Office of Global Engagement is now accepting proposals for FY23 Global Partnership Grants.

Drake University has established formal partnerships with multiple institutions abroad. Joint faculty and staff projects with our global partner institutions may be eligible for financial support through the Global Partnership Grants. Please contact Annique Kiel for more information or to get connected with a global partner institution.

Eligibility and criteria
Full-time faculty and staff are eligible to apply for Global Partnership Grants for activities taking place during FY23. Preference will be given to proposals that:

• identify a specific set of activities with distinct outcomes with one (or more) of our partner institutions
• demonstrate specific impact on Drake curriculum, students and current global partnerships
• advance Drake’s global engagement with existing partners in new ways
• support involvement by individuals who have not previously been globally engaged
• are financially supported by the school, college, or department of the individual submitting the proposal
• align with internationally or globally focused unit objectives and/or the University’s Continuous Improvement Plan

Application process:

1. Discuss the proposed activity with your unit director or dean prior to submission to help determine its strategic value and if it aligns with the unit’s global engagement priorities. The discussion will help determine the unit’s interest and ability to support the proposal with financial resources.
2. Submit the online application via Qualtrics, which includes a description and budget (*see note) for the proposed activity. Deadline: Jan. 7, 2022
3. Deans/directors will review all proposals for their unit with the Global Partnerships Coordinator and the Executive Director of Global Engagement for prioritization and to make collaborative funding decisions. Final award decisions are expected to be announced in February 2022.

*Note, Global Engagement grant funds are not typically awarded for stipends for Drake faculty and staff; however, stipend requests may be considered for funding by your unit’s Dean/Director on a case-by-case basis. The College of Arts & Sciences will not fund stipends.

Learn more about Drake’s global partner institutions and other opportunities for funding global projects at drake.edu/global.

— Bonnie Ehler, Global Engagement

We are pleased to announce the winners of Called to be True Blue awards for the Fall 2021 semester.

• Marietta Jackson, Sodexo Manager
• Ann Guddall, Academic Affairs Business Manager
• Erica Hartschen, Assistant to the Vice President
• Sheri Gavin, Budget and Office Manager, CBPA and SJMC
• Nate Reagen, Chief of Staff
• SJMC Staff
• Elizabeth Kozor, Director of Campaign Communications
• Kara Blanchard, Assistant Dean for Admissions & Financial Aid, Law School
• Kerry King-Jordan, Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life
• Ted Lyddon-Hatten, Spiritual Counselor
• Isaac Newsome, Director of Student Life
• Kevin Grady, Coordinator for Registered Student Organizations
• Amanda Martin, Assistant Director, Community Engaged Learning and Service
• Maggie Fiala and Jeannie Nielson, Experiential Education, CPHS
• Shawn Madson, Director, System Engineering, IT
• Cowles Library Access Service Team

A staff member who is called to be True Blue is someone who: 

1. Epitomizes the values of leadership, teamwork, and integrity, and exhibits their commitment to the Drake community
2. Has shown others what it takes to get a task or project done, and accomplishes that by working well with others
3. Is able to be honest and fair in the situations they face
4. Does all of these things for the betterment of Drake and its values and goals.

To nominate someone, please go to this link – https://www.drake.edu/asc/recognition/calledtobetrueblue/

— Drinda Williams, Office of the Provost

Join the All Staff Council in celebrating this joyous time of year while decorating festive cookies! Lynne Cornelius will be showing us her expert decorating skills starting at 3 p.m. on Dec. 17 via Teams. Join the event here (and look for it on the University Calendar).

This is a virtual, family-friendly event for decorators of all ages. We will raffle off a dozen cookies to a lucky participant.

Please contact ascspecialevents@drake.edu with any questions or comments.

— ASC Events and Community Service Committee

You may recall that three focus areas were identified from the 2021 Great Colleges to Work For (GCTWF) survey results. One of the focus areas seeks to facilitate re-connection and attending to our culture. One of the many wonderful suggestions that came from our focus group discussions was the need to bring back new employee orientation. As we hire new people, we should be setting standards and sharing values. New employees benefit from opportunities to ask questions and meet other new employees. New employee orientation simply needs to be brought back and not just resurrected but rebuilt to be better than before.

Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?

We are working on the agenda and organizing it around Drake’s Core Values. We are thrilled to share that every member of the President’s Council has committed to taking turns being a speaker at the orientation sessions. Human Resources is working with key departments across the institution to assure the new employee orientation experience is robust, informative and, well, fun. It should not just be a learning event, but one that builds community–and culture. As a new employee, part of the benefit of attending orientation is to meet people outside of their work areas and, hopefully, make some new work friends.

Every new program benefits from a pilot or two, so we are planning on scheduling pilot sessions in early 2022 where we will invite newer employees to attend. These will be folks who never got to attend new employee orientation. This will be a great opportunity to make up for that missed opportunity, while also getting valuable feedback on the material and format. If you are not a newer employee but you would like the opportunity to attend a pilot and provide feedback, let Maureen know.

We’ll be looking to have a pilot in late January and another in early to mid-February. We’ll “go live” in early March. Our hope is that we’ll be in a place with COVID-19 where we can have the pilots be in-person, but we will plan for virtual orientation if that’s the safer route to go at that time.

If you have ideas or suggestions on how to help cultivate Drake’s culture, we would still love to hear from you. Please reach out to Nate or Maureen.

— Maureen De Armond, Human Resources; Nate Reagen, Office of the President

Faculty and staff can get a reserved seat for a general admission price for Drake men’s and women’s basketball games happening Dec. 19–Jan. 19.

Tickets must be purchased online in advance of game day. To purchase discounted tickets visit DrakeTix.com/promo and use promo code GRIFF. Email tickets@drake.edu with any questions.

Games available to purchase are as follows:
Dec. 19 – MBB vs. Chicago State at 2 PM
Dec. 23 – WBB vs. Minnesota at 2 PM
Dec. 28 – MBB vs. Mount Marty at 7 PM
Dec. 30 – WBB vs. Indiana State at 6 PM
Jan. 1 – WBB vs. Evansville at 2 PM
Jan. 8 – MBB vs. Indiana State at 5 PM
Jan. 12 – MBB vs. Illinois State at 7 PM
Jan. 13 – WBB vs. SIU at 6 PM
Jan. 15 – WBB vs. Missouri State at 2 PM
Jan. 19 – MBB vs. Bradley at 7 PM

— Aimee Lane, Athletics

When I first became faculty, my mom used to love to say to me, “it’s almost finals!” She’d say this as though being this close to finals felt … good—when in reality, as faculty, it usually meant for me the beginning of massive amounts of work, under time constraints, right before a whole bunch of holidays (and, for me, my son’s mid-December birthday). In my experience, the marathon-length semester becomes, in these next 10 days, a super-duper breathless sprint.

It’s a tricky paradox to navigate—just as our students’ lives are about to become easier, ours are, temporarily, becoming more difficult.

As much as I don’t want to offer bromides about self-care for faculty and staff who are teaching this semester, I do want to acknowledge the mad rush you’re entering—and say that I hope you’re also able to enjoy seeing the proof of your good work in the assignments and exams and final projects that students complete; that you’re able to build in rewards for grading (chocolate or carrot sticks or an expensive coffee for every class entered on time into DUSIS); and that you’ll have time for regeneration during the season ahead.

I also want to remind us all that our students’ collective mental health challenges this fall may very well amplify at the close of the semester.  Many of us will need to breathe deeply, and offer them appropriate assistance. To that end, and as we look toward spring (yes, already), I want to offer a greeting from Kayla Bell-Consolver, the new director of the Student Counseling Center. Kayla and I, along with Dean of Students Hannah Clayborne, have had some promising preliminary conversations about how to support faculty and staff in supporting our students. We have some plans shaking for spring … until then, please read this message, and feel introduced to a new colleague poised to help. Kayla writes:

Greetings,

My name is Kayla Bell-Consolver (she/her/hers) and I am the new Director of the Student Counseling Center. I received both my B.S in Psychology in 2016 and M.S in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2019 from Drake University. It brings me great joy to return to Drake in a role I am very passionate about. As a student and professional, I am aware that there may be hesitancy in sending students to the counseling center due to historical experiences and concerns on if their needs would be met. I am very devoted to exploring strategies and implementing programming with our counselors to enhance the quality and quantity of services we provide.

My current focuses are to enhance the quality and access to equitable mental health services for our students of color, suicide prevention and postvention for at risk students, and continue to systemically target mental health concerns in collaboration with the university. To learn more about our counseling center staff, please navigate to Meet Our Staff | Drake University. If you are interested in learning more about the resources that we provide, please navigate to Counseling & Services | Drake University. Through our efforts, I look forward to collaborating with you and learning more from you to best support the mental health needs prevalent on campus.

Kayla Bell-Consolver, LMHC, MS
Director, Drake University Student Counseling Center 
(She, Her, Hers)

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

As we begin to enter final grades, think about course copy and migration, and plan spring syllabi and class time, I want to amplify some of the messages the campus community has received from folks within Drake’s Information Technology Services.  (Needed footnote alert: some of this is original text, some of it is brazenly plagiarized from ITS!)

Final grades are due by 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 22. This is the last day that the University is open, before break begins. To enter final grades, log into myDrake/MyDUSIS, click on the “Grading” icon under the Faculty & Advising section, and then click on the “Final Grades – Submittal Link” link.  Or, enter grades via Blackboard, using the instructions available here.

Don’t forget: Gradebook filtering can help streamline grading.

• Go to Gradebook > click on the grid view (left) > click on Filter (right)
• filter by student name to show only grades for one student
• filter by groups
• filter by child courses of a merged or cross-listed course

As you prepare to copy or originate new courses for spring, please be aware that there will be variations for instructors.

• If you are copying from Original (not Ultra) course view, please use the correct instructions and start in the course from the past that currently contains the content.
• If you are copying from Ultra course view, the process starts from the future/empty course and pulls content in from past courses. You have more granularity about what you copy with the new process. (Don’t copy items that are broken – this will help clean up courses with transition errors.)
• Copy Courses for Efficiency: Instructions for copying courses.
• NOTE: Please remove any repeated links referring to the Support Center after you copy content.

To request Course Merges or Course Sharing: Please submit a request through the Blackboard Learn Ultra Request and choose the appropriate option for either merge courses or share/copy course content. Your course can be copied forward while completing a merge. Make sure you include the course that currently contains the content as a part of the request.

If you are new to the look and feel of Blackboard Learn Ultra, and setting up original/new courses, here are some tutorials to help you get started:

• Blackboard Learn Ultra has a limit of two folder levels. Please keep your content organized within these limitations. By not being able to bury content in folders, students are more likely to find what they need to succeed.
• If you have a “Content” folder, you can gain back another level of folders by moving items out of the Content folder and up to the main content page.
• Build content in a chronological order if possible. This helps the students immensely!
• For Instructors: Where can I get training?
• FAQs on the Blackboard Learn Ultra update

Finally, please be aware of our institutional storage limitations. This resource on the End of the Semester with BlackBoard Ultra is really helpful for thinking through archiving and storing course material. And, one of my upcoming January OnCampus messages will offer much more specific instructions and ideas for maintaining an efficient set of courses that don’t tax storage bandwidth. As you think about planning and recording lectures for virtual learning content in your spring courses, Panopto is our preferred video content managing system. You can learn about its capacities and how it interacts with BlackBoard Ultra, at this helpful link.  Also, in a January OnCampus, I’ll offer some tips for thinking through the use of Respondus technology for OnLine testing. But, if you’re either finally figuring it out here at finals time (no shame!), OR, thinking about using this technology for the first (or fifth) time this spring, please read these important tips and best practices for that technology!

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

Last week, new printers were installed in Meredith, Fitch, and Harvey-Ingham Halls. Our staff is working hard to match up the number and type of machines that are delivered with the machines needed in a given area. We are trying to replace all department/building machines simultaneously to avoid the confusion from using both old and new printers, but this continues to be challenging due to ongoing supply chain issues.

Our partners at LRI are coordinating installation and training with department contacts as machines arrive. Our project team will continue to adjust our schedule as machines arrive and update the list at Printer Locations (FAQ).

See guides on using the features of the new printers in the Printing category of the IT service portal. Learn more about the overall printing project at drake.edu/its/printing/.

— Kris Brewster, ITS

Drake LGBTQ+ faculty and staff are invited to an affinity group happy hour on Wednesday, Dec. 15, at 5 p.m. This Drake LGBTQ+ affinity group is still in its early stages, but join us for a casual gathering where you can meet colleagues and discuss ideas for the future of this group.

Please contact Evan Favreau at evan.favreau@drake.edu for more details about the happy hour, or if you would like to be included in messages about future events.

— Jen Harvey, Associate Provost, Campus Equity and Inclusion