The Iowa Stater
February 2002
Answers are just a phone call away
Daylilies forgot to bloom this year? Struggling with your 15-year-old son's behavior? Black licorice melted into your carpet? Landlord canceled your lease five months early? Pick up the phone; most likely there's an ISU extension specialist who can point you in the right direction.From its first "seed gospel train" tour of 96 Iowa counties in 1904 to self-help Web sites today that receive as many as four million hits each year, ISU Extension always has been about sharing helpful information with Iowans.
For the last 20 years or so, a key outreach tool for Extension specialists has been telephone hotlines. The oldest, known by many as the "Answer Line," goes back to 1975; the newest is the state's "Bets Off" gambling treatment line, which ISU Extension received last July through a contract with the state department of public health.
Five of the university's eight hotlines are housed in the extension outreach center in Urbandale, where, collectively, they average about 1,400 calls per month. Three, including Hortline from the Reiman Gardens, originate from campus locations.
Horticulture specialist Richard Jauron has been the steady voice of the ISU Hortline since 1983. In fact, the hotline predates him only by about nine months. Hortline is the only hotline today that isn't a toll-free line, but that hasn't always been the case.
"As more people became aware of Hortline, I was doing 8,000 calls a year. It got to the point I couldn't keep up, and for three or four years, there were two of us taking calls," he recalled. "By then, we were handling 16,000 to 17,000 calls a year and we still couldn't keep up. We couldn't afford a third staff member to answer calls, so the decision was made in 1997 to switch to a 515 (area code) number. The calls fell off drastically."
In 1997, Jauron took 6,700 calls and now averages about 4,500 callers each year.
Like most hotline specialists, he has his own "system." A lot of information is available to him in a database, but arguing that his computer is too slow, he usually opts for the set of reference books and subject file folders that line his desk. And, after 18 years at this job, a lot of the information he shares -- up to 75 percent, he estimated -- is in his head.
-- Anne Krapfl
University Relations
ISU Extension phone hotlinesBets Off 800-238-7633Families Answer Line 800-262-3804 Farm On (division of Iowa Concern) 800-447-1985 Hortline 515-294-3108 Iowa Concern 800-447-1985 Iowa Healthy Families 800-369-2229 PORKline 800-808-7675 Teen Line 800-443-8336 |
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| Horticulture specialist Richard Jauron helps about 4,500 callers to the ISU Hortline each year. Photo by Bob Elbert. |