Last fall, Howard University made headlines as the victim of a ransomware attack that forced the cancellation of online and in-person classes. The Washington, DC, institution is not the only university to be impacted by cybercriminals. With vast repositories of sensitive and personal data from students, faculty and staff, colleges and universities are a prime target for attack.

One of the most common attack vectors for ransomware is phishing, which has been around for decades. Phishing is a social engineering technique that uses email to entice or trick unsuspecting people to click on web links or attachments that appear to be legitimate but are instead designed to compromise the recipient’s machine or trick the recipient into revealing credentials or other sensitive information. Phishing presents adversaries with a low-risk method that offers a high potential for financial gain.

Phishing is challenging to fight with technology alone. Many email security solutions still allow up to 20% of phishing emails to be delivered.  Also, anti-phishing technology usually won’t stop email from a compromised University email account because the messages are being sent from a legitimate source. As a result, stopping phishing threats requires vigilance by everyone. People must learn to recognize the signs of a phishing attempt and report these attempts to the proper security staff.

Here are five signs of a phishing attempt

• An unexpected email that prompts you to change a password, send funds, open an attachment, or log into a website.
• An email whose body appears to be legitimate but was sent from the wrong domain (e.g., an email that says it is from your bank but was sent from a Gmail account).
• An email with misspelled words, bad grammar, or poor formatting.
• An email that contains suspicious file attachments.
• An email containing web links that are from fake or unknown web domains when the cursor is hovered over them.

To help us all recognize phishing emails, ITS will continue to simulate phishing and assign training to those most susceptible. If you believe you’ve been targeted by phishing, see Reporting a Phishing Message (How-to).

— Chris Mielke, ITS

Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART) needs help to finalize plans for major changes to transit service in West Des Moines. DART is proposing replacing some current routes and services with a new DART On Demand zone. To learn more about DART’s upcoming meetings and to complete the survey, visit: ridedart.com/WestDesMoines.

— Ryan Arnold, Community Engagement

All Staff Council has rescheduled its kickball tournament for Wednesday, June 15.

Register your team or as a free agent and view the attached flyer for details.

Spectators are welcome and encouraged! Yard games and refreshments will be provided and you may enter the All Staff Council drawing for a chance to win an awesome prize. We look forward to seeing you there.

— Sydni Jennings, on behalf of All Staff Council

The Office of the Deputy Provost hosted two and a half days of faculty development at the close of the spring semester, drawing on Drake colleagues’ expertise to facilitate conversations around “meeting our students where they are.”  More than forty-five faculty and staff gathered to learn from and with each other and participated in engaged learning about who our students are (incoming first years to our graduate and adult learners), what they’ve experienced in the past two years (with COVID-19, and changes in high school education), and how our perceptions of their preparation impact how we meet them where they are in writing intensive courses, first year courses, and STEM courses.  We spent time together engaging in improvisational learning and leadership development, and had a terrific four hours of development around making our course materials accessible to all of our students by using best practices for universal course design. We were honored to welcome the executive director of Anawim Housing, one of our community partners, as part of a design clinic in Community Engaged Learning, facilitated by that office and Assistant Professor Elizabeth Talbert (SCSS).

If you missed this opportunity but would like to know more about the work we did, there are a couple of ways to plug in over the summer.

First: feel free to watch the videos of several of the sessions, posted here.

Second: you can join a learning community on STEM education, First Year Seminars, universal course design, Community Engaged Learning, and/or Writing Instruction by simply sending an email renee.cramer@drake.edu with the subject line: Learning Community [STEM, FYS, Course Design, CEL, or Writing].  Those of us who facilitated the workshop are putting together Teams units for those groups, with electronic resources for learning and engaging over the summer and a plan for fall face-to-face engagement.

Third: you can agree to be part of mentoring cohorts that my office is launching in the fall.  These cohorts will be intergenerational and interdisciplinary, and resourced for hospitality and mutual support/learning.  Each cohort will include two or three incoming faculty, and one or two faculty at each rank (including consecutive term appointments and clinical/faculty of practice).  Email renee.cramer@drake.edu with the subject line Mentoring Cohort, and I’ll be in touch as I grow this program and the training and support associated with it.

Finally: you can think ahead to the Drake University Learning Symposium—Thursday, Aug. 18, which is on the theme of Return.  Please know that we will gather as a university to talk about, think through, sit with, even make art about (and potentially, make sense of!) what we’ve gone through as an institution and a community in the past two years.  We gather with the hope that we can Return to our classrooms, our offices, our roles reinvigorated and trusting that, like our Core Values state, we really *are* all in this together.  If you’re interested in being part of planning and programming for that day—you know it—email renee.cramer@drake.edu with the subject line Planning Learning Symposium. I will be in touch in June!

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

I went shopping from the Forbes list of Best Books on Higher Education published in 2021, for my “beach reads,” this summer.  I’ll be reading them, thinking about which might be appropriate as a Books for Breakfast selection in academic year 2022–2023.  Some of the contenders are: The Hidden Curriculum, The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs, The Attack on Higher Education,  and What Universities Owe Democracy. I’m also rereading the chapter on neoliberalism in higher ed, in Wendy Brown’s classic, Undoing the Demos—and working my way through both Presumed Incompetent, and Surviving Sexism in Academia for a second time each—thinking about how to incorporate those texts into some reading groups and development I have planned for fall.  If you read any of these books and want to recommend them for book club and development, please reach out—I’m happy to hear what you appreciated about them, and how we can engage them!

And, many of you have sent me podcast suggestions over the course of the year—and, while I’m not good at being a regular listener/consumer of that content, I intend to try to get better! Some of the podcasts I intend to tune in to regularly are: The Key: Inside HigherEd, The Prof G Pod, and Leading Improvements in Higher Ed.  I’d love to hear your recommendations for other podcasts, and for ideas about how to incorporate this kind of media into faculty development moving forward.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

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

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

— Hannah Sappenfield, Global Engagement

Drake will be participating in this summer’s Des Moines Corporate Games.  This annual company-based competition runs June 1 through July 31, promoting company pride and corporate wellbeing through healthy competition.

Events range from team-based to individual and competitive to recreational. There are both in-person and virtual opportunities.  All in-person activities will be held in the evenings and on weekends and are free (except for golf cart rental).  You may participate in as many events as you wish.  These games are open to all employees, interns, and retirees.  Please email linda.feiden@drake.edu for more information.

— Linda Feiden, Human Resources

With the All Staff Council and Human Resources virtual townhall taking place on May 19, many of the submitted questions have centered on salary increases. Here is a brief overview to help address some of the key components of the work underway for faculty and staff salaries in the coming fiscal year.

As the President shared in his May 3 email, a merit pool of 2.5% was approved for both faculty and staff for fiscal year 2023. While the pool will total 2.5%, deans and managers will have discretionary authority in determining an individual’s actual merit increase. Deans and managers will be provided a budget allocation equal to 2.5% of the base salaries of all full-time employees hired before May 1 and expected to be on payroll for fiscal year 2023. From that pool, individual salary awards will be made on the basis of merit (i.e., it is possible that some salary awards will be less than 2.5%, and some may be more).

In addition to merit increases, there are some funds available for limited market adjustments. For faculty, the Provost’s Office analyzes relevant benchmarking data. Market adjustments are then determined by the Provost’s Office, working in consultation with Institutional Research, deans, the Faculty Compensation Committee, and Human Resources.

For staff, HR is finalizing a methodology to apply to this year’s market pool, which is slightly larger than last year’s. It is likely that we will rely on our core benchmarks, where we strive to have staff at the 25^th percentile of their pay grade by year four in the position and by the 50^th percentile by year seven in the position. Maintaining this approach, helps ensure those who have remained in their position at Drake through the years we have not been able to provide increases are progressing through the applicable salary range.

Human Resources, the Budget Office, the Provost’s Office, and managers are dedicating time and effort to assuring the data are accurate and decisions are sound. This is great work to have—we remain thrilled that we are in the position to assess merit increases and market adjustments. We know people are anxious to know what these increases may mean to them efforts remain on track to communicate before the July 1, 2022 effective date.

— Maureen De Armond, Human Resources

The 2022 Sapphire Awards were hosted online by the All Staff Council Recognition Committee and Human Resources on Thursday, May 12. You can watch a recording here.

Every individual and group nominated for a Called to be True Blue award this year was eligible to win the Sapphire Award. There were 25 True Blue awards given, 17 individuals and 8 group awards. One individual and two groups were chosen as this year’s winners.

Winners of 2022 Sapphire awards were:

• Erica Hartschen, assistant to the vice president, nominated by Andy Verlengia.
• Office of Student Financial Planning, nominated by Chris Ditter.
• Assistant Athletic Trainers, nominated by Angie Dahl.

Two other awards were presented.

• SOE Dean Ryan Wise presented the Employee Excellence Award to Lisa Proctor, director, Head Start.
• University Communications and Marketing Director Leslie Maynes presented the Levitt Community Service Award to Erin Bell, associate director of marketing, and live mascot manager.

Andy Verlengia recognized and thanked the out-going All Staff Council members.

• Past Chair: Sara Heijerman
• Recognition Committee: Dianna Gray, Drinda Williams
• Special Events/Community Service: Kim Jones, Tyler Spoon
• Special Interest: Laura Bjurstrom

The winner of the free parking pass for next year is Alicia Mann, office manager, IT Services.

— Drinda Williams, On behalf of All Staff Council

I am sharing this message on behalf of ITS and Drake Online and Continuing Education.  They write:

We understand that it has been challenging to manage the upgrades to Blackboard as you develop and deliver your classes.  To provide you with the best support, we have some exciting news coming for summer.

Blackboard will continue to provide monthly updates that have new settings and abilities added to current features.  The two most affected areas will be assessments and grading. Tips and Tricks emails from Dr. Good will continue to provide a full listing of the updates when they are released. For more detailed information from Blackboard, visit https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Release_Notes.

Before Fall 2022, ITS and Drake Online and Continuing Education will be partnering to provide a more user-friendly system to get Blackboard updates and provide useful information around best practices. We are hopeful and determined to build a tool that will provide this information in a way that can be better utilized when you need it.

As always, please remember that the Academic and Emerging Technologies team provide support and Drake Online have instructional designers and technologists who can help with troubleshooting both technical and pedagogical issues that involve educational technology use.  If you need additional help, please use this link to request assistance.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost