This past spring, the Faculty Senate created an ad hoc committee focused on a review of Drake’s ability to be a student-ready institution and ways the campus community can play a role in achieving this goal. If you are not familiar with the term, a student-ready institution provides holistic support to its students and restructures systems to support student needs.

Also, this past spring, the ad hoc committee met with campus stakeholders and assessed university systems and faculty and staff practices related to this area to understand where we are. While this helped us develop a picture of Drake’s current practices, WE NEED YOUR HELP. As staff play a key role in helping students succeed at Drake, we need to better understand what you are doing and what improvements you feel can be made to achieve the goal of being a student-ready institution.

This sessions will gather your insight into how we currently are and, in the future, can do better to support our students and effectively prepare them for both academic success and future careers.

Please note that for efficiency, artificial intelligence will be used during the meetings to record and transcribe the discussions. The findings from staff focus groups will be combined with data from corresponding student and faculty focus groups to generate a comprehensive report outlining ways actionable changes and best practices for faculty and suggestions for institutional system modifications to make Drake a more student-ready institution.

Meetings will be held on the following dates/times and you can sign up for these meetings via the links provided:

Tuesday, September 22nd, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., Johansen Room 301: https://calendly.com/maria-valdovinos-drake/ad-hoc-student-ready-institution-focus-group-staff1

Monday, September 28th, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., Library Room 201: https://calendly.com/maria-valdovinos-drake/ad-hoc-student-ready-institution-focus-group-staff2

— Maria Valdovinos, Professor of Psychology