In December, Drake’s All Staff Council Recognition Committee celebrated staff in Drake’s Office of Admission with a cookie delivery. Here, we learn more about this team of 23 staff members, 39 students, and one very special canine.

Mission: “Our mission is to recruit diverse learners from domestic and international markets for both undergraduate and graduate programs”—Keith Summerville, Deputy Provost, the Windsor Professor of Environmental Science

Staff members: 23, with two more yet to be hired

Student employees: 39 (29 Student Ambassadors who give tours, 10 with administrative duties)

Longest-time employee: A tie between Jo Arbuckle, associate director of admission (32 years) and Leslie Mamoorian, associate director, international and graduate admission, who has been at Drake for 38 years, 32 of them with admission

Newest team member: Another tie! Admission counselors Maggie Coleman and Adriana Slaughter started in September 2016.

Where they travel:
In U.S.: Recruitment is heavily concentrated in the Midwest—Iowa, Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Omaha, and St. Louis—but counselors also regularly travel to Indiana, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Colorado, with some recent trips to California, Arkansas, New York, Connecticut, and Michigan.
Internationally: Two international counselors (Leslie Mamoorian and Carrie Lewis) travel all over the world, including Malaysia, China, Mongolia, Chile, Israel, Jordan, Honduras, Panama, and Zimbabwe.

News/initiatives/accomplishments

• Recently welcomed new leadership: Anne Kremer (dean of admission) and Keith Summerville (deputy provost).
• Griff, Drake’s live mascot, “works” in Cole Hall every Friday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., greeting and doing photo ops with visitors. He has a dog bed for naps underneath the visitor check-in desk, and a trained student “Griff handler” attends to his every need.
• Began offering targeted campus visit days customized to specific majors or college/schools, including Politics Day, Project Teach, Business BlueChip Expo, STEM@Drake Day, Health Professionals Day, Journalism and Mass Communications Day, and more.
• They went mobile—campus visitors can now register or view confirmation details about campus visit programs through the Guidebook App.
• Moved/centralized graduate admission from colleges/schools to the Admission office.
• Launched the Tuition Guarantee and Drake Commitment.
• Implementing Slate, a content management system to help with recruitment management.

Let’s hear it for Drake’s admission team, who works tirelessly days, nights, and weekends—from Arizona to Zimbabwe—to share the Drake story with new Bulldogs.

—Jill Brimeyer, University Communications, All Staff Council