Tom Davis

Keno Davis

Tom Davis will continue to lead the Drake University men's basketball program until he decides to retire, at which point his son, Keno Davis, will take the reins of the program, Drake President David Maxwell announced today.

When the senior Davis retires, Keno Davis will be given a contract as head coach through the 2010-2011 season, ensuring a seamless transition for the program. The junior Davis joined his father on the bench when Tom Davis was named the school's 23rd head coach in 2003.

"Dr. Davis is in the process of building a men's basketball program at Drake that reflects our desire to compete and succeed at the highest levels, and that respects the University's academic integrity," President Maxwell said. "It is our hope that he will continue coaching long enough to enjoy the fruits of those efforts. We also believe that continuity in our coaching staff is vital to the program's continued improvement and for the team to become truly competitive in the Missouri Valley Conference."

Drake's commitment to Davis' coaching legacy mirrors a growing trend in men's college basketball, with similar conversions occurring at Texas Tech University and Oklahoma State University. These institutions are ensuring continuity of their programs with father-son coaching teams.

Tom Davis will enter the 2006-07 ranking seventh in wins among active NCAA Division I coaches with 580 victories. The Bulldogs were 12-19 overall this past season, losing eight games by a combined total of 19 points. Drake returns nine of its top 11 players, including four starters, from last year's squad. The Bulldogs also will welcome the return of junior forward Klayton Korver, a two-year starter who took a medical red shirt this past season.

Keno Davis brings an impressive coaching resume to his role as heir-apparent at Drake, including two years as an assistant under Bruce Pearl at Southern Indiana University, six years working with former Drake coach Gary Garner at Southeast Missouri State University and the past three years with his father.
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The time had come for young Ruth David to flee.

At just 10 years old, David had already seen her family shunned by society, been forced from her school and her family's jobs at the local factory taken away.

Then came the violent attacks of Kristallnacht. The Nazis arrested David's father. She would never see him or her mother again. They were murdered at Auschwitz. The family made sure the murderous German regime during World War II would not get their daughter. They dispatched her and her four siblings to England where she would begin life anew.

David, and author of "Child of Our Time: A Young Girl's Flight from the Holocaust," will tell her more of her Holocaust survivor's tale and discuss her book at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 19, in the Cowles Library Reading Room.

The book discussion at Drake is in conjunction with a traveling exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on display in Cowles Library through May 20. The exhibit is titled "Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings."

Although the discussion is free and open to the public, reservations are required due to limited seating. Call Susan Breakenridge at x3994 to reserve a seat.

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Students from Lincoln and Hoover high schools watched the first act of the Drake production of "The Pirates of Penzance" in a preview performance last week. The students' visit was part of an ongoing partnership between Des Moines schools and Drake to spark interest in fine arts.

A mass of singing buccaneers will seize control of Harmon Fine Arts Center this week.

Drake's production of "The Pirates of Penzance" features a cast of 34 and an orchestra made up of Drake students, alumni and professional musicians under the direction of Tom Harvey. Ann K. Cravero, Drake assistant professor of music, directs the operetta.

Performances start at 8 p.m. April 21 and 22 in the Performing Arts Hall in the Harmon Fine Arts Center. Tickets, which are $12 for adults, $6 for students and senior citizens, are available at the Drake Fine Arts Box Office at x3841.

On Friday, April 21, Friends of Drake Arts will sponsor a pre-theater dinner and TalkAbout for "The Pirates of Penzance." Following the 6 p.m. dinner in Levitt Hall in Old Main, Cravero will discuss the operetta and offer insights into how the production came together. Cost for dinner, TalkAbout and operetta is $20. For reservations, call x3147 or send an e-mail message to alumni.rsvp@drake.edu.

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The Drake Symphony Orchestra, John Canarina conducting, will present its annual Young Artists Concert at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 25, on the Jordan Stage in Sheslow Auditorium in Old Main.

Five outstanding student musicians will be featured as soloists: baritone Timothy Bostwick, trumpeter Justin Brookens, clarinetist Amanda Nunn, soprano Lizabeth Porto and soprano Jenna Stinson.

The varied program will include music by Mozart, Bizet, Donizetti, Gounod, Catalani, Hummel and Krommer. The orchestra will cap the evening with Morton Gould's lively and boisterous Latin-American Symphonette.

The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call x2108.
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Workers rush to complete Old Main in 1882. When finished, Francis Marion Drake paid for a new, raised porch to be added to the building's front because he thought the building was too plain. Historical tidbits such as this will be on display at the Polk County Heritage Gallery from Tuesday, April 25 through Friday, June 2.

Their names appear on buildings and adorn award certificates. Their faces are seen rarely, and then only in dusty old portraits and the yellowed pages of college annuals. Distance in history makes it hard to remember that the founders of Drake University were flesh and blood - men and women of great ambitions, tedious struggles and grand accomplishments.

Despite building what today is Iowa's largest private university, the stories of the people who made the school possible are seldom told - until now.

A historical display at the Polk County Heritage Gallery, 111 Court Ave. in downtown Des Moines, will tell the tales of the dreamers, thinkers, stargazers and war heroes who built Drake. The display will run from Tuesday, April 25, through Friday, June 2. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. For information on the gallery, visit www.heritagegallery.org or call (515) 286-2242.

Visitors will learn how a swashbuckling adventurer, businessman and Civil War general named Francis Marion Drake allied with George Carpenter, a teacher and preacher from Winterset, to build a university in the middle of what was then a forest some five miles from Des Moines.

They will read about Daniel Morehouse, a former football player and stargazing intellectual who discovered a comet, got some of Drake's finest buildings built during the nation's worst economic times and dozens of other stories great and small from Drake history.

Also on available for viewing will be a display of historical items from Drake's storied past and a running slideshow of images through Drake's past and present.
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Charles D'Ambrosio

Short-story author and essayist Charles D'Ambrosio will read from his work and discuss the craft of writing at Drake at 8 p.m., Wednesday, April 19, in the Medbury Hall Honors Lounge. D'Ambrosio's talk is part of the Drake Writers and Critics Series.

D'Ambrosio, visiting writer at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, is a 1991 graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

In addition to winning the Aga Khan Fiction Prize, he is a recipient of the Henfield/Transatlantic Review Award and a James Michener Fellowship.

His story, "The Point", first published in the New Yorker, was selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 1991. Little Brown published his book of stories, "The Point," in 1995. He is also the author of "Orphans," a book of essays.
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"Trash Bag" by Abraham Nord will be featured in his "Splendor Overlooked" exhibition.

Art students are displaying their best works in a series of Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibitions in the Anderson and Weeks galleries on campus and the Fitch Gallery in downtown Des Moines. All of the exhibitions are free and open to the public.

"The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," featuring prints by Jesse Baker and graphic design by Spencer Luebbert and John Vogl, opened this past weekend and runs through April 22 in the Fitch Gallery, 304 15th St.

Sculpture by Teah Phillips will be on display in an untitled exhibition from Friday, April 21, through May 7 in the Anderson Gallery. The opening reception will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday. The show explores the lives of Middle-Eastern women.

Drawings by Jesse Bechtold will be displayed April 21 through May 8 in the Weeks Gallery in the lobby of the Harmon Fine Arts Center. The opening reception will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday.

Paintings by Abraham Nord will be displayed in an exhibition titled "Splendor Overlooked" April 28-29 at the Fitch Gallery. The opening reception will be from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, April 28. Nord's work calls attention to the subtle or unexpected visual beauty in places, situations and objects normally overlooked by enlarging the subject matter and placing it on the pedestal of fine art.
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Judging by the amount of misused paint in this photo, students occasionally confuse themselves for concrete squares during street painting.

FRIDAY, APRIL 21

• Float making party, 3 to 7 p.m., Parking Lot 4.

• Drake Relays Parade, 10 a.m. to noon, Drake campus and neighborhood, alumni Dan and Pat Jorndt, will serve as parade marshals. The Relays Parade starts at 24th Street and University Avenue, then moves west on University, then north on 30th Street, then east on Forest Avenue, ending at Forest and 25th Street. Businesses and community organizations are invited to participate.
• Street Painting, 1 to 5 p.m., Painted Street, Carpenter Avenue.

• Mud volleyball finals, 2 to 5 p.m., mud lot by Carpenter parking area.

Revitalized Drake Stadium

0 - Number of night football games west of the Mississippi before Drake hosted the first at the stadium on Oct. 8, 1928

1.96 - Most amount of rain, in inches, to fall during a single day at the Relays, Saturday, 1969

2 - Number of steel cables anchoring the red brick Stadium facade to the infield during construction to support the wall while bricks and concrete foundation were removed

4 - Approximate height, in feet, the stadium infield and track were raised after the reconstruction

6 - Width, in inches, that lanes on the new track were increased to meet international standards

11 - Approximate depth, in feet, of the hole dug in the stadium infield during reconstruction to replace drainage system

12 - Maximum space, in inches, required to be counted as one seat in a Drake Stadium bleacher in 1925

18 - Maximum space, in inches, required to be counted as one seat in 2006

19 - Margin of victory, in points, for the Bulldogs over the Kansas Aggies on opening day of Drake Stadium, Oct. 11, 1925

40 - Lowest high temperature recorded, in degrees Fahrenheit, at the Drake Relays, 1910

88 - Highest high temperature recorded, in degrees Fahrenheit, at the Drake Relays, Saturday, 1986

100 - Estimated number of fans attending the first Drake Relays in 1910, which were held on one day during a blizzard.

1905 - Opening year for Haskins Field, later renamed Drake Stadium, an amphitheater with bleachers built into the steep hills north of Forest Avenue.

1925 - Year Drake Stadium opened with honored guests including the mayor of Des Moines, the governor of Iowa and Robin Hood, a bulldog purported to be the "most symmetrical bulldog in the United States."

14,000 - The capacity of the revitalized Drake Stadium.

38,000 - Estimated attendance for the 2005 Relays, held over three days.

40,000 - The number of fans the original Haskins Field was projected to hold if expanded to full capacity.

$230,000 - Cost to build Drake Stadium in 1925.

$15 million - Approximate cost to renovate Drake Stadium in 2005-06.

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• Drake softball vs. Iowa, 5 p.m., Buel Field.

• The College of Business and Public Administration celebrates Business Days with an invitation-only awards banquet and guest speaker, Richard Kovacevich, chief executive officer of Wells Fargo, 6 p.m., Parents Hall, Olmsted Center.
• Drake English Department's Writers and Critics Series presents a lecture and reading by author Charles D'Ambriosio, visiting writer at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, 8 p.m., Medbury Hall Honors Lounge.

• Annual Leaders and Luminaries, Drake student leadership awards ceremony, 1 p.m., Sheslow Auditorium, Old Main.
• Float making party, 3 to 7 p.m., Parking Lot 4.
• "Pirates of Penance" Pre-Theater Dinner and Talkabout presented by director Ann Cravero, assistant professor of music, 6 p.m., Levitt Hall, Old Main, $20, call x3147 for reservations.
• Drake Opera Theater presents Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance," directed by Ann Cravero, 8 p.m., Performing Arts Hall, Harmon Fine Arts Center, $12 for adults, $6 for students, seniors and those with Drake ID.
• Drake Municipal Observatory presentation, "Jupiter and Saturn Physical Attributes and Materials Available for Life," 8 p.m., Drake Municipal Observatory, Waveland Park.

• Drake Relays Parade, 10 a.m. to noon, Drake campus and neighborhood, alumni Dan and Pat Jorndt, will serve as parade marshals. The Relays Parade starts at 24th Street and University Avenue, then moves west on University, then north on 30th Street, then east on Forest Avenue, ending at Forest and 25th Street.
• Drake men's tennis vs. Missouri State, 11 a.m., Drake Tennis Center.
• Street Painting, 1 to 5 p.m., Painted Street, Carpenter Avenue.
• Drake softball vs. Bradley, noon, Buel Field.
• Mid-Seventies Music Alumni Reunion, 4:30 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. dinner, Levitt Hall, Old Main. Dinner is $20 per person and a cash bar will be available. Alumni are then invited to attend the Drake Opera Theatre production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance."
• Drake Opera Theatre presents "The Pirates of Penzance," directed by Ann Cravero, 8 p.m., Performing Arts Hall, Harmon Fine Arts Center, $12 for adults, $6 for students, seniors and those with Drake ID.

• Drake men's tennis vs. Wichita State, 10 a.m., Drake Tennis Center.
• Drake softball vs. Bradley, noon, Buel Field.
• Mud volleyball finals, 2 to 5 p.m., mud lot by Carpenter parking area.
• Drake Concert Band, conducted by Sean Flanigan, 8 p.m., on the Jordan Stage, Sheslow Auditorium, Old Main.

• Beautiful Bulldog Contest, 11 a.m., Nollen Plaza, downtown Des Moines.
• Hypnotist Jim Wand, 9 to 11 p.m., Sheslow Auditorium, Old Main.

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, professor of economics, recently presented two papers at two professional meetings. The first paper, titled "Origins of the Recent Wars of Choice-and Their Impact on U.S. Global Markets," was presented at the annual symposium of The Center for Global Trade and Development April 6-8 at Chapman University, Orange County, Calif. The paper can be viewed online. The second paper, titled "Social vs. Military Spending: How the Pentagon Budget Crowds Out Public Infrastructure and Aggravates Natural Disasters-the Case of Hurricane Katrina," was presented at the February meeting of the American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences in Las Vegas, Nev. The paper can be viewed online.

Art Sanders, professor of politics and chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations, received the Centennial Scholar Award at the College of Arts and Sciences Honors Convocation. The award is given in alternate years to faculty members in the liberal arts for distinguished achievements as scholars.

Brian Sanders, associate professor of psychology and head of the Neuroscience Program, received the Outstanding Teacher Award at the recent College of Arts and Sciences Honors Convocation.

Ronald Torry, professor of pharmacology, is a co-investigator on a five-year grant of $1,112,650 from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. The principal investigator is Donald S. Torry, professor of medical microbiology, immunology and cell biology and clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Ill. Clinical studies have shown that expression of placenta growth factor is significantly reduced in pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia. The overall objective of the grant is to determine the molecular mechanisms and physiological consequences of this aberrant gene expression in trophoblast isolated from preeclamptic human placenta.