Fifty Drake University faculty and staff competed against 10 other “large division” companies in this year’s Des Moines Corporate Games. It was a great way for faculty and staff to get to know colleagues from around campus and be active.

Drake brought home a number of medals including first place in men’s golf 4-person best shot, second place in sand volleyball, second place in women’s 3-on-3 basketball, and third place in kickball. Drake teams also won medals in a variety of individual events. A big thank you to everyone who participated. Way to show your Drake pride!

—Linda Feiden, Human Resources

Academic Excellence and Student Success is pleased to welcome Josh Wallace as the new academic success and retention specialist. Josh also serves as the staff director of the Crew Scholars Program in partnership with Jennifer Harvey, faculty director. Josh’s office will be located in Medbury Hall, Room 219. Josh is available for individual appointments with students seeking assistance with academic transition issues such as time management, study skills, note-taking, reading strategies, and more. Josh will provide presentations for classes and student organizations on these topics.

— Melissa Sturm-Smith, Academic Excellence and Student Success

Lisa West, associate professor of English, recently participated on a panel for a WebEx seminar, “American Fiction: Exploring the American Experience Through Literature,” conducted by Gale-Cengage regarding one of their databases.

—Lisa West

Drake students won nine awards, including best website and magazine, in this year’s Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication magazine contest. The awards were:

• Best website: The senior capstone multimedia project, Urban Plains
• General excellence: Drake Magazine
• First place for editorial content: Drake Magazine
• Second place for design: Drake Magazine
• First and second place for new magazine prototypes
• Two second-place awards and a third-place honor for writing

The judge of the general excellence category, a Vanity Fair editor, said of Drake Magazine: “This entry is exceptional for many reasons—its design, its photography, its story selection and presentation. It is a well-edited magazine in every sense of the word … Every element feels considered and deliberate … This magazine hits on all cylinders.”

The awards will be presented at the AEJMC conference on Aug. 11

—Kathleen Richardson, Dean, School of Journalism & Mass Communication

The campaign that lured world-famous rapper Drake to campus in the wee hours of the morning won a CASE Circle of Excellence award. The #BringDraketoDrake campaign won a gold distinction for the international honor in category of Best Uses of Social Media, Public Relations. There were 39 entries from around the world in that category.

The judges left the following comments on the award submission:

“Capitalizing on an upcoming Des Moines concert by popular rap artist Drake, communications staffers conducted research and made a calculated bet that a persistent effort to bring the star to campus would result in a reputational boost. The social campaign generated copious media coverage, a late-night campus visit with inclusion on the star’s own Instagram feed, and record-breaking traffic to the University’s website, most notably the undergraduate application and programs pages. Hailed by journalist as ‘Best PR Move of the Week,’ it wouldn’t have been possible without an astute social media strategy.”

A list of award winners from the current year’s competition is available at www.case.org/circle. There were 107 Gold distinctions awarded this year across over 80 categories.

—Niki Smith, University Communications

Karen Wallace, professor of law librarianship, was recently cited by the Iowa Supreme Court. In a June 16 opinion, the court quoted her Drake Law Review article “Does the Past Predict the Future?: An Empirical Analysis of Recent Iowa Supreme Court Use of Legislative History as a Window into Statutory Construction in Iowa,” to support the premise “that members of this court frequently look beyond the text of the statute in the interpretation of statutes.” (p. 26)

Also, Karen was recently elected vice president/president elect of the Mid-America Association of Law Libraries (MAALL). MAALL is a chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries with almost 300 members in thirteen states.

Teri Koch, professor of librarianship and coordinator, serials, acquisitions, and electronic resources, and Andrew Welch, librarian for discovery services and technology, presented “Central Iowa Collaborative Collections Initiative Survey” at the American Library Association Annual meeting in Chicago on June 23 as part of the Print Archive Network Forum.

Public relations students’ 2016 senior capstone campaign to promote the community of Manning, Iowa, beat professional public relations entries to win the Community Relations category in the 2017 Clarion Awards.  The Manning work also won the Student Public Relations Campaign category. Additionally, work that a public relations writing class did for community client Easter Seals also won an award.

The Clarion Awards contest is presented by the Association for Women in Communications (AWC) and known as one of the most prestigious competitions in the marketing and communications field.

The 2017 contest attracted hundreds of submissions, including five Drake entries. Three of the five won awards. The awards will be presented at the national AWC conference in Dallas, Texas, in September.

—Kathleen Richardson, Dean, SJMC