Tag Archives: diversity

Featured Events Archive

Drake Law celebrates Diversity Week Feb. 22–26

Drake Law School will celebrate Diversity Week Feb. 22–26 with various events hosted by Drake Law student organizations. Events include Gender and Sexuality Awareness Day, a discussion with local Muslim students and community leaders, a panel of diverse judges, and a roundtable on refugees and immigration law.

Schedule of events:

Monday, Feb. 22
Gender and Sexuality Awareness Day
9 a.m.–4 p.m., Cartwright Hall, Porterhouse Lounge

Tables will be set up in Cartwright Hall  with information related to various gender and sexuality issues in law and society, including reproductive rights, the wage gap, how to address clients of different genders, and more. There will also be facilitated discussions about the upcoming abortion and religious freedom cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and how Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing may affect the decisions.

Girls Court Information Session
4:30–5:30 p.m., Cartwright Hall, Room 206

Drake 3L Laura McGuire will present on the Girls Court, a gender-specific court designed to better accommodate victims of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. McGuire, who has been involved in the process of opening a Girls Court in Polk County, will discuss what the Girls Court is, when it will start, and why it’s important. The presentation will include time for questions.

Sponsored by Drake Law Women and Drake OUTlaws.

Tuesday, Feb. 23
The Muslim Experience in Iowa
4 p.m., Cartwright Hall, Kern Commons

Students are invited to share in a conversation with Muslim students and leaders from the Des Moines community. During the event, the guests will discuss how the past few years of changing political climate has impacted them in Des Moines. Food will be provided.

Sponsored by the International Law Society.

Wednesday, Feb. 24
“We’re All Just a Piece of a Beautiful Puzzle: Do Your Piece”
10 a.m.–3 p.m., Cartwright Hall, Porterhouse Lounge

Various tables will be set up in Porterhouse Lounge. The display will include an interactive element with two puzzles depicting diversity, a variety of photos celebrating differences in people, and candy giveaways containing uplifting messages.

Sponsored by the Black Law Student Association and OWLS.

Thursday, Feb. 25
Diverse Judge Panel
5:30–6:30 p.m., Cartwright Hall, Room 206

This panel will focus on how diversity and the law interact. Various judges will talk about their own experiences and observations with diversity and the law—both on and off the bench. Potential topics include how the judicial system promotes diversity and where it can improve; the role of diversity in judicial elections, elections in general, access to legal education, and jobs; and how diversity will affect the nomination of the next U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Judges confirmed to attend the event include Judge Mary Tabor from the Iowa Court of Appeals, Judge Romonda Belcher from the Fifth District of Iowa, and Deputy Workers’ Compensation Commissioner Michelle McGovern. The judges will speak for about 40–50 minutes, leaving 10–20 minutes available for questions from the audience. Light refreshments will be provided.

Sponsored by the American Constitution Society—Drake Law Chapter.

Immigration and Refugee Reception
6:30–7:30 p.m., Cartwright Hall, Kern Commons

Attend a reception and roundtable discussion on immigration and refugee matters. Local practicing lawyers in the areas of immigration and civil rights are invited to participate in the discussion with students and share their work with refugees, employment law, and other aspects of immigration law. Each table will have prepared questions and topics to discuss. Food will be provided.

Sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association.

Friday, Feb. 26
Students are encouraged to get a signature on their activity cards at each event they attend during the week. Students who have attended at least three events can submit their cards to Cartwright Hall, Room 128, by noon on Friday, Feb. 26 to be entered into a drawing to win a $50 prize.

Sponsored by the Student Bar Association.

For more information, visit: www.law.drake.edu/newsEvents/details.aspx?eventID=2016-diversityWeek

—Kayla Choate, Law School Alumni Affairs & Communications Coordinator

Strategic Updates Archive

From the Provost: Week of Feb. 15

Beginning to Build the Professoriate for the Future
Two years ago Drake University proposed our Quality Initiative, a project undertaken “to alter the University culture to ensure that people of all races and ethnicities find a welcoming and supportive environment at Drake University, and concomitantly to increase racial and ethnic diversity among Drake students, faculty and staff.” The climate survey conducted last spring, the report on that survey delivered in September, and the forums that followed to discuss and identify immediate action steps we can take (soon to be announced) are, of course, part of that initiative, as was the creation of the Crew Scholars program, now in its third successful year.

Another piece of the QI, one on which there has been less apparent movement, is the “professoriate of the future,” a commitment to “recruit, hire, mentor, and retain faculty of color, across the disciplines represented in the University.” I want to take a moment to make our efforts in this area more visible.

This year we are conducting 22 searches to recruit faculty to Drake University, most to fill positions opened by retirement or resignation, some for the new programs. Along with the deans and Catalyst—a group of faculty devoted to improving diversity recruitment—I wanted to make a more deliberate and concerted effort to attract and hire diverse applicants and thus increase racial and ethnic diversity on campus. Toward that end we have taken several small, but needed steps:

  • In cooperation with Human Resources, we revised the Faculty Search Manual in two important ways. First, we updated the language in the EEO statements to ensure that advertisements are more welcoming and present Drake in a manner that will be attractive to diverse candidates. Second, we allowed the addition of a third finalist for campus visits (searches are currently restricted to two) if a compelling case can be made that an additional candidate will forward our goal of Drake becoming a more inclusive community. (In the 15 visits we have had so far, 5 were permitted to include a third candidate.)
  •  I purchased a three-part self-paced training webinar on recruiting, hiring, and retaining diverse faculty and mandated that at least one member of each search committee complete the webinar.
  • Representatives from Catalyst have met with the deans and with search committees prior to campus visits to discuss best practices.

These may seem small things, but they appear to be having an impact. Of the nine completed searches, three have resulted in diversity hires. In addition, since June I have approved converting two faculty of color in contingent positions to tenure-track lines. Of course, we have much more and serious work to do: improving our website to feature a page focused on the needs of a diverse prospective employee; develop a University-wide mentoring program for faculty; build better connections between the University and the community to provide a more welcoming and supportive environment; update and revise promotion and tenure policies; and, as the climate survey told us loud and clear, provide better training to all Drake students, faculty, and staff. For this very reason, the 2016 Learning Symposium will be devoted to the theme of “Inclusive Excellence” and will include an afternoon workshop on inclusivity training. An invitation to submit session proposals will be sent soon. This is an opportunity to join with others and make a real contribution to improving our working and learning environment.

Provost Mobile Office Hour
You can find me this week on Thursday, Feb. 18, 10–11:30 a.m., in the Cowles Library coffee shop. No appointments needed.

—Joe Lenz, Interim Provost

Strategic Updates Archive

Climate Assessment update

The members of the Strategic Diversity Action Team are deeply grateful to the more than 300 faculty, staff, and students who took the time to participate in one of 22 next steps forums throughout the fall semester. Your thoughtful participation provided rich insights for our team to review and use to develop a set of recommendations for future action. We will analyze the information in January, and plan to share a set of action steps with the campus community in the early part of spring semester. Thank you for your continued engagement in the work to achieve meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus and to create a welcoming and inclusive community.

—Submitted by Melissa Sturm-Smith, Renee Cramer, and Michael Couvillon

Featured Events Archive

Principal Financial Group Center for Global Citizenship events

“How Islamic Investing is Transforming Global Capital Markets”
Tuesday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m.
Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center

Datuk Noripah Kamso is a Global Practitioner at Drake. She was formerly the advisor of CIMB Islamic and the founding chief executive of CIMB-Principal Islamic Asset Management Sdn Bhd. Acknowledging that Islamic asset management is an infant industry, she shares her research via articles in global publications, international Islamic finance and Takaful conferences, and her second book Investing in Islamic Funds: A Practitioner’s Perspective.

“The Long Walk to Inclusivity: Evaluating the Success of Diversity Initiatives”
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 7 p.m.
Meredith Hall, Room 101

In this talk Kesh Govinder will present an overview of the demographic status of the higher education sector in South Africa. He will also present a simple index to monitor the effectiveness of strategies to address the issue of the underrepresented minority—known as transformation—in South Africa. Govinder also will apply this approach to Drake data and comment on its implications for the Strategic Diversity Action plan. Kesh Govinder is a professor of applied mathematics, as well as dean and head of the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). He has published more than 80 articles in internationally recognized journals and presented at and organized local and international conferences.