In a show of loyalty and support for the university and its colleges, two professors asked well-wishers to give money to Morrill Hall instead of to their retirement funds.

Jane Farrell-Beck is professor emeritus and former curator of the Textiles and Clothing Collection. Janis Stone was a professor of textiles and clothing and worked in ISU Extension.

Together, donations from the two professors’ requests have raised more than $7,500, moving the College of Family and Consumer Sciences within $100,000 of its goal for the renovation, said Lisa Stephany, director of development for the College of Family and Consumer Sciences in the ISU Foundation.

Even if it was only a few dollars, Stone said she would prefer to have people spend money they would use on cards or gifts to support Morrill Hall.

“I wanted to think of something I could do that might make a difference,” she said.

Stone said she worked closely with many people in the extension offices in Morrill Hall before the offices were taken out. She said she remembers making many trips back and forth to help move offices out. Stone wants to see the ideas of getting information to the people represented by the Extension offices she worked with preserved in Morrill Hall.

Since large contributors don’t have the option of putting their names on the building, Stone said she believes Morrill Hall is a hard sell.

“The building has already been named and the glory is gone,” she said.

Farrell-Beck, who retired in December after more than 27 years at Iowa State, said she was glad she could help see the Textiles and Clothing Collection she spent so much time working with protected.

Even with two graduate students working with the collection, Farrell-Beck said getting to the needed pieces in the collection is still incredibly difficult.

She said the new storage space, equipped to handle the humidity controls the collection requires to be properly preserved, is needed.

“Right now it’s in an old classroom with a window air conditioner,” Gregoire said.

Total fund-raising on the Morrill Hall project is currently near $6 million, said Jason Menke, assistant director of communication for the ISU Foundation.

Mary Gregoire, professor and chairwoman of apparel education studies and hospitality management, said the College of Family and Consumer Sciences had been challenged to raise $1.5 million for the Morrill Hall project.

She said fund-raising had already started for a plan to renovate the top floor of LeBaron Hall for a similar space, also with a goal of $1.5 million, but when the department received the space in Morrill Hall, the money previously raised was rolled over into the new fund.

Farrell-Beck said she is using her retirement to travel and continue doing research. She said she spent last week in St. Paul, Minn., at a conference about brassieres and girdles from the World War II era.

She is also working on a book on the 20th-century history of dress in the United States, she said.

Stone said she is currently working on a study of greenhouse worker’s gloves she did not finish before retiring as she expected to.

She is also taking advantage of her retirement to visit family in Texas.