The Office of Student Financial Planning is hosting a retirement open house for Susan Ladd, director of financial aid, tomorrow, July 11, from 2–4 p.m. in the Carnegie Hall lobby. Susan is retiring after 26 years of serving students, families, faculty, and staff at Drake University. She has held many roles over the years, including graduate assistant, assistant director, associate director, and university project manager for the Drake ERP (Banner) implementation. Additionally, she has served on numerous committees. Her official last day of employment was July 2. Please join us to celebrate her service and wish her well.

— Christine Ditter, Student Financial Planning

The Des Moines metro was hit with catastrophic flash flooding on Saturday, June 30. Drake’s campus was one of the many locations affected. The lower levels of more than 30 buildings on campus were impacted as the rapid rainfall led to power outages and overflowing storm sewers.

Facilities, Planning, and Management (FPM) has been working with the University’s insurance agent and cleanup and repair teams to assess the damage. Faculty and staff whose workspaces were affected, and will need to be temporarily relocated, were already notified by FPM. Faculty and staff who have questions, can contact Kelly Foster at kelly.foster@drake.edu.

Remediation companies SRP Environmental and Service Master are on campus and will be working until the affected buildings are cleaned and restored. Please note, SRP Environmental and Service Master are operating out of G-K lots 21 and 34.

Following the cleanup process, drywall, flooring, and other building materials, including furniture, will be replaced and restored. If you have personal belongings or specific business equipment that received water damage, please have your building contact send information/inventory to Donna Blunck at donna.blunck@drake.edu.

FPM does not expect the storm to disrupt the many construction and facilities projects underway across campus. The department is working hard to address the water damage—and confident in the progress being made—all while keeping previously scheduled projects moving forward.

We look forward to welcoming faculty and students to campus next month for the start of fall semester.

— Kevin Moran, Facilities, Planning, and Management

After gathering input from campus and posting for the two-week review period, the Approval Authority Policy was presented to and approved by the Board of Trustees during their April meeting. The policy combines and replaces two previously existing policies titled Contract and Legal Service Authority and Executive Purchasing. The new policy will become effective July 1, 2018.

As a reminder, the purpose of the policy is to ensure all contracts and transactions are signed by those with the authority to obligate the University with external parties in accordance with the delegation approved by the Board of Trustees. Individuals authorized to sign contracts and transactions under this policy are expected to have the necessary information and expertise to fully understand the implications of such commitments.

The new policy is available in the University Policy Library. Please take a moment to review the Approval Authority policy.

New Payment Request Form

As we have planned for implementation of the Approval Authority Policy, we have taken the opportunity to revise the forms used to submit payment requests to accounting. A new form titled Payment Request Form will combine and replace the previously existing Direct Pay and Invoice FOAPAL form. The new form is available on the Finance & Administration Forms webpage. The use of the new Payment Request Form will be effective July 1, 2018. Please discontinue use of the Direct Pay and Invoice FOAPAL forms.

— Heather Travis, Controller

Each year, Drake Dining donates unused flex dollars to help fight hunger both locally and globally. Unused Flex money left over at the end of the year is donated to Sodexo’s Stop Hunger Foundation. The organization uses the money to help provide nutritious meals to children and support food pantry programs, food recovery programs, and community gardens. This year, the Stop Hunger Foundation awarded a grant to help the Sprout Garden construct hoop houses over the raised beds, put up signage, and seed/plant garden beds. In June, more than $32,000 of leftover flex money was donated to the Stop Hunger Foundation.

— Jennifer Bowersox, Drake Dining

For the rest of the summer, prize packs will be given out to a randomly selected participant at each GroupX class. To win, participants must be pre-registered for the class using the IMLeagues App or website. The more classes you register for and attend, the greater your chances at winning. Prizes will be given out on the following dates:

Friday, June 8
Tuesday, June 12
Monday, June 18
Wednesday June 20
Thursday, June 28

— Drake Wellness

In preparation for the launch of the new myDrake portal later this month, ITS is rolling out a new login screen for Office 365. The current screen will continue to be used for other applications including TeamDynamix and Slate. Here’s the current screen:

The new screen, shown below, will replace the current Office 365 login screen beginning tomorrow, June 13. This may result in an outage affecting logging into email between 10–11 p.m.

Office 365 is the first system to use this new login screen. Other applications will eventually be converted to the same login screen. The new login will allow for single sign-on (SSO) access. With SSO, you only have to sign in once, and your authentication is passed on to other applications without having to enter your username and password again. ITS is working toward connecting many applications, including Blackboard and the IT service portal, through SSO access.

One important change with this new system is that you have to be sure to bookmark the application that uses the login screen rather than the login screen itself. This ensures that your credentials will be passed correctly between systems.

— Carla Herling, ITS

Going somewhere fun this summer? Attackers are hoping you’ll also take a vacation from protecting your valuable accounts and personal information. Summer is traditionally high season for scamming, and this summer is shaping up to be a hot one, with active campaigns swirling around purported security incidents at trusted organizations, vacation bookings, and the World Cup.

No matter where you’re checking messages, whether at the local pool or from an exotic destination, slow down and take a closer look to make sure your plans don’t get disrupted.

Here are some indications that an email may be dangerous:

• A strange sender, or one that you don’t expect
• A request that you take ‘urgent’ or ‘immediate’ action
• Links or attachments that don’t match the message content or that you don’t recognize.

ITS will continue to send out simulated attacks to faculty and staff this summer. If you receive any email that you suspect is phishing, don’t click any links, download any attachments, or reply. Instead, forward the email as an attachment to informationsecurity@drake.edu.

Additional training will be assigned to faculty and staff members who repeatedly click links or open attachments in phishing emails, simulated or not.

For more information on how to report phishing emails, see the IT Service Portal guide, Reporting a Phishing Message (How-to).

— Peter Lundstedt, ITS