CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — After you fly over the amber and green patchwork of farmland, smell musky odor of roasting oats wafting from the Quaker factory (it kind of reminds you of the scent of a wet dog) and drive past the churning gray waters of the Cedar River, it's difficult not to be overwhelmed by the sheer Heartlanded-ness of Iowa.

And Cedar Rapids, the second-largest city in the state, home to such luminaries as Miami Dolphins quarterback Trent Green and, uh, Ashton Kutcher, is perhaps the most Heartland-y of all. There are old Chevy pickups on the curb and picture-window diners and leaning houses with screened-in porches. It's sort of like John Mellencamp exploded all over the place.

And among all this staggering Americana sits Coe College, home of the fighting Kohawks and more red-brick buildings, white spires and rolling green hills than you can shake a liberty stick at. It's a tiny campus — a little more than 1,200 students, mostly from Iowa and nearby states like Minnesota and Illinois — but on Monday, all the idyll will be overrun with red-white-and-blue bunting and media trucks and slate-face Secret Service officers, because Barack Obama will come calling.

The senator from Illinois is taking part in the second MySpace/MTV presidential forum, held here in the crucial caucus state of Iowa (the first took place last month in the equally important New Hampshire, with fellow Democrat John Edwards fielding questions on the campus of the University of New Hampshire). And while the goal for any candidate entering one of these campus forums is the same — convey key platform points, corral young voters, avoid wearing a tie (too stuffy) — Obama has a secondary purpose at Coe: to introduce himself to a campus of voters who really like him but have no idea what he stands for.

"Having the opportunity to ask Senator Obama real questions is amazing, but I'm actually looking forward to hearing what he has to say," said Katie Roger, a Coe senior and the vice president of the Student Senate. "I think like a lot of people I'm intrigued by him, but he needs to prove that he has the experience to lead, and he needs to provide proof that he knows what he's talking about. So I'm going to use [the forum] as an opportunity to get a little critical."

"He hasn't had a chance to point at his record, and to this point, a lot of voters are just taking his word for everything," added Mitchell Lincoln, a political-science major and the president of the College Democrats. "I'm not sure what his stance is on a majority of issues, so I'm going to be listening and hopefully asking a question. And I think a lot of students here will do the same — it's an opportunity to talk to the man who might be the next president of the United States."

So the stakes are clearly high for Obama, the candidate who entered the race on a surge of fresh-face popularity but has slid into a distant second behind the more-experienced Hillary Clinton in most polls. The Coe forum will be his chance to convince young voters that he's not just the charismatic guy who gave the stirring speech during the 2004 Democratic National Convention — he's the candidate with informed, progressive ideas, who's willing and able to lead.

And the students at Coe are ready to listen, but they're also ready to strike with a series of questions that belie their years. There's the usual campus hot buttons (the war in Iraq, gay marriage, etc.). But there's also a whole lot of concern about issues like health care, the environment and renewable energy sources — in particular, ethanol, a byproduct of corn (which just so happens to be one of the state's biggest exports).

Ever since 2004, when the Department of Energy became heavily involved in commercialization of ethanol as a source of renewable energy, Iowa farmers have profited mightily from the booming corn market, and since a majority of students we spoke to either grew up on a farm or had farmers in their family, they were very interested in hearing what Obama had to say about the matter.

"I grew up in a farming community, and right now things are going really well," Jessica Schade, a freshman from Grand Mound, Iowa, said. "So I want to hear that he's invested in not only ethanol, but also alternate-energy sources, because it affects both my community and the environment around the world."

"People in my family farm, and since the corn market is a free market, there's a huge demand for it, and prices are going up. So my family is directly benefiting from all of this," Lincoln says. "Also, since ethanol is now being mixed with gasoline, it means we're becoming less dependant on foreign oil, we can have secure fuel lines here in the U.S., and we don't have to go to wars just for oil."

And the ethanol issue is pretty representative of the Coe forum as a whole. It's a seemingly tiny matter of universal import. And the answers Obama gives about it — and a whole lot of other topics — have equally weighty merit. It's a discussion about a corn byproduct, but also about families and the environment and the economy and even our foreign policy. And obviously, the students here know all that.

"I mean, this is Coe College. These kinds of things don't usually happen here. So it's huge," said Andy Johnson, an editor at the campus paper, The Cosmos. "And I think everyone here will rise to the occasion. I think he'll face some tough questions. I'd personally like to see him get hit hard, so I hope we don't disappoint."