The session where experienced J-Term instructors will share their experiences and advice with those who are teaching J-Term for the first time in 2019 and those who are thinking about teaching J-Term in 2020 or beyond focused on travel seminars will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, Nov. 14, from 2:15 to 3:15 p.m. in the Drake International Conference Room, 1215 25^th Street.

Art Sanders, Associate Provost

Drake International’s “Engage with Drake’s International Partners” Breakfast & Fair,” is on Thursday, Nov. 15, from 8–9:30 a.m. in Levitt Hall. This is an opportunity for faculty and staff to stop by and learn about Drake’s international partnerships directly from our international colleagues and Drake faculty who are engaged with those partners.

Art Sanders, Associate Provost

The Contemplative Practices in Teaching and Learning Group will meet tomorrow, Wednesday, Nov. 14, at noon in Collier Scripps, Room 120. The purpose of this meeting is to have an overview of contemplative practices in higher education and set our goals and intentions (for this group and in general) for the spring semester.

Art Sanders, Associate Provost

On an average day, about 206,000 malicious emails are sent to drake.edu addresses, comprising nearly 80% of all the email sent to campus. Today’s attacks are also more sophisticated than ever. That’s why we continuously work to educate faculty, staff, and students how to avoid these attacks designed to convince us to give away our information.

We’ll be distributing another phishing education scenario soon. These phishing email look-alikes provide information about how to spot malicious emails and allow us to introduce you to the ever-changing types of attacks in a risk-free environment.

When you encounter email you don’t recognize, always slow down and look carefully for red flags that give away its intent before acting. Suspicious emails can be reported by going to https://drake.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/Requests/ServiceDet?ID=17310

Peter Lundstedt, ITS

An objective of Drake’s Continuous Improvement Plan is to ”Elevate Service Excellence”. The Survey of Administrative Services directly supports our continuous improvement in this area.

This fall, the survey was issued to all faculty and staff with the focus on Finance, Public Safety, Human Resources (HR), Facilities Planning and Management (FPM), Information Technology Services (ITS), and University Communications and Marketing.

This feedback helps all of us understand where service gaps may exist and how to improve our services to the University.

Survey respondents provided largely positive feedback about FPM services. Responses were provided on a five-point scale, with five being the highest.

Satisfaction with FPM staff – Total Average 4.30 (4.41 last year)

Respondents assessed their satisfaction with FPM staff including their courtesy, professionalism, knowledge, timeliness, resolution of issues and communication regarding work orders and projects. Satisfaction with FPM staff was generally high.

Satisfaction with FPM support and services – Total Average 4.26 (4.40 last year)

Respondents assessed their satisfaction with FPM support and services including custodial, grounds maintenance, snow removal, moving, cooling and heating, painting, construction, carpentry, trash/recycle, keys/locks, and plumbing. Satisfaction with FPM support and services was generally high for keys/locks (4.67), ground maintenance (4.49)), painting (4.41)), and plumbing (4.38). However, lowest for trash/recycle (3.72) and cooling and heating (3.87).

The preservation of historic buildings can be demanding when upgrading the mechanical systems. It is our goal to heat and cool to establish a comfortable environment, but understand the capacity of the system along with individual preferences. The same holds true maintaining sustainable practices with regards to our impact on landfills. Moving forward we promise to service all needs on campus through collaboration and communication.

Overall satisfaction—Total Average 4.09 (4.27 last year)

Overall satisfaction is above average, but FPM still has room for improvement.

In reviewing the data and reflecting on the comments provided by the respondents, FPM has concluded that:

It is our goal to remain consistent over time with the above benchmarks. While strong ratings were seen in FPM, we are actively developing strategies to improve our services and overall quality.

Over the coming year, FPM makes the following commitments.

FPM will:

1. Ensure that FPM meet the promised response and resolution timeframes.

2. Collaborate to find reasonable and supportable long-term solutions.

3. Strive to understand issues and requests before beginning work.

4. Confirm the request was completed to satisfaction.

5. Improve communication related to work order requests and projects.

6. Work as a team to provide facility-related services on behalf of Drake.

In the following months, FPM will being working on updating our website to better deliver communications. This, coupled with more direct reporting, we anticipate that we can booster our lower administrative service areas. Watch OnCampus and the FP website for more information.

Kevin Moran, Executive Director Facilities Planning and Management

The recording of President Martin’s Town Hall presentation from Monday, Nov. 5, is available here. The video provides a great deal of useful information about the current state of higher education and Drake’s response.

Please note: The presentation is for internal audiences only.

Nate Reagen, Office of the President