All posts by Linda Feiden

For Faculty Archive, For Staff Archive

Time to play HealthyU BINGO

Join us in July for HealthyU BINGO.  The goal is to fill up a blank BINGO card (or two), during the month, with healthy activities completed from a provided list.  Then, in August, we will get together to play games of HealthyU BINGO for prizes.

You are welcome to fill out the HealthyU BINGO card without playing the BINGO games, but who doesn’t like playing BINGO!

To get started, send an email to linda.feiden@drake.edu. Deadline to register is Thursday, June 30.  All participants will receive an email with an attached packet that includes directions, a list of HealthyU BINGO activities, and a blank BINGO card.  You are welcome to make multiple copies of this card.

Please feel free to reach out with questions.  This is a great event for the whole family!

— Linda Feiden, Human Resources

Campus Announcements Archive, For Faculty Archive

Deputy Provost 2:10: Megan Brown named director of Writing Workshop

Each Tuesday in OnCampus the Deputy Provost shares two articles with a read time of 10 minutes.

Please welcome Professor Megan Brown into an additional new role at Drake University—director of writing.  Starting July 1 as director of writing, Professor Brown will oversee and advise the work of our Drake student tutors in the Writing Workshop; she will also convene and participate in faculty development around the teaching and evaluation of writing across the disciplines.

Megan has taught writing across a variety of settings, and with diverse populations, for more than twenty years, and we are fortunate to have her as both a professor of English and a founding faculty member of the John Dee Bright College.  She is the author of two books, and a dozen articles and essays; at Drake, Megan teaches a range of writing-related courses, including Narrative Nonfiction.

We are thrilled that she will bring her expertise to the Writing Workshop, as well as her commitment to building rapport and community with students and faculty, in the belief that we can all develop our writing skills and capacities.

— Renée Ann Cramer, Deputy Provost

For Faculty Archive

Deputy Provost 2:10: Big announcements for faculty, academic year 2022–2023

Each Tuesday in OnCampus the Deputy Provost shares two articles with a read time of 10 minutes.

Interdisciplinary Intergenerational Faculty Mentoring Cohorts! The office of the deputy provost will provide a bit of training, small stipends, organizational support, and money for hospitality to assistant, associate, and full faculty who volunteer to be part of mentoring cohorts for and with our incoming class of new faculty.  I’m spending the summer organizing the groups – and would love to have you volunteer (if you’ve already emailed, you’re on my list – but I’m still seeking more people to join us).  Email me at renee.cramer@drake.edu with “Mentoring” in the subject line, and I’ll reach out in late July/early August.

Getting Ready to Hire Center for Teaching Excellence Director! After spending a year getting my arms around the newly configured role of deputy provost, I’m ready to begin building out the Center for Teaching Excellence.  In early August, I will circulate a call for CTE Director with details about duties and compensation.  As a preview: the role will begin January 1, and the term will be for three years, with renewal upon review, for up to two terms.  In the fall of 2022, the incoming CTE director will attend the POD Network in person workshop in Seattle, as part of professional development in advance of taking on the role.

I’m making this announcement now so that interested faculty can begin to think about applying.  Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have, prior to the announcement of the position.

— Renée Ann Cramer, Deputy Provost

News & Achievements Archive

Iowa Supreme Court Justice Brent Appel to join Law School faculty

Drake University Law School is pleased to announce that Iowa Supreme Court Justice Brent Appel will join the full-time faculty upon his retirement from the Court at the end of July. He will teach Professional Responsibility and State Constitutional Law, in addition to seminars and other courses.

“We are so honored to welcome Justice Appel to our faculty,” said Drake Law Dean Jerry Anderson. “He has been a brilliant jurist and will draw on a wealth of experience both on the bench and in the courtroom. In addition to his impressive resume, Justice Appel has served as an adjunct professor and as supervisor and mentor for our Supreme Court interns.  We’re thrilled that he has such a passion for teaching and helping to train future generations of lawyers.”

“I look forward to the exciting opportunity to be part of the Drake Law community and to this new chapter in my professional career.” said Appel.

Justice Appel was appointed to the Iowa Supreme Court in 2006. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University, and his JD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he served on the board of editors of the California Law Review. During his time at Berkeley Law, he won the McBaine Moot Court competition and the Jamieson Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Advocacy. After graduation, Appel clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He then served as first assistant attorney general and then as deputy attorney general of Iowa from 1979 to 1986. During this time, he argued and briefed four cases before the United States Supreme Court. At the time of his appointment to the Iowa Supreme Court in 2006, he was a partner at Wandro, Baer & Appel in Des Moines, where his practice focused on commercial litigation, employment law and personal injury.

In 2010, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Appel to the Federal Advisory Committee on the Rules of Evidence, where he served until 2016. In 2022, Appel received The Iowa State Bar Association’s Rolland E. Grefe Pro Bono Publico Award for his leadership in advocating for access to justice for all Iowans throughout his career, and for his outstanding work as the chair of the Iowa Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission since it was formed in 2016.

— Theresa Howard, Law School

Campus Announcements Archive

Action items in Self Service starting July 1

A new feature in Banner Self Service is coming July 1. Action items will alert you to tasks you need to take care of. The first action item you’ll see starting July 1 is the student financial responsibility agreement. A few other examples of action items include entry of local address and entry or update of emergency contact information.  These and more action items will be implemented and assigned as their setup work is complete.

Some action items will halt other processes. For example, a student financial responsibility agreement action item will need to be completed in order to view your current schedule or register for classes.

Please review Using Action Items in Self Service (How-to) for details on viewing and completing action items.

For questions about the student financial responsibility agreement action item, please email stuacct@drake.edu.

— Julia Gwebu, Student Account Services; Kris Brewster, ITS

Campus Announcements Archive

Self Service/Banner planned outage June 30 at 4:30 p.m.

Due to required maintenance for the end of the fiscal year, Admin Pages, Touchnet, and portions of Self Service will be unavailable between 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 30, and lasting until 12:01 a.m. on Friday, July 1. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

If you experience issues outside of this window, please call the Support Center at 515–271–3001 or visit https://service.drake.edu to report your issue. Thank you for your patience as we continue to strive to provide superior service.

— Heather Travis, Finance

For Faculty Archive, For Staff Archive

Travel policy effective July 1

Finance has completed a periodic review and update to its existing policies. As part of that review, a comprehensive travel policy is being implemented and will become effective July 1, 2022.

The policy combines and replaces two previously existing policies titled Accounts Payable Guidelines and Group Travel. The purpose of the policy is to provide guidance for expenses incurred while traveling on University business. It is intended to comply with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations and the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) definition of an Accountable Plan.

Starting this Thursday, June 30, the travel policy will be available for public review and comment on the Policies under Review webpage. The policy will be posted for comment for two weeks. Please take a moment to review the policy.

— Heather Travis, Finance

For Faculty Archive, For Staff Archive

Coming soon: Drake’s new applicant tracking system

As some of you already know, Drake’s current applicant tracking system (ATS), Hire Touch, is being sunset by the parent company at the end of this year. Drake HR vetted a number of platforms as a possible replacement. We are thrilled to share that our new ATS will be supported by PageUp.

PageUp has a well-established and impressive presence in higher education. Through their platform, we will be able to configure the public facing job page to reflect Drake’s brand in new and better ways than ever before. We will enjoy a more user-friendly design—for both external (applicants) and internal (HR and hiring managers) users. We will also have better ways to run reports and track data—which will help support our efforts to modernize our recruitment practices and strategies.

We are trying to come up with a clever name for the jobs page (and how we refer to it), rather than relying on the vendor name (Drake Careers, Jobs@Drake, something like this). If you have any catchy or clever suggestions, please feel free to share them! If we select your suggestion, we’ll buy you lunch and give you bragging rights over the new name! Send your ideas to drakehr@drake.edu.

As mentioned, we will have some latitude in how we configure the look of the jobs page through PageUp. If you are curious about what the public facing jobs board could look like, here are several examples of other institutions of higher education already using this vendor:

The project team is working on the transition to the new ATS (big shout out to ITS for being amazing partners in this endeavor!), which will likely go live sometime between late September and early November. We need to be off Hire Touch completely by the end of the calendar year.

If you have questions or comments about this transition, please reach out to drakehr@drake.edu.

— Maureen De Armond, Human Resources

Campus Announcements Archive

Parking passes for sale starting July 1

Fall parking permit sales for the upcoming academic year begin July 1.  Log into myDrake and select “Parking Tag Registration” to register for your pass. Please make sure to have your license plate number at the time of purchase, as it will be needed for registration.

There have been a few small adjustments to the parking permit system.  In an effort to provide more economical parking spaces to campus, we have converted the Stadium parking lot (formerly green) to a perimeter parking lot (now purple).  The price for perimeter parking lots has not changed, and there will be more spaces available for purchase at the $125 rate.

Permits will be available on a first come, first serve basis, and we ask that all permit sales be done online. The payroll deduct process can also be completed online, and is now available to full-time, benefit-eligible part-time, and adjunct employees. Credit/debit card is also accepted for any pass purchase.

Resident passes: $395 (24/7 parking)

Premium passes: $280 (yellow, Olmsted lot; red, Ray Promenade lots)

Perimeter passes: $125 (all orange and purple lots)

Evening/Weekend passes: $100 (valid from 4:30 p.m. to 2 a.m., Monday through Friday, and all day on weekends)

Passes are valid from August to August, and will be available to pick up in the Student Services Center (Olmsted) in August.

Please visit drake.edu/map to see where the lots are located, and contact studentservices@drake.edu for questions.

— Sara Heijerman, Student Services Center

For Faculty Archive, For Staff Archive

Seeking home hosts for dinner with international visitors from Africa

Global Engagement is seeking families to provide home-hosted dinners for the 2022 Mandela Washington Fellows

The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is the flagship program of the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). The Fellows, between the ages of 25 and 35, are accomplished innovators and leaders in their communities and countries. Drake University is proud to host 25 Fellows from across sub-Saharan Africa for a six-week program June 8–July 17, 2022.

A key component of the program is home-hosted dinners, which provides a great opportunity to welcome the Fellows to Des Moines and showcase our amazing, supportive Drake community! We are seeking home hosts for 1-5 Fellows on the following dates. Home hosts will be asked to pick up their Fellow(s) from Drake West Village at 6 p.m., have dinner together, and drop them back off later that evening.

  • Sunday, June 19th
  • Sunday, June 26th
  • Thursday, June 30th

Please complete this brief Qualtrics form if you are interested in being a home host family!

— Hannah Sappenfield, Global Engagement