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.

Cowles Library donates its outdated books to Better World Books, a third party bookseller, to sell them online. In addition to getting these books in the hands of people who want them, we, and a charity of our choice, each receive a percentage of the sale price (which we use to purchase new books). Cowles Library has designated “Room to Read” as the organization that will benefit from sales of our outdated books. In addition to a monetary donation, Better World Book donates a book for each book sold. In this year alone, both Cowles and Room to Read have each received approximately $2,779 from these sales.

Room to Read is a nonprofit organization whose focus is on literacy and gender equality in education. This organization works with communities and local governments across Asia and Africa to develop literacy skills, to support girls to complete secondary school. More information about Room to Read is available at www.roomtoread.org/

—Claudia Frazer, Professor of Librarianship and Coordinator of Digital Initiatives Library

Jeff Karnicky publishes book
The University of Nebraska Press has released Jeff Karnicky’s book Scarlet Experiment: Birds and Humans in America, an investigation of the intersections among environmental control policy, ornithology, and literature. The book—explicitly written “for the birds”—focuses on cultural, scientific, literary contexts shaping human interactions with five species of birds in North America: the blue jay; the European starling; the red knot; the Canada goose; and the titmouse (both black-crested and tufted). In Scarlet Experiment, Karnicky, associate professor of English, uses his experience as a birdwatcher and bird enthusiast as the starting point for examining the larger ethical and ideological implications of how we conceptualize our avian neighbors as both individuals (friends, pets, and so on) and as populations (to be counted, studied, and managed), arguing that even our most pedestrian interactions with birds are shaped by layers of cultural, scientific, historical, and personal meanings.

Karnicky teaches courses in contemporary literature and critical theory. Scarlet Experiment is Karnicky’s second book; his first, Contemporary Fiction and the Ethics of Modern Culture, was published by Palgrave-MacMillan in 2007.

John Rovers receives Principal Financial Group Global Citizenship Award
John Rovers, professor of practice in the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, recently was honored with the second annual Principal Financial Group Global Citizenship Award.

The award recognizes one Drake faculty or staff member who has made “outstanding contributions to global engagement and internationalization of the campus and curriculum.” A selection committee appointed by the provost reviews all nominations and makes an award recommendation to the provost. Read more about Rovers’ work in the Drake Newsroom.

Michael Haedicke receives award from the American Sociological Association
Michael Haedicke, associate professor of sociology, recently was selected as the recipient of a Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD) award by the American Sociological Association (ASA). Haedicke will receive $8,000 to support his research on the social and political organization of coastal restoration initiatives in southeastern Louisiana. Learn about Michael’s work in the Drake Newsroom.

We are happy to announce the fourth book of the University Book Club! We will be reading The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney this fall—a New York Times bestseller and debut novel about a spectacularly dysfunctional family and their joint trust fund, “The Nest”.

Cowles Library has a number of copies available to check out on a weekly basis (hint: ask for the book on reserve at the circulation desk). The book is also available in audio format from Audible.com, at various Des Moines-area public libraries, and Amazon.

Contact Sara Heijerman if you have any questions or interest in discussing; the face-to-face discussion session will be Oct. 17 at 4:45 at Louie’s Wine Dive. Happy reading!

—Sara Heijerman, Manager, Campus Card Office