Every Tuesday in OnCampus the Deputy Provost shares two articles with a read time of 10 minutes.

Drake faculty and staff have been gathering this spring to think about what we’ve gone through as a University in the past two years—with a focus on what all of those experiences mean for the academic experiences of our students, the scholarly and creative lives of our faculty, and the relationships we have to work and to each other. We’re ready to start broadening that conversation by sharing resources, informing development opportunities, and planning for the Drake University Learning Symposium (save the date: Aug. 18, the theme will be Returning).

Here are just a couple of resources we’ve found useful, in thinking through the past two years, with thanks especially to Dan Chibnall, Clayton Mitchell, and Carrie Dunham-Lagree for their work in annotating a giant bibliography of these offerings.

One of the first things many of the resources point out is the fact that we’ve all lived through trauma—and that collective trauma will show up in the way we work together as faculty and staff, and in the ways that our students enter our offices and classrooms.  I hope it is becoming clear that members of the Deputy Provost team are working from a trauma-informed perspective, trying to focus on steps 2, 3, and 5 from the University of Wisconsin’s helpful website: we’ve been working to build community by offering intellectually stimulating gatherings with lots of hospitality (read: pastries and good coffee/tea); by recognizing and amplifying the good work of our faculty and staff (more on that, soon – I’ve been gathering data about our internal grant awardees to share with the community); and by encouraging “small things” like stepping back for self care and connecting on the Bulldog Mile. I’d love to hear your thoughts about how to do more, and better, to achieve these aims.

We know the pandemic has had an impact on the scholarly and creative lives of all faculty—with a disproportionate negative impact on women-identifying professors.  But, do we know how the pandemic affected the worklife of our students? How has it changed employers’ needs for skills and mindsets of the undergraduate students we are sending to the workforce?  The Chronicle of Higher Education has a great on demand video series covering these kinds of questions.

As we move through the next six months, returning in various ways to a more familiar rhythm of academic life, let’s promise to continue to think about, learn from, and grow into using the lessons of exceptionally recent events.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost