their county extension office," she said. "People were just amazing. Many sent in more than one specimen."

Each year Tiffany typically handles calls from physicians, poison control officials, and frantic individuals that are concerning when a person eats an unknown mushroom. The individuals will describe the type of mushroom or samples of the mushroom that have been consumed are transported to her office for her identification.

And each spring she continues to give programs about mushrooms in counties throughout Iowa, discussing the type of mushrooms humans can eat.

"Most of the calls are false alarms," said Tiffany, who herself is allergic to morels. "Iowans by and large do not hunt wild mushrooms other than morels which are distinctive enough in appearance that it's hard to make a mistake."

Tiffany's research has led to countless publications, including two books that she co-authored. And she has been recognized for that research. In 1982 alone, she received the Distinguished Iowa Scientist Award from the Iowa Academy of Science and was the first recipient of the Governor's Award for Science Teaching.

The Mycological Society of America, an international association for those individuals who specialize in fungi, honored Tiffany as the recipient of its first annual award for excellence in mycology teaching.

Iowa State has honored her numerous times for her teaching and research activities. The Iowa Women's Hall of Fame inducted her in 1991. Two years later she was named VEISHEA professor of the year and in 1994, the same year she was named a Distinguished Professor at Iowa State, the Iowa Academy of Science recognized her with a Distinguished Service Award.

Pretty impressive accomplishments considering she hadn't given any thought to continuing her academic career when she graduated with her bachelor's degree in 1945.

"I never thought about it," she said. "After I graduated I was working in the plant pathology department for a faculty member when I.E. Melhus, who was the head of the department at the time, saw me in the hall on the first day of the spring quarter. "

Melhus wanted to know why Tiffany wasn't in class that day.

"I told him that I had graduated and was working for Dr. (George) Kent," she continued. "He told me to go sign up for his graduate class. I did that and went to class the next day. My career was very much unplanned."

Tiffany got her master's degree in 1947 and went on to receive her Ph.D. in 1950, a very unusual achievement for a woman back then.

"It was obviously a new experience for the professors," she remembered. "I also was challenged constantly by the student veterans in the botany classes I taught. I had to work real hard to make sure I knew the answers before they asked the questions."

Those challenges continued when Tiffany joined the Iowa State faculty in 1950 as an instructor of botany.

"One of the things I learned very early in my career was that if you want to find discrimination, you can in almost any situation," she said. "But you have to get on to what you want to do with your life."

The challenges are what has kept Tiffany at Iowa State the last 50 years. And she says she couldn't imagine working anywhere else.

"I really enjoy undergraduate teaching," she said. "I had and have good graduate students, excellent colleagues, a good lab. No other position came along that could compete with what I had here at Iowa State. All the elements for a professional life that I wanted were here."

And the future?

"There are a lot of loose ends out there with our research that we need to follow up on," she said. "Plus there's are so many things that I can still learn."