Lynda.com is an online subscription library offered free to all Drake students, faculty, and staff that teaches the latest software, creative, and business skills through high-quality instructional videos.

With more than 3,700 courses, Lynda.com is designed for all levels of learners and is available whenever you’re ready to learn—even on your mobile device.

Benefits to using Lynda.com include:

• Unlimited access to courses on a wide variety of technologies and disciplines
• New courses added every week
• Tutorials taught by recognized industry experts
•  Access to exercise files to follow along as you learn
• Beginner to advanced courses

To get started, visit the Campus Life tab in blueView.

—Carla Herling, Information Technology Services

Drake will host a free conference examining how local, state, national, and international demographics will change in coming years. Though the theme was chosen long before the presidential election, organizers say the conference is particularly relevant in the weeks after President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order restricting immigration and travel.

The 2017 Engaged Citizen Experience Conference, “Demographic Opportunities and Challenges: Domestic and International,” will be held Friday, Feb. 24, beginning at noon in the upper level of Drake’s Olmsted Center. The event is free and open to the public; advance registration is requested via the conference website. Learn more about the conference in the Drake Newsroom.

Drake Public Safety has partnered with the 911 Cell Phone Bank, a nonprofit organization providing emergency-only cell phones to those who otherwise may not have access to an emergency line when it matters most. If you have an unused cell phone you would like to donate to help those in need, please drop it off at the Public Safety Office.

—Brett Niederhauser, Drake Public Safety

The Group X program has added a couple new classes this semester. Come check out Step & Sculpt on Fridays at 12:15 p.m. and the Walking Group on Thursdays at 12:15 p.m.

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 11 a.m.–1 p.m.: Recipes from Home Lunch in Hubbell Dining

Please share with us your favorite recipes from home. We will choose several to feature during our lunch on Feb. 21! If your recipe is selected, you will also receive two meal tickets to lunch that day to share with family! Please email your recipe by Feb. 3 to jennifer.bowersox@drake.edu, along with the  following information: Recipe name, recipe (ingredients, directions), a little about this recipe.

—Jennifer Bowersox, Sodexo

To all students, faculty, and staff:

As part of our continuing effort to keep the campus community informed about safety matters, we are notifying you that Drake Public Safety has received reports of three burglaries in Drake-owned real estate properties and two incidents of suspicious activity that have occurred since November—with three occurrences during J-Term. All of these incidents involved doors that were broken or found open. These incidents have also been reported to the Des Moines Police Department, which is investigating.

While it is true that most crimes on and around our campus involving members of the Drake community are crimes of opportunity, in these recent cases we have had break-ins to unoccupied—i.e. the tenants were not home—or vacant homes. As a reminder, if you arrive at home and suspect someone has broken in, do not enter the premises, but call the Des Moines Police Department and Public Safety and wait for assistance.

If you or friends are the victim of a crime, please immediately make a  report to Drake Public Safety (271-2222) and the Des Moines Police Department (911).

In addition, here are some links to helpful safety tips:

Personal Safety
Protecting Your Stuff

As a reminder, we strongly suggest that you download the Drake Guardian App and use the Safe Ride Bus for additional safety on and around campus.

—Scott Law, Public Safety

University Communications, ITS, and the Office of Admission have been preparing new templates for top-level content management system (CMS) web pages (mainly those that can be reached directly from Drake’s homepage), including a new homepage design for www.drake.edu.

The new designs are scheduled to go live on Feb.  4. In preparation for this launch, a publishing freeze will be put in place the prior day to prepare the templates and migrate data. The CMS will still be available to make edits and prepare content as normal, but during this period, changes will not get pushed out to the live site. There will not be any downtime for the public website, only in having updates published.

This will only affect web content that is managed in the Terminal Four (T4) CMS. Other Drake sites that utilize alternate systems such as WordPress will not be effected.

The publishing freeze will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 2, through 8 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 4.

If you have any questions please contact Jeremy Sievers at jeremy.sievers@drake.edu (x2795).

—Jeremy Sievers, University Communications

A revised add/drop form is now available for students to download online. This form replaces the half-sheet, carbon-copy add/drop form, which is considered obsolete as of the Spring 2017 semester.

Like the previous form, the revised form may be used for students to request and receive permission to add or drop a class after the semester has begun. Students must use the form to obtain signatures from various officials, including the instructor of the class, and submit the form to their college/school dean’s office.

Please be aware that dean’s offices and academic departments may no longer have hard-copy versions of this form available in their offices now that the form is available online.

Best wishes to all of you as we begin the spring semester.

—Kevin Moenkhaus, Student Records and Academic Information

Back in September, Facilities Planning and Management (FPM) prepared a list of future deferred maintenance projects for the campus. I am excited to announce FPM has purchased a new chiller for the east chiller loop of the campus and work will begin Jan. 23. The funding for this project was made possible from a onetime allowance from the Board of Trustees for decreasing the backlog of deferred maintenance on the campus.

The chiller project will begin with demolition of the old chiller and the cooling tower. During February, work will include structural steel install, electrical work, and new piping installs. The new chiller and cooling tower will be delivered on Feb. 28. The cooling tower startup is scheduled for March 22. The chiller start up is scheduled for April 19.

This will cause some issues in the loading dock and small parking lot located at the north end of the Harmon Fine Arts Center. A crane will be used to unload and set the new equipment, and a dumpster will be in same area for construction debris. Please email me with any concerns or issues during the completion of this project: jolene.schmidt@drake.edu

—Jolene Schmidt, Director of Operations & Support Services