Changing footer margin of one page using fancyhdr

Question

I have the following code where I need to put the authors' affiliations in the document footer. However, the document footer is not large enough for multiple affiliations. I need to share this template with several others so I need a better answer than resetting the margins throughout the paper. Can I do this using the Fancyhdr package for the footer page style I setup?

\documentclass[12pt,letterpaper,onecolumn]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{lipsum}  
\usepackage{placeins} % added to use float barrier
\usepackage{indentfirst} % indent the first paragraph after the section label

\usepackage[left=3.35cm,right=3.96cm,top=1.905cm,bottom=2.36cm]{geometry}



\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\fancypagestyle{specialfooter}{%
  \fancyhf{}
  \renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}

  \fancyfoot[L]{$^{1}$ \footnotesize{Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA}  \\
  $^{2}$  \footnotesize{Co-author affiliations, Earth}}

}



\begin{document}

\begin{titlepage}
    {\noindent Title: {\bf \textit{ The Title for an Excellent Work}} }
    \vspace{1\baselineskip}

    % Authors
    {\noindent Authors: \hspace{4ex} Austin Downey$^{1}$ \\}
    {\indent \hspace{10.5ex} Co-author$^{2}$}
    \vspace{1\baselineskip}


\end{titlepage}

\vspace*{8cm}

\thispagestyle{specialfooter}

\begin{abstract}
\lipsum[1]
\end{abstract}

\section{First section}

\lipsum[1-10]

I do need the large space in the first page.

Adding the solution here as I am not sure how long the linked page will be active for.

 \fancypagestyle{specialfooter}{%
  \fancyhf{}% Clear header/footer
  \renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}% Remove header rule
  \fancyfoot[L]{\footnotesize\smash{\begin{tabular}[b]{@{}p{\linewidth}@{}}
   Austin Downey, Dept. of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Eng., Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA\\
   Co-author, Co-authors affiliation, Earth \\
 \end{tabular}}}
}

Answer 1

The only page of concern is the one dealing with the specialfooter change. On that page, you can adjust the allowable text block size through \enlargethispage{<len>} (see Squeeze some more lines on the current page). Instead of enlarging the text block with a positive <len>gth, we shrink it using a negative <len>gth:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}  
\usepackage[left=3.35cm,right=3.96cm,top=1.905cm,bottom=2.36cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}

\fancypagestyle{specialfooter}{%
  \fancyhf{}% Clear header/footer
  \renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}% Remove header rule
  \fancyfoot[L]{\footnotesize\begin{tabular}[b]{@{}p{\linewidth}@{}}
    \textsuperscript{1} Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA \\
    \textsuperscript{2} Co-author affiliations, Earth
  \end{tabular}}
}

\begin{document}

% Not needed in this minimal example, since it's a stand-alone title page
%\begin{titlepage}
  %\noindent
  %\begin{tabular}{@{} l l }
    %Title: & \bfseries\itshape The Title for an Excellent Work \\
    %\\
    %% Authors
    %Authors: & Austin Downey\textsuperscript{1} \\
             %& Co-author\textsuperscript{2}
  %\end{tabular}
%\end{titlepage}

\vspace*{8cm}% Your title

\thispagestyle{specialfooter}% Special footer for this page
\enlargethispage{-2\baselineskip}% Make text block slightly shorter

\begin{abstract}
\lipsum[1]
\end{abstract}

\section{First section}

\lipsum[1-10]

\end{document}

You can fiddle around with a different <len>gth, depending on your author count.