Welcome two new faces at the Center

On the advisory board ...

A Swea City grain farmer has joined the Leopold Center Advisory Board. Arlyn Valvick has been selected by the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation as one of three farmer representatives who serve on the 17-member advisory board. Valvick succeeds Kurt Johnson, an Audubon County sheep producer who had been a board member for six years.

With help from Arlyn's father Irving, Arlyn and Annette Valvick raise 1,400 acres of corn and soybeans and 52 acres of certified organic crops on their northern Kossuth County farm. He is president of the Kossuth County Farm Bureau and a graduate of the Iowa Farm Bureau Leadership Institute. He is a member of Practical Farmers of Iowa, cooperating in that group's on-farm research the past two years. He also is a member of the Organic Crop Improvement Association and is active in his local church, fire department and community theater. He is vice president of the Kossuth County Taxpayers Association, and is past president of FFA Alumni. The Valvicks have four daughters. Arlyn is a lifelong resident of Kossuth County.

On the staff ...

Callers to the Leopold Center looking for hope now get the newest staff member, Hope Kepler, who joined the staff in December. She fills a vacancy left by John Lane, who returned in August to his home state of Maryland after four years at the Center.

Hope answers the telephone, fills requests for information, helps staff with projects and maintains a library of past and current reports and publications. She has office experience in the medical field and with nonprofit organizations, however, most of her work since graduating from the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at Iowa State University has been in human services.

An Iowan all her life, Hope remembers playing on her grandfather's dairy farm in Grundy County and listening to farmers when they gathered at the local gas station for coffee. She brings a lot of organizational skills to her job and plans to help prepare office spaces for remodeling this summer.