Associate Professor of Journalism and Associate Dean David Wright, a former professional sports videographer, was featured in a Des Moines Register article about the wonderful hands-on opportunities for students created by Drake’s expanded relationship with ESPN.

Four SJMC alums—Rachel Vogel Quinn, JO’10; Jess Hoffert, JO’11; Mario Rossi, JO’15; and Annelise Tarnowski, JO’15—launched an Iowa-focused storytelling podcast, Middle of Somewhere. The inaugural podcast is now posted.

Add “hot music scene” to Des Moines’ list of attractions for both college students and young professionals. Tobi Parks, a musician and copyright expert with Sony Music in New York, is moving to Des Moines this fall to partner with The Des Moines Social Club and Drake University to create Station 1 Records, a nonprofit label to promote local bands. Several Drake students are already interning with Station 1, and Parks is working with journalism, music, and business faculty on a J-Term 2016 class that will take students behind the scenes of the music industry.

Submitted by Kathleen Richardson, Dean, School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Jana Brem has joined the Drake University Finance department as the accounting manager. She will oversee the Accounting Department, including accounts payable, non-student accounts receivable, University purchasing cards, fixed assets, FOAPAL maintenance, account reconciliations, and other accounting related functions. Jana was most recently the Controller for a small financial services firm in West Des Moines. She brings more than 18 years of accounting experience with her as well as a Master of Accounting from Drake.

Jana is located in the Accounting Office in Old Main, on the third floor, Room 328. Please feel free to stop by and welcome Jana to Drake!

From the Office of Sponsored Programs Administration (SPA):

Principal Investigator: Judy Russell
Project Title: Drake University Head Start and Early Head Start Program
Project Summary: The Head Start/Early Head Start program provides young children with the opportunity to develop academic, interpersonal, and social skills to better prepare them for school readiness, kindergarten, and beyond. Des Moines Public Schools has been a long standing Delegate of the Drake University Head Start program, providing services to children in the Des Moines metro area. They provide a strong partnership as the largest school district in Iowa and serving high need families. The Office of Head Start is transitioning grants to provide Head Start and Early Head Start services from indefinite project periods to five-year project periods in accordance with Section 641 of the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007.
Funding Agency: Department of Health and Human Services
Amount: $6,751,396

Principal Investigator: Janet McMahill
Project Title: Iowa South Central Regional STEM Scale-Up Programming Support
Project Summary: Now in its fourth year of operation, Drake University is one of six established Regional STEM Network Hub institutions in our state. Funding is used to financially support scaling up exemplary STEM projects throughout Iowa that have demonstrated a positive impact on student interest and achievement, targeting all learner sectors from preschool through postsecondary.
Amount: $500,995

Principal Investigator: Renee Sedlacek
Co-Principal Investigator: Mandi McReynolds
Project Title: The AmeriCorps Community Health Coaches Program
Project Summary: Drake University will direct 10 full-time and 10 minimum-time AmeriCorps members to assist the Healthiest State Initiative in encouraging rural towns across Iowa to commit to adopting practices that will improve the overall health and happiness of the residents in their community. AmeriCorps members will serve as liaisons between local organizations and the Healthiest State Initiative by providing training, education, and assessment workshops to schools and businesses in 10 rural communities across the state. At the end of the first program year, the AmeriCorps members will be responsible for growing the number of individuals who report an increased knowledge of nutrition and increasing the number of individuals who report their workplace is functioning more effectively after training. In addition, the AmeriCorps members will leverage an additional 100 volunteers who will be engaged in developing programming and events focused on nutrition education.
Funding Agency: Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) / Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service (ICVS)
Award Amount: $166,347

Principal Investigator: Janet McMahill
Project Title: Regional STEM Network Management at Drake University
Project Summary: The purpose of the Regional STEM Network is to provide broader access to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics educational opportunities and promote STEM economic development. Current and developing STEM activities will span one or more Iowa STEM regions. Regions will share information, work together, and be interconnected by coordination of resources.
Funding Agency: Iowa Mathematics and Science Education Partnership on behalf of the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council
Amount: $70,710

Principal Investigator: Anne Murr
Project Title: Workplace Literacy Program
Project Summary: The goals of this project are to expand adult literacy services to offer more accessible instruction to low-literate adults in the community. Funding will also be used to continue ALC’s one-to-one tutoring services. The ALC will also develop short-term literacy modules to be instructed on site at community-based organizations in an effort to reach low-literate adults who may not enroll for long-term individualized mentoring ALC services. The project will develop workplace literacy programs in partnership with local employers to meet the basic education needs of low-literate employees.
Funding Agency: United Way
Award Amount: $43,000

Principal Investigator: June Johnson
Project Title: Prescribing patterns for canaglifozin (Invokana) in a specialty endocrinology group practice: Patient characteristics and outcomes
Project Summary: Funds will be used for research study to examine and describe actual canagliflozin (Invokana) prescribing patterns and patient outcomes in a specialty endocrinology group practice, the Iowa Diabetes and Endocrinology Center (IDEC).
Funding Agency: Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Award Amount: $31,200

Principal Investigator: Brian Gentry
Project Title: Infection Mitigation During Space Flight: Combination Pharmacotherapy to Combat Herpes Viral Infections, Curtail Drug Resistance, and Decrease Incidence Rates of Adverse Effects
Co-Principal Investigators: Pramod Mahajan, Ron Torry, & Marc Busch
Funding Agency: Iowa NASA EPSCoR
Award Amount: $20,000

Principal Investigator: Neil Hamilton
Project Title: Landowners’ Legal Guide
Funding Agency: Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation
Award Amount: $10,000

Alysa Mozak, coordinator for sexual violence response and healthy relationship promotion, was chosen to be a part of a nationwide effort to work on campus gender violence prevention. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention charged 15 states, including Iowa, to be part of the initial strategic team. This effort is part of the larger White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault that was launched January 2014 through the Not Alone Campaign. The Iowa team includes members from the Iowa Department of Public Health Violence Prevention Unit, a local county Campus Prevention Specialist, Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault Prevention Education Coordinator, and a faculty member from an Iowa public regent university (UNI).

Mozak and the Iowa team convened with 14 other state representatives at the CDC to start this effort on July 20–22 in Atlanta, GA. The Iowa team is tasked to start plans to engage the state’s private and public institutions of higher education toward comprehensive, effective primary prevention initiatives. The vision is that Iowa institutions of higher education will act as catalysts for comprehensive gender violence prevention initiatives that build safe and equitable campuses and communities.

Every year during Welcome Weekend first-year students are introduced to the benefits of service in the Drake community by participating in a book-wrapping service project with Everybody Wins! Iowa. Wrapped books are donated to elementary-aged children that participate in the Everybody Wins! Iowa reading program at King Elementary. We have around 1,000 books to wrap for this project, and that requires a lot of wrapping paper! If you can donate any wrapping paper (holiday or non-holiday, no birthday-themed) or other items for this service project, it would be highly appreciated. Please drop donations off to Old Main 319 or contact student coordinator Madison at madison.ruge@drake.edu.