Ray Center endorses Debate Standards
The Robert D. and Billie Ray Center joined the National Institute for Civil Discourse this week in calling on the presidential debate moderators to adopt a set of Debate Standards designed to ensure that the 2016 Presidential Debates are fair, informative, and civil. More than 60 organizations signed on to the debate standards, which include guidelines for moderators, the audience, and the candidates themselves.

Show Some Respect—a civility initiative led by The Ray Center, the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines, Interfaith Alliance of Iowa, and the Greater Des Moines Partnership—also signed onto the debate standards, released nationally on Sept. 15. Learn more about the standards and the work of The Ray Center in The Drake Newsroom.

U.S. News & World Report rankings
U.S. News & World Report has ranked Drake University third for overall quality among universities in the Midwest.

The organization’s Best Colleges 2017 rankings, released today, placed Drake among the top colleges for excellence for military veterans. Nationwide, only four of the 653 universities in Drake’s rankings category had a higher peer-generated ranking for academic quality; five universities have an equivalent peer ranking.

Drake falls into U.S. News’ largest category of regional universities, which the publication subcategorizes by universities in the North, South, Midwest, and West. The category includes universities which award at least 50 percent of degrees in the liberal arts disciplines and which award both undergraduate degrees and master’s degrees. Learn more in the Drake Newsroom.

Students present award-winning research
Two Drake students won first place at an Iowa State University neuroscience competition for research aimed at slowing the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

Hayley LeBlanc, a senior neuroscience and psychology major from Leawood, Kan., and Alyson Williamson, a P3 pharmacy student from Colfax, Iowa, won first place in a poster presentation competition at Iowa State’s Neuroscience Research Day on Sept. 17.

Their research, titled “Study of Daily Genistein Ingestion on Spatial Memory and Olfaction in Triple Transgenic Alzheimer’s Mice,” earned top marks over 27 other posters displayed at the research conference. Read more about their research in the Drake Newsroom.