Category Archives: Archive

Strategic Updates Archive

Cowles Library facility master plan

Cowles Library has started a process that will lead to a revamp and updating of the master plan for the library facility. Drake has contracted with FEH Design, a major Midwest architectural firm, to undertake the design study. FEH will employ a highly collaborative process to develop the master plan. Initial conversations with the Drake community have started and will continue through the summer and early fall. The results of the planning process are slated to be completed during the latter part of 2016.

—Rod Henshaw, Dean, Cowles Library

Featured Events Archive

Hear from country star Danika Portz, BN’11

What: Let’s DU Lunch featuring Danika Portz
Where:  Des Moines Club, 666 Grand Avenue (34th Floor of Ruan Building)
When: Wednesday, May 4, 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.
Cost: $17; $13 for young alumni
RSVP: https://alumni.drake.edu/letsdulunch

You’re invited to Let’s DU Lunch on Wednesday, May 4, at 11:30 a.m. at the Des Moines Club to hear from alumna and rising country music star Danika Portz. Let’s DU Lunch is  a professional speaker series that lets you hear firsthand from Drake and Des Moines leaders.

The road to stardom is often formed when passion and talent meet opportunity.  With her hit release, “Greatest Show on Earth,”  Drake alumna Danika Portz, BN’11, is a rising star in country music.  Danika will discuss how she broke into the music industry, life on tour, and what her fans can expect in the future.

Danika will also give a special performance at 6 p.m. at Gilroy’s, 1238 8th St., West Des Moines.

Strategic Updates Archive

Board of Trustees promote, honor faculty

Tenure and Promotion
At its meeting on Friday the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees approved the tenure and/or promotion of the faculty listed below. They are all to be commended and congratulated for meriting this distinction.

Tenure, Promotion to Associate Professor
Natalie Bayer, History (A&S)
Will Garriott, Law, Politics & Society (A&S)
Leah Kahlmanson, Philosophy & Religion (A&S)
Nanci Ross, Biology (A&S)
Matthew Mitchell, International Business (CBPA)
Lori Solsma, Accounting (CBPA)
Liping Zheng, Economics (CBPA)
Michael Andreski, Social and Adminstrative Pharmacy (CPHS)
Brian Gentry, Pharmacology (CPHS)
Andrea Kjos, Social and Adminstrative Pharmacy (CPHS)
Andrew Welch, Librarian, Discovery Services & Systems (Library)
Jerrid Kruse, Teaching and Learning (SOE)
Cris Wildermuth, Leadership (SOE)

Tenure, Promotion to Professor
Anthony Gaughan, Law
Shontavia Johnson, Law

Tenure, at rank of Professor
Ann Burkhardt, Occupational Therapy (CPHS)
Renae Chesnut, Pharmacy Practice (CPHS)
Sue Mattison, Epidemiology (CPHS)

Promotion to Professor
Charisse Buising, Biology (A&S)
Renee Cramer, Law, Politics & Society (A&S)
Heidi Sleister, Biology (A&S)
Jill Caton Johnson, Literacy Education (SOE)

Distinguished Professorships
The Academic Affairs Committee also recognized the accomplishments of three distinguished faculty by awarding them endowed professorships. Please join me in congratulating Phil Chen, Steve Scullen, and Gholam Mirazal:

Ellis and Nelle Levitt Distinguished Professor: Philip Chen, Professor of Art
Professor Chen joined Drake as an associate professor of printmaking and drawing in 1996. His recent solo exhibitions include the Three Shadows Photography Art Center in Beijing, and, last year, the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City. Chen’s work has been selected for permanent art collections in museums nationally and internationally. These include Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum; San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts; Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Institute Museum of Art; New York Public Library; and the Brooklyn Museum. He has received the Louis B. Comfort Tiffany Award in the Visual Arts, and, just weeks ago, the 2015/2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Windsor Professor of Science: Steve Scullen, Professor of Management and Gholam Mirafzal, Professor of Chemistry
Professor Scullen, current associate dean of CBPA, came to Drake in 2004. His primarily research interests are in job performance measurement and personnel selection in the context of small applicant pools, areas in which he is regarded as one of the top researchers. He has published numerous articles in top-ranked journals, and his research has been cited in such places as the Harvard Business Review and Fortune. He sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management, Personnel Psychology, and Organizational Research Methods.

Professor Mirafzal joined the Drake faculty in 1999. He has been the recipient of the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Teacher of the Year Award in 2007 and College of Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award in 2013. Professor Mirafzal’s scholarship relates to the fields of synthetic and mechanistic organic chemistry and chemical education. He has published in well-respected peer-reviewed journals including 13 articles with students as co-authors. As the Drake faculty representative for the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship in Sciences he has coordinated the nomination of 23 students, with eight winning the Goldwater Scholarship and four receiving honorable mention.

Finally, I also want to recognize and congratulate Sally Beisser, professor of education, who has received the Ronald Troyer Research Fellowship. This Fellowship was established by the Drake University Board of Trustees in 1999 to honor former provost Ron Troyer and to recognize both scholarly accomplishment and future promise. Professor Beisser has the distinction of being the first woman and the first faculty member from SOE to receive this award. In the past five years she has published 36 juried publications in peer reviewed journals, 24 juried conference publications in national and international Proceedings, and presented 145 juried conference presentations at state, national, and international conferences. This fellowship will advance her current research on early childhood practice in gifted education.

—Joe Lenz, Interim Provost

Campus Announcements Archive

From the Provost: Week of May 2

Guest Speaker for Learning Symposium

I am pleased to announce that our guest presenter for the afternoon session of the Learning Symposium will be Jennifer Godinez (AS ’97). Jennifer Godinez is associate director of Minnesota Education Equity Partnership (MnEEP). As associate director, she co-leads MnEEP and is responsible for key initiatives and program evaluation. Prior to joining Minnesota Education Equity Partnership, she served as executive director of La Escuelita and is founding chair of the Latino Scholarship Fund of Minnesota. She has in-depth experience in youth development, college access program development, race equity policy and strategy development, and education policy development. At Drake she was a Multicultural Cowles Scholar, with a sociology major and multicultural studies concentration. She also holds an M.P.P. from the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Policy, which she attended as a Public Policy and International Affairs Fellow. She will talk with us about her academic and professional journey in developing pathways of cultural responsiveness, inclusivity, and equity action.

While I am at it, I remind you to register for the 2016 Drake University Learning Symposium.

2016 Learning Symposium: “Inclusive Excellence ”
August 19, 2016 8 a.m.–3 p.m.
Sheraton West Des Moines
1800 50th Street, West Des Moines

Click on this link to register and select the sessions you would like to attend—space is limited by the size of the rooms.

We hope you join us at the Symposium to welcome our new provost into the learning community that is Drake University.

Provost Mobile Office Hour
My next scheduled mobile office hour is Tuesday, May 3, 10 a.m.–noon, Cowles Cafe.

—Joe Lenz, Interim Provost

HR Information Archive

Weight Watchers at Work meetings

Great news! We have just started a 12-week Weight Watchers at Work series. Classes meet Mondays at 11 a.m. starting today through Aug. 1 (no meetings on Memorial Day or Fourth of July).

Weekly meetings include confidential weigh-ins from 11 to 11:15 a.m., followed by a 30-minute class. The cost is $156 for the 12-week renewable series. If you are interested in attending this Weight Watchers at Work series, please contact Linda Feiden at linda.feiden@drake.edu for registration and room information.

—Linda Feiden, Assistant Director, Wellness & Engagement

Featured Events Archive

Identities 101

Join Professor Jennifer Harvey and UNITY Roundtable today, May 2, 8–9 p.m., in Parents Hall South, Olmsted Center, for a dialogue around diversity in the classroom to get a better understanding of the intersection between social reality and personal identities.

—Thalia Anguiano

Featured Events Archive

Refugee simulation

Join LEAD 100 students in a refugee simulation on Wednesday, May 4, 6–8 p.m. in Parent’s Hall. A series of hands-on simulation activities will help you better understand the experience of refugee resettlement, and teach you what you can do to help refugees in Iowa. Bring your friends, and brave refugee resettlement together as a “family.”

—Kaitlin Brueggen

News & Achievements Archive

Faculty accomplishments

Mahmoud Hamad takes part in drafting of Libyan constitution

Mahmoud Hamad, associate professor of political science, was selected by the United Nations to co-lead a mediation team that solved disputes within the Libyan Constitutional Drafting Assembly, which on April 20 announced they have approved a draft of Libya’s constitution.

Hamad stayed in Salalah, Oman, from March 15 to March 27 to work with the group. The mediation team included a former Jordanian prime minister and former ministers; justices; and members of parliament from Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Oman. The consultative meeting was held under the auspices of the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General Martin Kobler, the African Union Envoy to Libya Jakaya Kikwete (former president of Tanzania from 2005 to 2015), and the Omani Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah. Read more in the Drake Newsroom.

Perrine’s No Confession, No Mass honored

The 28th annual Publishing Triangle Awards were presented on April 21 at a gala ceremony. Jennifer Perrine, associate professor of English and director of women’s studies at Drake, received the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry for her work, No Confession, No Mass.

The Publishing Triangle, the association of lesbians and gay men in publishing, began honoring a LGBT writer for his or her body of work a few months after the organization was founded in 1988, and has now partnered with the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards to present an impressive array of awards each spring. The Publishing Triangle established its poetry awards in 2001. Joseph O. Legaspi, a judge this year, and Kamilah Aisha Moon, a past finalist for the Audre Lorde Award, presented these awards, which carry a prize of $500 apiece.

News & Achievements Archive

Bulldogs of DU: Emily Weaver

What do you do?
I am the director of annual giving, so I’m in charge of raising operational support for the University. The Annual Fund is sort of like the University checking account; the money that’s raised is spent to meet Drake’s immediate needs.

What are you working on right now?
Right now I’m focused on All In, our 24-hour online giving campaign. Days of giving were becoming increasingly popular among our peers, so we decided to try it two years ago and we’ve been really successful.  We raised almost $100,000 last year alone. This year’s campaign is May 10-11, noon to noon. The idea is that we want people to naturally engage with us online, so we produce a lot of video with University Communications and promote via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the website, and email. We try to make it fun and engage people—for example, some pharmacy professors are doing a race to see who can put on the most white coats, some arts and sciences faculty are doing an interpretive dance , and Craig Owens did a bedtime story last year that was hilarious.

You have three adorable kids—what do you love most about being a mom?
One thing that I love is seeing traits that I’ve always loved about my husband in my children. It’s neat to see these mini versions of yourself. I’m kind of a homebody and am a family-oriented person, and I just love having my people around me. Kids are so resilient and forgiving and you are just everything to them. Adults hold grudges, kids are always in your corner.

My daughter likes things a particular way, which is just like me. She also has this confidence—I think it comes from my husband—and she thinks this is her world and we are just living in it. She walks in a room and thinks she owns the room. My son is really smart and always has to know everything. I love watching his brain work. My baby is a huge mama’s boy, and I love that.

For Students Archive

Chill out with the LEAD Relaxation Room

From May 2–6, the LEAD capstone will host events to promote the relaxation room they have initiated in their efforts to enable students to achieve their optimal performance while managing stress. The Relaxation Room is located in the Mezzanine in Upper Olmsted. You will find food, prizes, tea, coloring books, silly putty, Legos, deep breathing exercises, and more.

—Samantha Olea