Basketball season is right around the corner! Now is the time to purchase tickets for premium men’s basketball matchups against Wichita State and UNI and a women’s basketball contest against Iowa. Reminder: Undergraduate students can attend all regular season home games using their Drake Card. Faculty and staff can take advantage of discounted pricing for single-games by visiting the Drake Athletics Ticket Office during regular business hours (M-F, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.) or by calling 515-271-3657 or emailing tickets@drake.edu.

A full schedule for both men’s and women’s basketball is available at www.GoDrakeBulldogs.com.

—Tom Florian, Drake Athletics

It is with great enthusiasm that I share Tess Cody has accepted Drake’s offer to become our Prevention Coordinator–Sexual and Interpersonal Misconduct. Tess was one of two finalists selected by the search committee. She will begin her new role on Monday, Oct. 17, and will be located in the Student Inclusion, Involvement and Leadership (STIIL) suite in the Olmsted Center.

Since graduating with her undergraduate degree from Luther College, Tess has worked in the field of sexual and domestic violence. Most recently, Tess completed her master’s degree in community development from Iowa State University. During her tenure at the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Tess managed their violence prevention program and associated grant through the Center for Disease Control. Tess comes to Drake having received extensive training on public health models and tools. In addition, she has helped train local domestic violence service providers in prevention work, led a community readiness assessment initiative, and coordinated a healthy relationships program.

Most recently, Tess has worked at Crisis Intervention Services (CIS) serving as the supervisor of their violence prevention team as well as supervising Drake’s Violence Intervention Partner program. Her experience building new partnerships and networks on all of the campuses within the CIS service area—including with existing and new student groups—will most certainly benefit our campus community. Through these efforts, she developed collaborative projects with campus groups and organizations, conducted staff and student trainings, and coordinated campaigns and volunteer opportunities at eight different colleges in south central Iowa. Many of our students and employees are already familiar with Tess through her collaborations at Drake, and we are excited to have her lead our prevention efforts and add to the conversation on campus.

I want to extend our appreciation to the members of the search committee: Stephanie Sledge (Chair), Diane Eischeid, Brett Niederhauser, Anisa Fornoff, Kerry King-Jordan, and students Grace Rogers and Russell White.

—Jerry Parker, Interim Dean of Students

The Office of Institutional Research & Assessment is pleased to announce that Gregory Lin has joined us as assessment coordinator. In this role, Gregory will support the improvement of student learning and enhancement of successful academic programs through student learning outcome assessment.

Previously interim assistant director of institutional effectiveness & planning at Parker University in Dallas, Gregory brings a holistic, end-user focused approach to assessment. Gregory brings a diverse and eclectic background in arts and sciences that allows him to meet the assessment needs and goals of departments and programs. Through Gregory’s passion for how student learning assessment can improve student learning, we aim to organize and assess student learning in a significant and meaningful way. Please join me in welcoming Gregory to Drake.

—Kevin Saunders, Institutional Research and Assessment

Please save the date for Larry Cox’s retirement party on Oct. 26, 2–4 p.m., in Levitt Hall. Larry is retiring after 32 years of proud service to Drake in the IT department as a network engineer. We hope you’ll join Larry’s ITS colleagues to wish him all the best in his retirement

—Carla Herling, ITS

The Winter Warmth Drive is ending THIS WEEK, on Nov. 3. t is a Des Moines metro-wide effort to collect new or gently used coats, hats, gloves, scarves, blankets, snow pants, and snow boots. These items are provided to the homeless or near homeless, refugees new to Iowa, and schools around the metro with students who come from families that are not able to afford proper attire for Iowa winters. Infant through adult-sized items are all needed!

The Drake chapters of the Christian Legal Society and Christian Pharmacists Fellowship International are leading the Winter Warmth Drive on campus. Donation boxes are located in Olmsted, Old Main, Aliber Hall (newly added!), Cartwright Hall, the Drake Legal Clinic, Harvey-Ingham, and Cline. For more information, please visit winterwarmthdrive.org or contact matthew.lepke@drake.edu or zoe.zumbach@drake.edu.

—Zoe Zumbach

The University Archives & Special Collections honors the Year of the Fan celebration of “Mr. Drake” Paul F. Morrison with a special exhibit: “Fights Like a Bulldog for Victory:  A History of Drake Football.”  Created by Political Papers Archivist Hope Grebner, the exhibit is in the Collier Room on the second floor of Cowles Library.  Along with reproductions, the exhibit also includes original documents, historical photographs, and memorabilia. The exhibit is part of a collaboration between Drake Athletics and University Archives to preserve the rich tradition of sports at Drake. It is viewable through December and is free and open to the public during Cowles Library hours.

—Claudia Frazer, Cowles Library

Ray Center endorses Debate Standards
The Robert D. and Billie Ray Center joined the National Institute for Civil Discourse this week in calling on the presidential debate moderators to adopt a set of Debate Standards designed to ensure that the 2016 Presidential Debates are fair, informative, and civil. More than 60 organizations signed on to the debate standards, which include guidelines for moderators, the audience, and the candidates themselves.

Show Some Respect—a civility initiative led by The Ray Center, the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines, Interfaith Alliance of Iowa, and the Greater Des Moines Partnership—also signed onto the debate standards, released nationally on Sept. 15. Learn more about the standards and the work of The Ray Center in The Drake Newsroom.

U.S. News & World Report rankings
U.S. News & World Report has ranked Drake University third for overall quality among universities in the Midwest.

The organization’s Best Colleges 2017 rankings, released today, placed Drake among the top colleges for excellence for military veterans. Nationwide, only four of the 653 universities in Drake’s rankings category had a higher peer-generated ranking for academic quality; five universities have an equivalent peer ranking.

Drake falls into U.S. News’ largest category of regional universities, which the publication subcategorizes by universities in the North, South, Midwest, and West. The category includes universities which award at least 50 percent of degrees in the liberal arts disciplines and which award both undergraduate degrees and master’s degrees. Learn more in the Drake Newsroom.

Students present award-winning research
Two Drake students won first place at an Iowa State University neuroscience competition for research aimed at slowing the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

Hayley LeBlanc, a senior neuroscience and psychology major from Leawood, Kan., and Alyson Williamson, a P3 pharmacy student from Colfax, Iowa, won first place in a poster presentation competition at Iowa State’s Neuroscience Research Day on Sept. 17.

Their research, titled “Study of Daily Genistein Ingestion on Spatial Memory and Olfaction in Triple Transgenic Alzheimer’s Mice,” earned top marks over 27 other posters displayed at the research conference. Read more about their research in the Drake Newsroom.

Cowles Library donates its outdated books to Better World Books, a third party bookseller, to sell them online. In addition to getting these books in the hands of people who want them, we, and a charity of our choice, each receive a percentage of the sale price (which we use to purchase new books). Cowles Library has designated “Room to Read” as the organization that will benefit from sales of our outdated books. In addition to a monetary donation, Better World Book donates a book for each book sold. In this year alone, both Cowles and Room to Read have each received approximately $2,779 from these sales.

Room to Read is a nonprofit organization whose focus is on literacy and gender equality in education. This organization works with communities and local governments across Asia and Africa to develop literacy skills, to support girls to complete secondary school. More information about Room to Read is available at www.roomtoread.org/

—Claudia Frazer, Professor of Librarianship and Coordinator of Digital Initiatives Library

Jeff Karnicky publishes book
The University of Nebraska Press has released Jeff Karnicky’s book Scarlet Experiment: Birds and Humans in America, an investigation of the intersections among environmental control policy, ornithology, and literature. The book—explicitly written “for the birds”—focuses on cultural, scientific, literary contexts shaping human interactions with five species of birds in North America: the blue jay; the European starling; the red knot; the Canada goose; and the titmouse (both black-crested and tufted). In Scarlet Experiment, Karnicky, associate professor of English, uses his experience as a birdwatcher and bird enthusiast as the starting point for examining the larger ethical and ideological implications of how we conceptualize our avian neighbors as both individuals (friends, pets, and so on) and as populations (to be counted, studied, and managed), arguing that even our most pedestrian interactions with birds are shaped by layers of cultural, scientific, historical, and personal meanings.

Karnicky teaches courses in contemporary literature and critical theory. Scarlet Experiment is Karnicky’s second book; his first, Contemporary Fiction and the Ethics of Modern Culture, was published by Palgrave-MacMillan in 2007.

John Rovers receives Principal Financial Group Global Citizenship Award
John Rovers, professor of practice in the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, recently was honored with the second annual Principal Financial Group Global Citizenship Award.

The award recognizes one Drake faculty or staff member who has made “outstanding contributions to global engagement and internationalization of the campus and curriculum.” A selection committee appointed by the provost reviews all nominations and makes an award recommendation to the provost. Read more about Rovers’ work in the Drake Newsroom.

Michael Haedicke receives award from the American Sociological Association
Michael Haedicke, associate professor of sociology, recently was selected as the recipient of a Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD) award by the American Sociological Association (ASA). Haedicke will receive $8,000 to support his research on the social and political organization of coastal restoration initiatives in southeastern Louisiana. Learn about Michael’s work in the Drake Newsroom.

We are happy to announce the fourth book of the University Book Club! We will be reading The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney this fall—a New York Times bestseller and debut novel about a spectacularly dysfunctional family and their joint trust fund, “The Nest”.

Cowles Library has a number of copies available to check out on a weekly basis (hint: ask for the book on reserve at the circulation desk). The book is also available in audio format from Audible.com, at various Des Moines-area public libraries, and Amazon.

Contact Sara Heijerman if you have any questions or interest in discussing; the face-to-face discussion session will be Oct. 17 at 4:45 at Louie’s Wine Dive. Happy reading!

—Sara Heijerman, Manager, Campus Card Office