David Elbert is a former business editor and columnist for the Des Moines Register. He now writes about local history for DSM Magzine. A version of the following column appeared first in the Des Moines Register.

Wendy Wintersteen is retiring after eight years as the first female president of Iowa State University.

As a native of Ames and a graduate of Iowa State, I should be proud. But I’m not. In retrospect, I probably I expected too much from her.

Before Wintersteen took over the top job at ISU, she was dean of ISU’s highly regarded College of Agriculture. She was, I might add, the first Iowa State president with an agricultural background since 1926 when Raymond Pearson left to become president of the University of Maryland. 

When Wintersteen assumed the ISU presidency in 2017, I hoped she would steer the Ag College into new and exciting directions.

Iowa farmers, who possess some of the best farmland in the country, were clearly in need of help. Along with new crops that could be converted into new products and pharmaceuticals, they were also in need of new ways of farming.

President Wintersteen started off in the right direction. Early on, she grabbed John Pappajohn’s mantle of entrepreneurship. She backed programs that encouraged students to “Start Something,” not just in the Ag College but all over campus.

That’s probably the best part of her legacy.

Unfortunately, she did not encourage the Agriculture College’s academicians and students to take a hard look at what has happened to Iowa’s land and waters, not to mention weather patterns, or Iowa’s growing cancer problems.

At this point in history, it doesn’t take a genius to look back and realize that Iowa agriculture should have moved away from its overreliance on corn and soybeans decades ago. It’s no mystery to anyone, who isn’t an executive of the Iowa Farm Bureau, that our current problems—polluted water, foul-smelling air and less productive land—all tie back to the way we grow corn and soybeans and our overreliance on corn-based ethanol.

Specifically, we need to put realistic limits on the fertilizers and pesticides we use to grow corn and soybeans and what happens to those inputs once they leave the farm field. We also need a more diversified crop portfolio than one that has relied on the same two crops since the end of World War II.

You might think I’d be excited about the man chosen to replace Wintersteen, David Cook, who is, like myself a native of Ames and graduate of ISU.

But I see little in his resume that leads me to believe he would challenge the state’s leading agriculture power, the Iowa Farm Bureau, which claims to support environmentally friendly practices, but does not back it up with action.

I was briefly hopeful the other contender for Wintersteen’s job, Benjamin Houlton of Cornell University, would get the nod.

I don’t know much about Houlton, but I do know he is the dean of Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and he was the clear choice of many ISU partisans following public sessions with him and Cook in November. 

Two final thoughts about the selection process.

• Cornell and ISU both have top Ag schools. In the most recent rankings, Cornell was No. 1 nationally and No. 3 globally; Iowa State was No. 6 nationally and No. 13 globally. Why not go for the best?

• According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, when both Houlton and Cook appeared before audiences in Ames, Houlton was more impressive and scored far better on 5-point rating scales distributed to the audience.

As one audience member told the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller, Houlton “would move the university in exciting new directions and offer ideas and perspectives desperately needed at Iowa State University.”

Sadly, Houlton will not be taking the reins.