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On Campus - Stories
October
15, 1999 - Vol.52, No. 20
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Inauguration Week culminates in installation of David Maxwell
as Drake's 12th president
David E. Maxwell was installed as Drake's 12th president on Saturday, Oct. 10, at
the Drake Knapp Center. Former Iowa Gov. and Drake President Robert D. Ray, BN'52,
LW'54, presented Dr. Maxwell with the Drake president's medallion, which has the
names of all Drake presidents engraved on it. He also praised Dr. Maxwell as the
right person to lead Drake into the 21st century. "He has the vitality, energy,
excitement and know-how to do a great job as president," Ray said.
The inaugural ceremony included the presentation of numerous gifts to the new president:
- A portable bookshelf filled with
books written by faculty members from Daniel Spencer, president of the Faculty Senate;
- A crystal globe representing
Drake's 45,000 alumni scattered across the world from Barbara Minner Ford, JO'74,
president of the Drake National Alumni Association;
- A history of the Drake Neighborhood
and a plaque from the Drake Neighborhood Association from Des Moines Mayor Preston
Daniels, LA'78, GR'85;
- A plaque engraved with a poem
by Russian author Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin from Student Body President John
Rosen;
- A set of juggling clubs representing
the many constituencies a university president must juggle from Dr. Maxwell's sons,
Justin and Stephen;
- Framed photos of the president's
medallion and the University mace from Ray, chair of the Board of Governors; and
- A brick representing the staff
as the foundation of the University along with a newly planted red maple tree near
Old Main from Carla McCrea, representing the Staff Suggestion and Evaluation Committee.
In his inaugural address, President
Maxwell said he has been working on a Strategic Vision Document for the University.
He invited faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends to provide feedback on the
document, which has now been posted on the Drake Web site at www.drake.edu/president/future/.
Maytag CEO to speak at Drake
Lloyd D. Ward, chairman and chief executive officer of Maytag Corp., will give an
informal talk and answer questions from students from 3 to
4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28, in Parents Hall North at Olmsted Center.
Later that day, Ward will give the annual Financial Executives Institute-Drake Lecture
at 7:15 p.m. in Sheslow Auditorium in Old Main. His lecture, which is free and open
to the public, is titled "Reinventing Maytag for the 21st Century." A reception
will follow in Levitt Hall.
Ward recently was featured on the cover of Business Week magazine, which also selected
him as one of the "Top 25 Executives of 1998."
He is the second African American to lead a major U.S. company and is playing a key
role in an initiative to reach a 100 percent graduation rate for African-American
high school students in the Des Moines area.
The FEI-Drake Lecture is an annual program sponsored by the Iowa chapter of the Financial
Executives Institute and Drake's School of Accounting and Business Law, College of
Business and Public Administration.
Prof. Sisk to discuss ethics rules
Failure to adopt a new set of lawyers' rules for professional conduct would leave
Iowa in the precarious position of being one of only a handful of states clinging
to the old code, says a Drake law professor, who will address the issue in a lecture
at 4 p.m. Monday, Oct. 25. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will
take place in room 213 of Cartwright Hall.
Gregory Sisk, Richard M. and Anita Calkins distinguished professor of law, says Iowa
should replace the current Code of Professional Responsibility with the Model Rules
of Professional Conduct, which have been adopted by 39 states.
"If Iowa stubbornly clings to a code that has been superseded in the nation
at large, Iowa lawyers will lose the opportunity to fully share in the experiences
and ethical advancements of the profession and to benefit from the constant reevaluation
and evolution of ethical standards," Sisk said.
Alumni to be honored Oct. 29
Two alumni of the School of Education will be honored for their achievements at the
school's Annual Alumni Awards Dinner on Friday, Oct. 29, at the Hotel Savery. They
are:
- Kent Mutchler, superintendent
of schools for the Oelwein Community School District. He received an Ed.S. from Drake
in 1990 and his Ph.D. in educational administration from Drake in 1998.
- Kay Augustine Pettijohn, director
of education and outreach of the Institute for Character Development at Drake. She
received a bachelor's degree in music education from Drake in 1978 and an M.S.E.
from Drake in 1988.
The annual event will begin with
a reception at 5:30 p.m. followed by dinner at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 per person
and $10 per senior citizen. For reservations, call Cheryl Cox at x2183.
Drake to host conference on college sports corruption
For the first time ever, a consortium of college professors will get together to
offer up their solutions to the growing number of scandals in collegiate athletics.
Jon Ericson, the Ellis and Nelle Levitt professor of rhetoric and communication studies
at Drake, says it's time for academia to stop sitting on the sidelines and start
fighting the plague of athletic program disasters that have detonated on college
campuses across the country. So he's set up a meeting of the minds at Drake on Oct.
21 and 22 for college professors and critics of modern-day intercollegiate sports
programs.
The result, he says, will be a plan he hopes will spark grass-roots efforts to reform
college sports. "This conference will have no speeches and no hand-wringing,"
he said. " I'm going to put everyone through a Camp David Accord and say 'You
have 24 hours to come up with a plan to reform collegiate athletics.' "
For the most part, faculty are standing idly by, or adding to the outrage by letting
student athletes slide by in their classes, Ericson charges. "Until faculty
collectively dig in and say, 'It's over,' things aren't going to change. We're trying
to shift the attention from athletic directors and coaches and put it right where
it belongs - with the faculty."
A tall order for one professor. But he's bringing in some other outspoken critics
of the status quo to promote the cause: William C. Dowling, professor of English
at Rutgers University; Terry Knapp, professor of psychology at the University of
Nevada-Las Vegas; and Richard Purple, professor of physiology and ophthalmology at
the University of Minnesota.
Dowling has received national attention as founder of Rutgers 1000, a student-alumni-faculty
movement to withdraw Rutgers from the Big East conference and enter a Division IAA
non-athletic-scholarship league or conference. Knapp began research more than a dozen
years ago on how student-athletes maintain academic eligibility. And Purple is former
chair of the University of Minnesota Faculty Senate's executive committee who resigned
in protest from the university's Assembly Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics
in October 1988.
Journalists from across the country also will participate in the conference. Wall
Street Journal sports columnist Frederick Klein will be there, as will George Dohrmann,
a sports reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press; Tom Witosky, a reporter for The
Des Moines Register, and Jim Naughton, former senior editor for The Chronicle of
Higher Education.
Several journalists already have written about the conference, including Robert Lipsyte
of The New York Times and Skip Bayless of The Chicago Tribune.
Ericson has drafted a proposal as a starting point for the conference. It is posted,
along with additional information about the conference, on the Drake Web site at
www.drake.edu/events/collegesports/. There is no registration fee for the
conference.
The conference will start at noon Thursday, Oct. 21, with an address by professor
Murray Sperber of the University of Indiana at the Des Moines Rotary Club Luncheon
to be held at the Polk County Convention Center in downtown Des Moines. Sperber is
the author of several books on college sports, including College Sports Inc.: The
Athletic Department vs. The University.
After the luncheon, the conference will move to the Drake campus for meetings in
Sheslow Auditorium in Old Main and Olmsted Center. The final session will be held
from 11 a.m. to noon Friday, Oct. 22, in Parents Hall at Olmsted Center. At that
meeting, participants are expected to finalize the conference plan and decide what,
if any, manifesto should be forwarded to faculty senates of all Division I universities
and colleges. A luncheon and closing remarks will follow from noon to 1 p.m. in Olmsted
Center.
New outdoor sculpture graces Drake campus this year
Drake has gained a new work of art with the recent installation of a 14-foot-tall
sculpture on a hilltop at the northwest corner of Meredith Hall.
Robert Craig, associate professor of art and chair of the art department, began building
the untitled piece during his sabbatical last year and finished it in July. It's
the largest piece he has done since 1994, when he completed a commissioned sculpture
that was installed on the campus of Grinnell College.
Craig said his new sculpture is a departure from his previous pieces in both form
and content. "It is the first piece of sculpture in a new series involving my
interest in industrial design objects that I have begun to collect and research,"
he added.
The new work, which has been well received by faculty and students, will remain on
display at Drake through May. After that, Craig plans to submit it to
national sculpture exhibition competitions.
"I'm glad to have an opportunity to exhibit my sculpture on campus for the Drake
and Des Moines communities to view," Craig said. "The location was chosen
because the architecture of Meredith Hall was related to my design and I felt my
sculpture would be best situated on an elevated site."
A Student Centered Learning Environment
At the start of the academic
year, the Drake Disability Resource Center sent out a campuswide e-mail message asking
students, staff and faculty to record textbooks on tape for students with disabilities.
The response was overwhelming.
Fifty-nine volunteers responded to the appeal, including students and faculty as
well as spouses and neighborhood residents, said Amy Desenberg-Wines, academic assistance
director for the center.
Elizabeth Tobak, a graduate student working on her master's degree for vocational
rehabilitation counseling, relies on the textbook tapes the Disability Resource Center
provides. She said her eyes don't track across the lines very well, so she listens
to the tape while reading along in the book. When she studies she will listen to
a paragraph, stop the tape, take notes, and then continue on with the process.
"I take one class at a time because it takes longer for me to study," she
said. "I'm going to get [my degree]. I'm determined." Tobak expects to
graduate in August 2000, five years after she started her degree program at Drake.
"Amy and the community should be commended," she added. "It's great
to get so many volunteers to perform the service."
Desenberg-Wines said the immediate response she had to the request sent out by e-mail
was exciting. She notes that people continue to volunteer to record tapes of textbooks
throughout the semester.
For example, Madeleine Maxwell, wife of President David Maxwell, recently stopped
by for a recording session as did members of the women's softball team. The entire
team has pledged to help with the recording project this semester.
"It is a real pleasure to see the show of support and commitment to service,"
Desenberg-Wines said. "This is one nice example of what makes Drake a wonderful
institution. I feel so proud to be a part of the Drake community."
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