Drake is establishing an affiliate relationship with the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI) that will strengthen our on-campus diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

You are invited to join the team of trainers being created to lead this collaborative campus-wide, culture shifting initiative!

The Office of Equity and Inclusion is in the process of identifying 35 people interested in becoming NCBI trainers. All Drake staff (exempt and non-exempt) and faculty are eligible to participate in a three day Train-the-Trainers learning experience.

The training will take place in person on September 21, 22, and 23rd. Trainers will learn to co-facilitate two modules: “Welcoming Diversity” and “Controversial Issues.”

To be eligible for this 3-day training, you must participate in an all-day Exposure Workshop (virtual) on August 10th.

All NCBI trainers will be provided a $500 stipend during the 2022-23 academic year to acknowledge and appreciate this vital work (both exempt and non-exempt employees). The commitment includes the 3-day training, along with agreement to co-facilitate three trainings during the 2022-23 academic year. All trainers will be directly supported by the Office of Equity and Inclusion. More details will be disseminated to interested parties after the August 10^th Exposure Workshop.

If you are interested in pursuing this opportunity or want more details, please contact both Jen Harvey (Jennifer.harvey@drake.edu) and Drinda Williams (drinda.williams@drake.edu).

— Jen Harvey, Associate Provost, Campus Equity and Inclusion

Recent changes to the PSLF Certification process remain in place, but are temporary. This means, if you have federal student loans, you should submit an application for loan forgiveness. The sooner the better, but no later than Oct. 31, 2022—no matter where you are in the repayment process.

Current waiver guidelines currently apply:

• Payments made on repayment plans other than income-driven repayment plans will count; including payments made in the past.
• Payments made to federal loans borrowed from private banks (FFEL) and Perkins loans that previously did not count towards PSLF will now retroactively count (FFEL and Perkins). These would need to be consolidated into the Direct Loan program by October 31, 2022.
• For those who have previously consolidated their loans, payments made prior to consolidation may count toward the 120 payments required for forgiveness.
• Previously denied PSLF applications will be reviewed a second time for eligibility under the new guidelines. Even if you were denied previously, reapply!
• Borrowers who qualify for loan forgiveness under the new temporary guidelines who also have made excess payments may qualify for a refund.
• Student Loans in COVID-19 Emergency Relief and Federal Student Aid deferment (set to end 08/31/2022 by the way) may be counted toward the total 120 payments.

As a tax-exempt, not-for-profit, Drake University is a qualifying employer. Drake HR is committed to helping you through this process. Be sure to send page 2 of the PSLF Form to DrakeHR@Drake.edu without your SSN (never email your social!). We will promptly complete page 2 and return it (if you have worked for more than one qualifying employer, ask each of them to complete page 2).

The PSLF website recommends that you submit loan forgiveness form, even if you have not made all 120 payments. They will be able to calculate the total number of eligible payments, credit you with any payments eligible under the current waiver guideline and give you an exact number of how many additional payments are needed. This, in turn, will make the process easier when you do meet all requirements.

If you have questions, feel free to reach out to DrakeHR@drake.edu.

— Trevon Smith, HR

The Global Engagement Office is excited to welcome new international students to campus this fall. To assist these students in their arrival in Des Moines for the first time, the Global Engagement Office is looking for faculty or staff members interested in volunteering to transport these students to campus. Most international students will arrive at Drake between Aug. 18–22. They are always excited to be greeted at the airport by someone from Drake as a first friendly face of the University!

If you are interested in volunteering to transport our new international students to campus, please contact Kendra Hossain-Morehead (Kendra.hossain-morehead@drake.edu) or Jorona Johnson (Jorona.johnson@drake.edu) as soon as possible.

— Kendra Hossain-Morehead, Global Engagement

Faculty Senate is happy to announce a new internal website, available to Drake faculty and staff. The new site provides the Faculty Senate’s current roster, committee assignments, meeting documents, and calendar. In addition, it has a complete archive of all available documents and committee reports.

Faculty and staff are invited to explore the site. https://drakeedu.sharepoint.com/sites/FacultySenate

The external website will continue to hold the current roster, committee assignments, and upcoming meeting documents.

— Drinda Williams, Provost’s Office

As we shared in June, Drake’s applicant tracking system (ATS), Hire Touch, is being sunset at the end of this year. We have contracted with PageUp to provide our new ATS. The ITS and HR project team is working closely with PageUp representatives to be prepared for the switch later this year.

In lieu of referring to the ATS by the vendor name, we’ll be adopting the name Jobs@Drake. The project team is working on both the internally facing components of the platform and about to start working on the public facing jobs board.

We remain excited about the functionalities of PageUp, including filtering options for those searching for jobs and the ability to better brand the public facing jobs board. We’ll find more effective  reporting options  and have a variety of visual tools at our disposal (such as adding different flags to applicants and applications) to assist search committees.

Presently, the project remains on track to have PageUp go live in October. We are already thinking through how we will navigate the active searches at that time. Luckily, this will be a one-time hurdle to clear. While we would not have chosen to prioritize upgrading our ATS right now, the decision was made by our current vendor. The silver lining is that we remain confident and excited that PageUp will prove to be a notable improvement in form and substance.

Additional updates, simulation opportunities, training, and tools will accompany the roll out. If you have any questions about this project, please feel free to contact us at drakehr@drake.edu.

— Kris Brewster, ITS; Maureen De Armond, HR

Please join us for the 2022 Learning Symposium on Thursday, Aug. 18.  We are planning a day with ample opportunities to reflect and reconnect, to socialize with colleagues we may not have seen in person in a while, and to center ourselves for the year ahead.

Agenda 

• 8:00 – 8:30     Light breakfast
• 8:30 – 8:45      Welcome
• 8:45 – 10:30    Reconnecting to Drake’s Mission and Core Values
• 10:30 – 11:30  Adapting to a Rapidly Changing Environment
• 11:30 – 1:00    Lunch Break: Food Trucks, courtesy of All Staff Council
• 1:00 – 2:45     Preparing For the Year Ahead
• 2:45 – 3:00     Closing

The Learning Symposium will be followed immediately by the Provost’s Drake Social from 3–5 p.m. at the Turner Jazz Center.

Please register for the Learning Symposium on Eventbrite. Those registered will receive a voucher for their lunch at the trucks.

We are excited to offer this year’s Learning Symposium in person. After the challenges of recent years, this is a wonderful opportunity for building and re-establishing community. As with all campus events and activities, we ask managers to actively encourage their employees to consider attending—this applies to faculty and both hourly and salaried staff.

Last year, the University began requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all students, faculty, and staff to access systems such as Banner and email. MFA requires people to identify themselves with more than a username and password, which are prone to being stolen or cracked by third parties. Adding an additional verification method, such as accepting a push notification to a phone app or entering a code sent via text message, drastically reduces the likelihood an account will be compromised. However, MFA is not fool proof.

The FBI has recently been warning companies to beware of attacks to circumvent MFA. Most of these attacks use “social engineering” to trick people into approving an MFA prompt that will grant unauthorized access to a system. Often, attackers will use that approved MFA prompt to enter the MFA enrollment portal. This allows them to enroll their own device so they can accept MFA prompts for accessing other resources in the future. Below is a list of variations of these attacks.

• Most MFA providers allow people to receive a phone call and push a key as the additional factor for authorizing an account. Attackers will place repeated calls, often in the middle of the night, until the person finally accepts the MFA request to make the calls stop.
• Attackers will repeatedly attempt to access a system requiring MFA until the person approves the request out of habit – How often do we say “No” to an MFA request? – or to make the prompts stop.
• Attackers will only attempt to access a system requiring MFA one or two times a day to avoid attracting attention but hoping the person will eventually accept an MFA prompt.
• Attackers will call someone pretending to be a fellow employee, usually a member of the information technology team, and asking the person to accept an MFA request as part of a company process or to resolve a technical issue.

While multi-factor authentication is a critical part of protecting accounts from being compromised, we still need to remain vigilant. Cybercriminals are constantly changing tactics in response to the technologies we use to protect information assets. In the end, we are the most important factor in keeping our data safe.

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

The project team reviewing faculty recruitment strategies will soon start drafting recommended tools and templates for consideration and possible adoption. The workgroup—consisting of Jennifer Harvey, Ann Guddall, and Drinda Williams in Academic Affairs; Maureen De Armond and Marli Jefferson in Human Resources; and Renée Cramer and Sue Mattison as the project’s executive sponsors—remains excited about opportunities to modernize practices and refine strategies when it comes to recruiting new faculty.

Through due diligence efforts, the project team also dove into some recent faculty searches to draw more data-informed conclusions about what we are seeing in current pools. We found that recent applicant pools have ranged in size from 3 to 277. We are seeing that more and more candidates are finding our job postings on sites like HigherEdJobs, professional organizations, and through word of mouth. Gone are the days when The Chronicle was “the place” to look for faculty openings.

One topic of interest shared by deans was interest for a dual career/spousal hiring program. Many universities offer a range of support to the spouses and partners of top candidates, who will also be seeking work in Des Moines. The project team listened to suggestions from deans, benchmarked practices at peer institutions and other universities, and are working up the outline of an initial program for Drake University. While this project’s focus is recruitment, the adoption of a dual career program will also support faculty retention.

In consultation with Kevin Saunders, director of institutional research and academic assessment, the project team will be very intentional in assuring any draft documents it proposes speak to the faculty qualification standards established by the Higher Learning Commission. HLC standards should co-exist with Drake’s faculty recruitment materials and the project team will assure this happens.

The project team will also be reviewing search committee chair and search committee training to assure we are using the most modern and best practices to assure our search committees are informed, supported, and prepared to manage searches.

The project team has been thrilled with the feedback and input it has received from new faculty, former search chairs, academic chairs, business office managers, and deans. While the list of work yet to do remains long, this is an ideal time to revisit recruitment. More updates to come in August.

If you have questions or suggestions relating to faculty recruitment that you would like the project team to hear, please email drakehr@drake.edu, subject line: Faculty Recruitment and the team will get the message.

— Jennifer Harvey, Campus Equity and Inclusion; and Maureen De Armond, Human Resources