Two SJMC seniors have been nominated for Emmy awards in the Upper Midwest Regional Student Television Awards of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Sam Fathallah was nominated in the commercial category, and Anna Steenson was nominated in the animation and director categories. The winners will be announced at the annual awards ceremony on April 13 in Minneapolis.
— Kathleen Richardson, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Renae Chesnut, dean of the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, served as a panelist at the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) Women’s 25th Celebration Brunch on Friday, March 9, at the TaxSlayer Center in Moline, Ill. Chesnut was Drake’s long-time faculty athletics representative.
The brunch featured panels with MVC pioneers and leaders as the league recognized and honored members of the 25th Anniversary Women’s Basketball Team.
The event was part of the MVC Women’s Basketball Tournament that was held March 8-11 at TaxSlayer Center.
Women’s sports were incorporated into the MVC in 1992, having previously competed under the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference banner from 1982-1992. The 2017-2018 season is a landmark one for the conference and women’s sports, celebrating the 45th anniversary of Title IX and the 25th anniversary of women’s sports in the MVC.
Chesnut was one of 12 members of the Leaders and Pioneers Panel moderated by MVC Hall of Famer and former Illinois State women’s basketball head coach Jill Hutchinson. Chesnut was the lone faculty athletics representative on the panel and served in that capacity for 16 years from 2000-2016. In that role, she represented Drake student-athletes, coaches and faculty in MVC and NCAA affairs and chaired numerous committees during her tenure. That leadership included serving as the president of the MVC Presidents’ Council in 2004-2005 and 2013-2014.
Dr. Chesnut was one of a slew of Drake representatives honored at the brunch as three Bulldogs were named earlier to the MVC Women’s Basketball 25-Year Team. Drake earned three honorees on the 10-woman roster with Carla Bennett (1999-03), Tricia Wakely (1992-96) and Lizzy Wendell (2013-17) being named members of the illustrious squad.
— Mikayla Olson, College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences
Drake SJMC alumni and students were honored last month at the annual American Advertising Federation of Des Moines contest. Award winners are:
—Kathleen Richardson, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Sally Beisser and Chuck Sengstock published a chapter, Investigating Online Instructor’s Experiences with Constructivist Pedagogy in a Private University in The Handbook of Research on Virtual Training and Mentoring of Online Instructors. Their research focuses on the significance of professional development for instructors to design and develop online courses. Findings support the need for online constructivist pedagogies, peer mentoring for instructors, formal and informal sharing opportunities, and support for the online students themselves.
Beisser, Levitt Distinguished Professor of Education, has been the director of the Drake Online Talented and Gifted Endorsement for 12 years, serving students in 28 states and 8 countries. She teaches courses in teacher education, qualitative research methods, and service-learning in the School of Education.
Sengstock, the director of continuing education and professional development in the School of Education, oversees the development and marketing of all online and video correspondence graduate courses providing training and support initiatives for both online and video conferencing instructors. In addition, he manages a multimedia production facility to create digital objects for their online, blended, and face-to-face courses.
Human Resources is proud to announce that Drake has been designated a Health Champion by the American Diabetes Association.
Through its Wellness Lives HereTM initiative, the American Diabetes Association recognizes organizations that make health and wellness a priority for their employees.
To become a Health Champion, organizations must meet healthy living criteria in three different areas: Nutrition and Weight Management, Physical Activity and Organizational Well-Being. The health and wellness initiatives of Drake have met the criteria and the American Diabetes Association has selected us for this prestigious recognition.
Faculty and staff should take pride in this recognition and the reassurance that Drake is committed to making health and wellness a priority among our campus community.
Linda Feiden, Human Resources
Elizabeth Robertson, associate professor of English, has been selected as a participant in the Council of Independent College’s (CIC) summer seminar on Pausanias and travel writing in Ancient Greece, to be held in Greece in July 2018. Professor Robertson teaches writing studies, early English texts, postcolonial literature and theory, and travel writing in the Drake English department. She recently returned from a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina-Faso—her second career Fulbright. CIC summer seminars are selective, rigorous opportunities for faculty at independent colleges to develop valuable ongoing expertise in a focused area of study or practice. Professor Robertson is the second Drake English faculty member in two years to have been invited to participate in a CIC summer seminar, following Lisa West’s selection for the Transatlantic Landscape seminar in New Haven, Conn. in 2017.
Drake University Theatre’s upcoming repertory showcase features two full-length, mainstage productions that vary significantly in style and message. The showcase begins Thursday, Feb. 22, and runs through Sunday, Feb. 25, in the William S.E. Coleman Studio Theatre in the Harmon Fine Arts Center.
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs today announced that Drake is included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2017-2018 Fulbright U.S. Students. Drake has consistently been a top producer of Fulbright Scholars among schools of its size and type, most recently earning the distinction in 2015-2016.
Drake University senior Meghan Walters of West Bend, Wis., has been named a semi-finalist for the 2018-2019 Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The program received nearly 10,000 applications this year, and Walters is part of a more exclusive pool of applicants to have been selected for further consideration.
Walters is an international relations and public relations double-major who applied for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Program in Bulgaria. As a semi-finalist, Walters has been recognized by the U.S. National Screening Committee as having the outstanding academic record, personal qualities, and educational experiences Fulbright seeks in potential award recipients.
Walters’ application is now in the hands of the Bulgarian commission, which will conduct further screening and make the final decision. She credits international opportunities during her time at Drake for preparing her for the Fulbright program.
“I received an AmeriCorps grant to work at a refugee center where I taught citizenship classes, English phonetics to seniors and a kindergarten preparedness class for young kids,” Walters said. “Additionally, while studying abroad in Morocco in spring of 2017, I worked at a school for children with physical and mental disabilities.”
According to the Fulbright website, “the Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.”
Finalists are chosen and notified in spring 2018; if chosen as a Fulbright finalist, Walters will receive a federally funded grant and spend one year in Bulgaria teaching English starting in August.
The university has consistently been a top producer of undergraduate Fulbright recipients, having had four in 2017-2018 and a total of 31 since 2000–2001.
Visit the Fulbright website to learn more about the selection process and scholarship.
Student work published on the senior capstone website Urban Plains swept the “small team” category at this year’s Broadcast Education Association Festival of Media Arts. The winners were:
1st Place: Matthew Gogerty, Adam Rogan, and Autumn Meyer; “500 Miles on 500 Dollars”
2nd Place: Autumn Meyer and Daniela Buvat; “Save the Bees, Seriously”
3rd Place: Anne Marie Matte, Nate Sohn, and Autumn Meyer; “Abandoned Midwest”
—Kathleen Richardson, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
