(Radio Iowa) — There’s been a significant decline in the number of students enrolled in Iowa colleges and universities, COMMUNITY colleges and trade schools. In the fall of 2011, there were more than 363-thousand students enrolled at an Iowa institution — seeking a degree or training beyond high school. By the fall of 2018, that had dropped by 38 percent — to 225-thousand students. Jay Pennington of the Iowa Department of Education says that high point in 2011 was after the Great Recession.

“Any time you see those downward trends, typically higher education becomes a destination for many as they leave the workforce or perhaps decide to go back to get another degree, you do tend to see significant increases in higher ed enrollment,” Pennington says. Total enrollment in Iowa’s 15 area community colleges has declined over the decade, too. An upward trend in Iowa’s high education is the number of Iowa high school students who are taking community college classes.

“We, as a state, are leaders nationally in concurrent enrollment,” Pennington says. “Between 2011 and 2018-19, we see significant increases both in the number of students enrolling in those opportunities, but also the number of courses that students are taking.” Last fall, more than 37-thousand Iowa high school students were taking college classes, too. The number of students in the UNITED STATES enrolled in college THIS FALL dipped below 18 million for the first time this decade.

SHELLSBURG, Iowa (AP) — A dive team has recovered the body of a man who fell through the ice of an eastern Iowa pond while fishing. Television station KCRG reports that divers pulled the body of 47-year-old Shannan Lee Hughes, of Vinton, from the water Friday. Hughes is believed to have fallen through the ice Thursday while fishing on a private pond near Shellsburg.

A passerby reported seeing Hughes fishing out on the ice. The bystander later noticed Hughes had vanished and a hole on the ice and called 911. Searchers found Hughes’ car near the pond, but no sign of him.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT (AP) (In an update to our earlier reports on KJAN) – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says a 66-year-old man who was serving a mission was killed in a Christmas day car crash in Iowa. Church spokesman Daniel Woodruff said in a statement today (Friday), that Craig L. Meyocks died Wednesday. The crash occurred in a rural part of the state about 40 miles  south of Iowa City, when a man tried to cross the highway and smashed into the Meyocks’ car.

The couple had been serving as senior missionaries in the Illinois Nauvoo mission since March 2019. They are from Dammeron Valley, Utah.

(By the Associated Press) — The Iowa woman charged in a string of racially-motivated attacks this month managed to avoid prison in recent years after arrests for previous violent crimes and threats. Nicole Poole is charged with intentionally driving her SUV into a Hispanic girl and a black boy near Des Moines-area schools in separate hit-and-run crashes on Dec. 9. She’s also charged with using racial epithets that day at a gas station. In 2017, Poole was charged with stabbing her then-boyfriend while she was on probation. But a felony charge was dismissed after the alleged victim refused to cooperate. Charges alleging she assaulted and harassed another boyfriend in 2018 were dismissed after he also declined to cooperate.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – State officials have referred to Iowa prosecutors the names of nine people suspected of voting twice in the November election last year. The Iowa secretary of state’s office said in a news release today (Friday) that the nine are suspected of voting in Iowa after casting ballots in other states. There were 27 suspected instances of people voting first in Iowa and then other states during the same election. The information was discovered through Iowa’s partnership with several states in the Electronic Registration Information Center. The states share data to improve the accuracy of voter rolls and enhance voter confidence.

The Secretary of State’s Office says four of the alleged instances of double voting where the second vote was cast in Iowa, are believed to have taken place in Polk County. There is one suspected incident each in Johnson, Mitchell, Sioux, Story and Warren counties. The 27 other instances of suspected double voting have been shared with the respective states’ commissioner/board of elections.

(Radio Iowa) — After more than five decades of collecting rare rocks, a self-taught geologist from Fort Dodge recently donated the thousands of fossil specimens he catalogued in his garage to the University of Iowa. Sixty-four-year-old Robert Wolf says he got interested in fossils very early on. “I was in 4th grade and a friend of mine showed me a fossil he found in his driveway of crushed rock,” Wolf says. “I didn’t know anything about them and we started looking in the field between the two houses and found a few fossils.”

Wolf started studying fossils and essentially never stopped. He furthered his knowledge by joining the Geological Society of Iowa and went on field trips to dig sites around the region. “I started numbering my specimens and before you know it, I was up to over 18,000 catalogued and a lot more than weren’t catalogued,” he says. While he made his career as a writer, working for many years as a reporter at the Fort Dodge Messenger, Wolf says geology has always been his number-one hobby. “A lot of it was stuff I learned out in the field and in libraries and I had an Earth Science teacher in high school who taught me a lot about it, too,” Wolf says. “Now, I’m on Facebook and I learn a lot of stuff through Facebook and people are always contacting me to have me identify things.”

Some Iowans love to collect arrowheads, he notes, and they’ve found hundreds of Native American artifacts by roaming through the state’s cornfields and forests. “I’ve been doing this for 55 years and I have never found an arrowhead,” Wolf says. “I think, after a while, your eyes just grow accustomed to what you’re looking for and that’s how I go about it, just trial and error.”  Wolf says one of his most memorable moments was discovering fossils from the Cambrian Era in northern Iowa. “I’m just fascinated by these things because they’re like 490-million years old and they come on the heels of what they call the Cambrian Explosion, which was a big worldwide event where many of the lifeforms we know today first started appearing,” Wolf says. “It’s just fascinating to read this and see documentaries on it and actually be able to put my hands on that stuff right here in Iowa.”

Wolf made his comments on the Iowa Public Radio program “Talk of Iowa.”

(Thanks to Charity Nebbe, Iowa Public Radio)