Global Engagement is accepting proposals for FY23 Global Partnership Grants, now through March 31.

Drake University has established 16 formal partnerships with institutions in 13 countries. Joint faculty and staff projects with any (or multiple) global partner institution may be eligible for financial support through the Global Partnership Grants.

General Criteria

• Full-time faculty and staff are eligible to apply
• Activities must take place during FY23
• Review the full grant criteria

Application Process

1. Discuss the proposed activity with your unit director or dean
2. Complete the online application
3. Deans/directors will review all proposals for their unit in partnership with Global Engagement to make collaborative funding decisions, to be announced in early May

More Information

Learn more about our partners on our website or contact Hannah Sappenfield, Global Partnerships Coordinator, to get connected with a partner institution.

— Hannah Sappenfield, Global Partnerships Coordinator

We are seeking applicants to teach Drake’s first-year student success course, Bulldog Foundations. It will be a fun experience this fall implementing the recent curriculum revisions, guided by student input. Applicants must hold a master’s degree or equivalent, and teaching experience is preferred. Learn more and sign-up for a short consultation session.

Bulldog Foundations helps students explore concepts and develop skills that are crucial for the development of meaningful personal lives, professional accomplishments, and responsible global citizenship. Students will explore the elements of an equitable and inclusive community, consider life skills necessary for success, and refine academic strategies. This course helps students transition into the Drake community with ease.

The course will run for the first eleven weeks of the semester and will meet once a week for fifty minutes. Instructors will be given all curriculum, materials, and facilitator guides for the course, and will not need to develop any curriculum on their own.

In addition to assigned class time, chosen instructors will need to attend an all-day training the week of August 1st, a check-in meeting the week of September 19 and a wrap-up meeting during the week of fall 2022 finals.

Instructors will be paid a $1000 stipend for teaching Bulldog Foundations unless this course serves as a part of your full-time teaching load.

To apply, fill out the google form. The application is due Friday, April 1.

— Bulldog Foundations Planning Team

Every Tuesday in OnCampus the Deputy Provost shares two articles with a read time of 10 minutes.

Drake Online will be hosting another round of office hours for faculty focusing on Gradebook questions as we head toward mid-terms (how have we gotten here so quickly?). Knowing that Gradebook has changed quite a bit, they welcome you to bring your questions for hands-on support.

 Guest link for Collaborate

Upcoming hours are:

• Tuesday, March 8, 1–2:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, March 9, 10 am–12 p.m.
• Thursday, March 20, 1:30–3 p.m.

No sign up or registration necessary.  Use the Collaborate link above to log in at any time during office hours.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

Every Tuesday in OnCampus the Deputy Provost shares two articles with a read time of 10 minutes.

There is a lot going on in the Office of the Deputy Provost and the Center for Teaching Excellence. (Spoiler alert: Spring weather puts me in an optimistic, planning mood….)

We have partnered with the School of Education to provide 10 additional spaces in an on-line Intercultural Conflict Workshop facilitated by Dr. Tara Harvey (True North Intercultural, LLC). The workshop will focus on helping participants better understand and navigate their own and others’ preferred conflict styles, so that they can more effectively communicate and engage in a diverse work environment. It is perfect for department chairs, associate deans, and others who might manage in and through conflict (ie: all of us). Registered participants would take, in advance, the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory, and the focus of the half-day workshop will be on building participants’ awareness using the Inventory.

This is an online workshop, held April 25 from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; preregistration required by April 11. Please note, if you are SOE faculty or staff, your registration is not through this link.

Please consider signing up to be part of the conversation on creating a faculty-to-faculty mentoring program, to inform my work as I look forward to launching a comprehensive faculty mentoring program over the summer.  Register here, so we can provide hospitality for everyone on Friday, March 25, from 1:30–3 p.m. in Howard Hall, Room 210.  If you cannot attend but would like to be a mentor—or be assigned a mentor— please email and tell me that.

Exciting news: The 2022 Baum Symposium will be comprised of a series of workshops focused on helping Drake faculty and staff respond ethically and compassionately to the shifts in higher education we have seen as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and demographic trends in our student body.  Featured speaker Cathy Davidson, the author of The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux, will speak on the evening of Wednesday, May 4.  Dr. Davidson is the winner of the 2021 Annual Advocacy Award from the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences, the Founding Director of the Futures Initiative at CUNY, and a founding member of HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory.  Her keynote will kick off an entire month of programming meant to help our faculty and staff address the ethical imperative of meeting our students where they are—emotionally, intellectually, and socially.  Please save the date, and watch for more.

I’m working with several campus partners to plan even more development opportunities through the spring and into summer, so please do keep a watch on this space for announcements about April, May, and June workshops and speakers.

Some reminders:

The Drake Research Grant awards committee, and the committees empaneled for determining the various professorships and awards are also ready to get busy reading application materials.

As such, I encourage faculty to apply for funding to hire student assistants for their research in the coming academic year (March 18 due date).

Applications for the Troyer Research Fellowship are due March 18; applicants should submit (via email to renee.cramer@drake.edu and nicki.kimm@drake.edu) a current curriculum vitae, a letter of application of no more than three pages, a preliminary budget suggesting how the fellowship dollars might be spent, and a one-paragraph abstract written for a non-specialist audience that summarizes the proposed research. The application letter should address the applicant’s record of scholarly accomplishment, future promise, how they will benefit and how the university will benefit if selected as the Troyer Research Fellow.

We welcome applications for Drake Research Grants for the coming academic year (July 22–23). These grants can include the possibility of sabbatical research support, and should be submitted by April 1.

We still have funds for Faculty Development and Enrichment Grants—and particularly welcome those proposals for projects that support innovative and high impact pedagogy and curriculum development, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and professional development as a leader at the institution. These are considered on a rolling basis.

I find I have been writing this OnCampus note with the energy of spring starting to percolate. I’m looking out the window of a coffee shop, and see sunshine. I slept in for an hour today and it almost felt like summer. I hope you read about these opportunities with some sense of excitement about the possibilities for community, recognition, support, and learning that they represent for Drake faculty and staff, in service of our students.

We truly have weathered—and continue to weather—a generation-altering series of events. Hibernation is always an option for survival—as spring hits in earnest, though, perhaps we can crawl out of our burrows, say hi to each other, and be in community a bit more frequently, to support each other’s growth and well-being.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic has required many of us to learn quite a bit about online instruction and assessment over the past nearly two years.  And, many of us had to adjust our way of using exams to assess student learning. In some disciplines, the use of Respondus Lockdown Browser, a technology that attempts to guard against cheating in online exams, has become necessary or desirable. Like all technologies, there are limitations to the efficaciousness of this technology—and serious questions to consider, prior to adopting it. I asked some of our CPHS faculty to have a conversation with me about why they use Respondus Lockdown Browser, and how they use it well—in ways that facilitate good student interaction with the software, and highlight best practices in online assessment. 

Andy Meisner, associate professor of pharmacy practice, told me, ““I think Respondus Lockdown Browser provides guard rails for students when taking paperless exams. Most of our students are digital natives and often have a knee-jerk response to Google something when they don’t know or unsure of the answer. If we plan to use exams that are built into an internet browser we are constantly offering the temptation to search rather than to think deeply.” Lynn Kassel, associate professor of pharmacy practice, echoes many of Andy’s thoughts about the technology, and adds that, beyond the COVID-related uses of Lockdown Browser, students who encounter them in their classes will be better prepared for board exams as they enter their professions. 

Both faculty acknowledge that there are things that can go wrong—quickly—with the use of the browser.  Andy cautions that the technology “comes with a whole host of default settings when you add it to your BlackBoard exams, but many of these may not make sense for your course. For example, do you want students to have to show the camera their student ID when you already know what they look like? What about giving access to students who use iPads? Review your settings, don’t just set it and forget it!” As a bonus, Andy provided this meme:

Andy told me the best thing a faculty member can do is,  “download your own copy of Respondus and take your own exam yourself. If the settings don’t make sense to you, they definitely won’t make sense to your students.”  Lynn adds, “it is really helpful for instructors to take the exam using the technology, to understand what you’re asking the learner to complete.”   

It also makes very good sense to share these links with students about how they can bring best practices to the online testing environment, and some answers to their frequently asked questions. 

Even more importantly, Drake’s learning management specialists have put together terrific articles to assist instructors in designing and deploying online exams.  You can find them here and here.  

Finally, Lynn stresses, if you are using this technology for online assessment, “Be sure that students have the tools available to get the technology fixed, or ensure that the syllabus allows for some flexible interpretation of these technology issues (e.g., exemption of grade versus absolutely 0). Consider student access regarding equity in access by asking yourself: does a student’s home internet connection allow for use of this technology or what additional resources need to be considered for them to utilize the platform?” In summary, she says, “be considerate/compassionate to technology issues.”

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

Every Tuesday in OnCampus the Deputy Provost shares two articles with a read time of 10 minutes.

Anisa Hansen, professor of pharmacy practice, will discuss her work on using case studies to facilitate student learning around social identities and social determinants of health, as part of our CTE conversations on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Please register here to join us for lunch on March 4 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Howard Hall, Room 210.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

All Staff Council and Human Resources are co-sponsoring a bingo event on March 9 from 3–4 p.m.  All faculty and staff are invited to play Drake’s version of bingo, GRIFO. Attend in-person at Parent’s Hall in the Olmsted Center and say hello to Griff II, or use this link to register for the virtual option. A multitude of prizes are available from Griff socks to a free parking pass.

— Molly Shepard, On Behalf of All Staff Council

On Thursday, March 3, at 3:30 p.m. in the Shivers Courtside Club, faculty and staff are invited to celebrate the Every Bulldog a Changemaker initiative highlighted in The Ones campaign launched in October 2021. This event will leverage a fast-paced visual storytelling format known as PechaKucha to highlight eight examples of changemaking projects across the disciplines. Appetizers and two free drink tickets will be provided along with time for networking with the presenters and other colleagues.

— Melissa Sturm-Smith, Academic Excellence and Student Success

Drake is continuing to roll out changes as part of the Self Service project. The next update launces today and focuses on Finance Self Service. Finance Self Service will be used to submit and approve payment requests, journal vouchers, and budget changes as well as generate department-specific financial queries and reporting.

Direct emails were sent to users who may be impacted by this change, and training sessions were held last week. If you did not receive these communications and need to know how to use the new system, there are several resources available in the IT service portal at https://drake.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/2025/Portal/KB/?CategoryID=22690. You may also watch a recording of a training session: Finance Self Service Training Recording.

Questions or concerns? Please reach out to payments@drake.edu.

— Heather Travis, Finance