Iowa agriculture will be on center stage when nearly 100 college students from across the nation and southern Canada attend the annual World Association of Agriculture Councils conference March 28-31 at Iowa State.A 15-member committee composed of students in the College of Agriculture is working hard to put the final touches on the conference. Fund raising has been a top priority during the last several weeks.”We have been visiting clubs we’re part of to ask if they would like to support WAAC,” said Kelli Cameron, senior in agricultural education and international agriculture. “We give a short presentation and ask them to support us in any way they can.”The committee doesn’t have a specific amount of money it hopes to raise from clubs, she said.”We don’t have a set dollar figure. But the more money we can raise, the more ISU students can participate in the event,” said Cameron, secretary and designer of the WAAC Web site, at www.ageds.iastate.edu/waac/index.html. ISU College of Agriculture students are invited to all of the evening activities. They are also invited to attend the tours, but ISU students must provide their own transportation, she said.WAAC brings agriculture students together to learn about the latest in agriculture as well as agricultural issues in central Iowa. In previous years, WAAC stood for Western Association of Agriculture Councils, and only universities west of the Mississippi River were invited. “Western” was replaced with “World,” and colleges and universities across the world may now attend in 2001, said Amber Hill, WAAC co-chair. “Several universities in the eastern United States and southern Canada will be attending WAAC for the first time,” said Hill, senior in agricultural business. The three-day event will be organized into several tours and workshops, she said.”We want to showcase what Iowa’s known for in agriculture,” said Dawn Edler, senior in animal science.The tour schedule includes a diverse array of Iowa agricultural sites.”We will be seeing beef, hogs and machinery, but we are also touring an ethanol production plant in Blairstown,” said Edler, WAAC tours committee co-chair. She said Ethanol, a by-product of corn, is not a common product in other parts of the country, so the production plant tour will be a unique opportunity for the visiting students.The conference participants will also be spending time on the ISU campus. Several agriculture workshops and campus tours will take place on Friday, Edler said. “[WAAC participants] will have a chance to see ISU’s seed science and meat lab. The meat lab is one of the best in the country,” she said.WAAC’s activities are not only an education in Iowa agriculture, but lifestyle too. The evenings will be filled with dinner at the renowned Rube’s Steakhouse in Montour, visits to Hunky Dory’s Night Club in Ames, and Coconut Joe’s Dance Club and the Funny Bone Comedy Club, both in Des Moines, she said