Students utilizing Drake’s Tuition Waiver benefit for undergraduate degree programs in the Fall 2022 or Spring 2023 semesters are required to complete the 2022–2023 FAFSA before July 1, 2022. See Drake’s Tuition Waiver Policy for more details.

Employees should complete the Tuition Waiver Application for each semester that the employee or eligible dependent wishes to utilize this benefit.

— Ryan Zantingh, Director of Financial Aid

As we head into the final week of classes, those of us in the Office of the Deputy Provost want to say thanks to our faculty and our staff who are teaching. This semester, as we’ve crept toward what might be a ‘return’ to something-like-it-used-to-be, has been—by all accounts I’ve heard—a difficult joy. Faculty have worked hard to maintain a challenging and supportive learning environment, to meet our students’ academic needs while tending to their—and our—needs for well-being and community.  Our students achieved so much this year, across all of our disciplines, and it is because of the tremendous effort and care from our faculty.

So, as you prepare to write finals, grade papers and presentations, watch performances and assess your students’ work, please know how much you are appreciated.

One of the professional and personal mantras I engage is the phrase, “always begin again,” which I take to mean: always be willing to return with an attitude of beginning.  As I plan development opportunities for next academic year, I do so having learned from you this year—what engages, what falls flat, what is too big an ask, and what is just right.  I know that our faculty (9- and 12- month) take that learning with you as you plan your fall courses—and I’ll feel the solidarity as we plan, this summer, together, to return yet again in the fall with an Aug. 18 Learning Symposium on the theme of Return.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

Several opportunities are closing in the coming weeks.

1) The last chance for you to send your students to the Writing Workshop is May 8.

2) The last chance to sign up to attend a virtual lecture by Cathy Davidson on Wednesday, May 4, at 7 p.m. is …. right now (by 5 p.m. on Tuesday,  May 3).

3) The last chance to register for a May Faculty Development workshop (May 18– 20) on the theme Meeting Our Students Where They Are, is Friday, May 6.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

Mental Health First Aid is an international, evidence-based program that teaches people to identify, understand and respond to signs and symptoms of mental health and substance use challenges. Just as CPR helps you assist an individual having a heart attack, Mental Health First Aid helps you assist someone experiencing a mental health or substance use-related crisis. In the Mental Health First Aid course, you learn risk factors and warning signs for mental health and substance use-related concerns, strategies for how to help someone in both crisis and non-crisis situations, and where to turn for help. If interested in taking this course, please contact Sarah Grady (sarah.grady@drake.edu) or Christine Urish (christine.urish@drake.edu). We’ll be offering a MHFA course on Thursday, June 2.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

June 13–16, 2022, the Honors Program will offer an Honors Teaching Workshop which will meet from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (or longer if participants would like) each of these days. This workshop is for anyone who is interested in teaching Honors courses in the future and would like to be part of a community working through some of the most recent work on most effective practices for student learning.  The workshop is limited to 10 participants who will receive stipends for their time.

The purpose of this workshop is multifold.  Primarily, to encourage and prepare participants to teach more courses that will count for Honors.  Additonally, to create a community of instructors and to further each participant’s thinking about pedagogy as informed by some of the most recent (as well as some of the classic) work in the field.

Honors courses at Drake are not exclusively for Honors students and many are cross-listed within departments (and thus count toward major/minor/concentration requirements).  The defining characteristics of Honors courses are

(i) Discussion dependent: in the classroom, students are primary contributors to each other’s learning

(ii) Broadly interdisciplinary: putting into conversation disciplines which are not routinely in conversation with each other – ideally, the arts, humanities, social science and natural/physical sciences are included along with attention to professional fields.  The ideal rarely happens but the goal is to accustom students to working with different disciplines even those where they are not experts and to accustom students to talking with people who do not have shared vocabularies

(iii) Capped at 20: to make healthy discussion routinely possible

(iv) Writing intensive: critical thinking and communication skills are fundamental to learners growth and we know that routine writing improves both of these.

Another unofficial common characteristic of Honors Courses is that the instructor is a co-learner with the students. Of course, the instructor is a more experienced learner and has expertise that shouldn’t be ignored, but instructors visibly participating in the practice of learning is identified by many Honors students as important to them.

Prior to the workshop, I will send out a list of possible books to read together and ask participants to identify which books they’d like to work through together.  The Honors Program will purchase for participants books that are not available electronically through Cowles.

Please email Jennifer McCrickerd (Jennifer.mccrickerd@drake.edu), director of the Honors Program, and Charlene Skidmore (Charlene.skidmore@drake.edu), assistant director of the Honors Program, to express interest or ask any questions you may have.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost