Year: 2007

Drake graduate Drew Gulley, AS'05, recently created a Web site designed to engage Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Drake alumni through dialogue and quality programming, while fostering support for Drake and its current LGBT students.

Drake and KRNT Radio in Des Moines have agreed on a three-year contract extension for the station to continue to broadcast Bulldog athletic events.

Drake senior Sarah Foote, who was named the most valuable women's soccer player in the Missouri Valley Conference, and senior Maor Zirkin, who was named the 2007 MVC Tennis Player of the Year, were named co-recipients of the Tim and Jerry Howlett Memorial Award as the school's top athletes for 2006-07 during the annual Drake Corn Feed and Auction Aug. 27.

Cole Ingle threw a 56-yard touchdown pass to Augustine Agyei with 23.2 seconds left to power Drake to the biggest victory in its 22-year history of nonscholarship football Aug. 30, a 27-24 season-opening upset of Illinois State, ranked No. 7 in the Championship Subdivision.

For fairgoers whose food choices were sticking it to them at the Iowa State Fair, Drake pharmacy students offered an appropriate remedy: a free heartburn screening -- and a free sample of Prilosec on a stick. During five days of the fair, pharmacy students conducted approximately 90 screenings, handed out hundreds of brochures and talked to a diverse group of both heartburn sufferers and non-sufferers.

The Drake University Law School will kick off the 25th anniversary celebration of its Agricultural Law Center with "Rural Lands Rural Livelihoods: Using Land and Natural Resources to Revitalize Rural Iowa," a conference and art show beginning Thursday, Sept. 20.

Drake University Adult Literacy Center helped improve the lives of 100 Des Moines-area residents during the last year. Despite this success, these adults account for less than 0.1 percent of the estimated 90,000 Polk County residents who struggle daily to read signs, job applications, medicine labels and even the screens of ATMs.

Nicholas D. Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, will deliver this fall's Martin Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25, at Drake University. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled "Why Troubles in Darfur and Other Parts of the World Matter to Us."

Although the research sites are located south of Indianapolis, Ind., Drake students are participating in a 10 year study of sustainable forestry in Indiana hardwood ecosystems right here on campus, to help improve the way lumber is harvested.

Drake University climbed to fifth in the "Great Schools, Great Prices" rankings and improved its score for academic quality and overall score in the Midwest Master's Universities category of the 2008 edition of "America's Best Colleges," published by U.S. News & World Report magazine.