Don't know if anyone is still on this thread.. but...
I harvested some wild Iowa hops too!
Mine are from Grinnell - I'm here at Grinnell College. And so happens that I am a Chemistry major... And the semester I harvested them (Fall 2012) was also the semester I was taking "Instrumental Analysis." The class had an independent project portion, so I used the HPLC to determine the alpha acids. I also tested an old UV-Vis method from the 1950s.
If anyone wants more info on how to do any of this (either of the two methods) - let me know and I can dig up my notebook and pass on the procedure.
As for drying the hops - I used the "2 air filters bungied to a box fan with hops sandwiched between them" method. It worked ok, but some hops got pretty smushed and started to come apart a bit. Made a little bit of a mess in my dorm room... but beer is why we go to college, right?