One day, Laura Crow and her students are headed to a performance at the Metropolitan Opera. Another day, they’re in Manhattan shopping for fabric. “One of my missions is to make my students less afraid of New York City,” says Crow, a professor of dramatic arts specializing in costume design. “There’s so much available there for them.”

Robin Bogner wasn’t planning a career in academics. “I thought I’d climb the corporate ladder in the pharmaceutics industry,” says Bogner, an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences. As an undergraduate, she had worked for four summers at Johnson & Johnson, and her heart was set on becoming an industrial leader. Once she got to graduate school at the University of Iowa, however, something happened.