As the holiday season approaches, many struggle to balance work, family, and endless tasks, often feeling overwhelmed and disorganized. While responsibility and dependability are crucial skills, few of us have formal training in mastering them, leading to reliance on complex systems that add to the stress.

Everclass: Overcome the Holiday Hustle: Simple Strategies for an Organized Life will focus on simplifying life during the holiday rush by creating easy routines and habits to stay organized and reduce stress. Learn how to align your calendar, to-do list, and priorities without worrying about missed deadlines or commitments.

Join us at 12 p.m. on Thursday, December 12th to discover strategies for surviving the holidays with less stress and more ease! This session will be facilitated by Kristin Economos, Senior Director, Adams Leadership Institute at Drake University.

—Andy Verlengia, Alumni Relations

While Harlaxton Manor is abuzz with holiday decorating and awaiting the arrival of Santa, Professor McCarthy and the amazing Drake cohort (never has she met such an enthusiastic group!) enjoyed a Christmas afternoon tea at Petticoat Vintage Tea Room in Grantham, England.

This is the culmination of a fascinating semester of local activities like visiting the parish council and attending monthly meetings of the local history society, along with school trips to places like Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Stonehenge, and personal trips to Ireland, Switzerland, and more. To follow one student’s journey, with some great laughs along the way, read student Samantha Pollack’s blog.

And come meet us at DU England: Drake Semester at Harlaxton. Look for information sessions in the spring semester!

ITS staff will be performing routine maintenance on our Oracle databases on Sunday, Dec. 22 between 7 – 9 a.m. During this time, Drake systems including Self Service, Banner, ProcessMaker, eTranscripts, and TouchNet may be unavailable. This work is necessary to maintain the security of University data.

If you experience issues after the maintenance is complete, contact the ITS Support Center for help by visiting service.drake.edu/its, calling 515-271-3001, or visiting the lower level of Carnegie Hall.

To see the full maintenance schedule, visit drake.edu/its/maintenanceschedule/.

—Becky Klein, ITS

On Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024 2 – 8 a.m., Blackboard will be fully unavailable to all users while required maintenance is being performed on the back-end database. This maintenance is necessary to ensure optimal system security and performance.

If you have questions, contact us by submitting a Blackboard Ultra Request ticket though the ITS service portal (service.drake.edu/its) or by calling the Support Center at 515-271-3001.

—Karly Good, ITS

End of the Fall semester: Building schedules will change for the Winter Break and the start/end of the semesters.  Following finals, we will adopt “administrative hours” for most campus buildings while classes are not in session (buildings will be open on weekdays from 7:30 am – 4:30 pm December 16–20).  Most extended hour student access plans will also be disabled for the break. 

Winter Break: Doors will be locked for the winter break from December 21st to January 1st.  Faculty and staff will still be able to utilize their authorized access plans (for example, 24/7 access to their office buildings), but extended hour student plans will continue to be shut off during this time. 

Start of J-term semester: “Administrative hours” (7:30am – 4:30pm) will resume for the staff’s return on January 2nd and 3rd, and then regular Monday – Friday academic year building hours and extended student access will resume at the start of J-term (January 6^th).  Due to decreased weekend traffic during J-term, we will again lock buildings on the weekends through January and will be 100% back to our normal schedule when Spring semester starts, the week of January 27.   

If you have a scheduling conflict that will be affected by this door schedule, please speak to your building manager so they can put in a ticket to unlock the doors outside of our planned schedule.  Please note that not every building will follow this schedule exactly (Rec, Cowles, Law, and Olmsted often have some schedule variations), so feel free to check in at those buildings if you are unsure of their schedules. 

Please contact Public Safety (515-271-2222) if you have a door access emergency during this time. Feel free to email studentservices@drake.edu if you have a general (non-emergent) card access question or concern.

Happy Holiday Season!

—Sara Heijerman, Finance & Administration