All posts by Michelle Laughlin

For Faculty Archive, For Staff Archive

New Access and Success Office

Student Disability Services and Academic Achievement have joined together to launch the new Access & Success office. This resource-neutral approach will yield increased capacity, allow for more proactive intervention, and support sustainable collaboration to best serve students. Access and Success will clear a pathway for the campus community to get students connected to needed resources.

Access and Success will serve all Drake students and focus on a holistic, wellness centered approach. In addition to disability services and peer tutoring, other resources may include, but are not limited to, academic coaching appointments, webinars, and workshops.You can quickly and easily connect your students to these resources by making an access and success referral in Starfish.

If you host a webpage or maintain any pdf resources that link to Academic Achievement, please note the URL will change on Feb. 1 to drake.edu/access-success.

— Michelle Laughlin, Access and Success

HR Information Archive

Attention health plan participants with out-of-state dependents

If you elected coverage for your dependents who reside out-of-state, you must contact Wellmark Customer Service (800-362-2230) to request a guest membership in Drake’s Health Plan. You will also need to designate an out-of-state primary care provider for your dependents to ensure access to in-network benefits. Your dependents may locate in-network Blue Card providers by calling 800-810-BLUE or visiting the National Doctor and Hospital Finder at bcbs.com. Should you have questions about this process, please contact Wellmark Customer Service at 800-362-2230.

— Marlene Heuertz, Human Resources

Campus Announcements Archive

Be sure you’re logged into eduroam with your Drake email

Although we’ve always encouraged logging into our eduroam campus wireless network using your Drake email address, it wasn’t required. This changed on Dec. 1, 2020. You must now use your Drake email address to log into the eduroam network. This network setting was changed to better maintain our network and ensure credentials are passed properly to access eduroam at other affiliated institutions.

In October, we sent emails to everyone who was logging into eduroam using their Drake ID. If you received this email and haven’t made this change, you’ll first need to forget the eduroam network on any device where you are connected. See Forgetting a Wireless Network (How-To). Once that is done, please connect to eduroam again and log in using your Drake email address.

Need a reminder on how to log into eduroam? Follow the instructions at Connecting to the eduroam Wireless Network (How-to).

If you have been working, learning, or teaching entirely remotely, you’ll need to make this change when you return to the Drake campus.

— Carla Herling, ITS

HR Information Archive

Inspirational speaker series kicks off Feb. 3

The National Association on Mental Illness (NAMI) Greater Des Moines chapter, has put together a new speaker series featuring some of the top motivational speakers in the country. Each of these virtual webinars are free. Their opening event will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 3, at 12 p.m. Check out the details and register for the speaker series.

This six-part speaker series is part of a free webinar series from NAMI in 2021. Topics range from managing stress and understanding seasonal affective disorder to problem solving and PTSD. Their goal is to ensure that mental health services and supports are readily accessible to everyone in need.

— Linda Feiden, Human Resources

Campus Announcements Archive

New Panopto app available

Panopto has released a completely updated version of its mobile app for Android and iOS devices. This replaces the existing app that you may already have downloaded.
 
The new version is available for free download from either the Apple App Store or Google Play.
 
Visit the IT service portal guides to learn more about using Panopto video.
 
— James McNab, ITS
For Faculty Archive, For Staff Archive

New portal to support online teaching

Drake Online & Continuing Education has worked with ITS, including Academic Emerging Technologies (AET), to develop a new service for faculty and instructors developing and teaching online classes. A new portal has been established in TeamDynamix for service requests related to online teaching. Faculty and instructors can choose between two services: Online Course Consultation and Online Course Issues. Consultation is focused on helping faculty who are developing a course. Course Issues is for instructors experiencing technical issues in their online classes. In addition, we will be building a library of knowledge base articles to support online teaching throughout the next year.

The portal is live and faculty can begin requesting assistance immediately.

For Faculty Archive, For Staff Archive

Join the WellPower Challenge

Are you looking for a way to keep your fitness goals on track in 2021?  The WellPower Challenge may be for you.

This free web-based program encourages you to increase your daily physical activity with an opportunity to earn virtual badges and prizes for achieving and logging healthy activities, both physical and mental.  The challenge is part of the WellPower Movement, a new year-round activity-tracking website from the Wellbeing Partners and the Nebraska Sports Council.  The web portal content is focused on Nebraska organizations, but the WellPower Challenge is open to companies and organizations in Iowa and Nebraska.

The goal of the WellPower Challenge is to log at least 100 activity miles between Feb. 1 and April 30.  Activity miles can be achieved by walking, running, biking, and/or converting other physical and mental health activities.  Those who log 100 miles by April 30 earn the WellPower 100 badge and will be entered into a drawing for more than 100 top-tier prizes. Prizes will also be awarded for earning 25- and 50-mile badges.

You may join individually or invite friends, family, and co-workers and compete as a group.

For more information, please email linda.feiden@drake.edu.

— Linda Feiden, Human Resources

HR Information Archive

New out-of-state work policy

Drake has developed a new policy establishing a mandatory University-wide process for securing approval for all employee out-of-state work arrangements; this policy applies to all part-time and full-time faculty and staff of the University.  All interested members of the Drake community are encouraged to review and comment on these policy revisions by Feb. 15.

— Jessica Morgan-Tate, Finance & Administration

Campus Announcements Archive

COVID-19 Vaccine Survey: Responses needed

The Student College of Clinical Pharmacy (SCCP), Drake chapter, needs your help with a survey concerning COVID-19 vaccine confidence and barriers. The survey consists of 20–25 questions that will gather your thoughts on the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as some pertinent demographic information. Please complete the survey, which should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Thank you for helping us be #DrakeTogether.

— Andrew Miesner, College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences