Dean’s Update - August 19, 2024
Dear Colleagues:
Last week’s retreat and strategic planning launch for the Honors College encouraged and inspired me, as I trust it did you as well.
I was blessed to share time with you, thinking and dreaming and speaking at leisure, guided by the mission and promise of Baylor, with an eye on ways we can support the University’s strategic plan. My gratitude runs in many directions.
I appreciate Autumn Henneke’s attentive efforts in organizing—and with delayed availability of the HRC’s public spaces, reorganizing—our day together.
For Jonathan Tran’s always thoughtful and generous leadership, and for his good-natured and kind words of welcome to begin the day, I’m grateful.
I’m thankful for Charley Ramsey’s opening reflection and invocation, in which he reminded us of the friendship we have with Jesus Christ, whereby we receive the gift of friendship with each other and share in the Lord’s redemptive work in the world.
It was a joy to lift up the worthy aims and accomplishments of Illuminate, and to celebrate our recent achievements in the Honors College. I also enjoyed sharing key emphases within the University’s new strategic plan, and anticipating broad ways in which we can organize our efforts in coming years. Our conversations, in breakout and large group settings, were generative and aspirational.
I’m grateful for Scott Moore’s closing reflection. Faith, friendship, and truth are indeed the sine quo non of strategic planning in a Christian university of the sort we strive to be. They are another way of naming “academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community,” aren’t they? Scott put it well in celebrating the strategic plan’s:
unapologetic and enthusiastic embrace of a Christian faith which is so much more than an historic artifact in the history of the university. This is no generic faith in the “human spirit” or the power of reason, however grand these may be. This is faith in the crucified and risen Lord. The One who is and was and is to come. This is not a concession reluctantly offered, or vacuous nod to the pieties of yester year. . . It is a faith which calls us to faithfulness, even as we recognize the mystery of reality transcends our grasp or our ability to delineate all that is.
For our Christian academic community, strategic planning is not only a means to marshal attention and resources within a complex university. It’s an expression of our faithful, honest, willing participation in the divine life to which God calls us in Christ.
Please take note of the following items of importance within our academic community:
- This Wednesday, August 21 is Move-In Day for the Honors Residential College. Following last year’s “exile” during renovation work, we now celebrate students’ return to Alexander and Memorial Halls. Thanks in advance to all our faculty and staff who will help on Wednesday by directing traffic, greeting students and families, carrying boxes, and passing out water bottles. Special thanks to Jason Whitt, faculty steward and senior lecturer of medical humanities in the Honors Program; Courtney DePalma, associate director of student leadership and engagement, and newly arrived hall director, Mariesha Shaw.
- On Thursday, August 29 at 3:30 p.m., we will convene in Alexander Reading Room for a college-wide faculty and staff meeting to kick off the fall semester. The meeting will include introductions of new colleagues, special recognitions, updates, and discussion of priorities for the year ahead. While geared toward regular full-time faculty and staff, all who share in the work of the Honors College are welcome to attend.
Two annual college-wide lecture series take place every fall semester: the Laura Blanche Jackson Endowed Lecture in World Issues and the Drumwright Family Lecture. Intended as marquee events in the life of the Honors College, they are tremendous opportunities to engage exemplary guest scholars and to model for our students what lives of intellectual hospitality and engagement look like. I really want to see you alongside our students at these events, so please plan for them, incorporate them into your syllabi where appropriate, and encourage your students to join you in attending. Details are:
Laura Blanche Jackson Endowed Lecture in World Issues. Featuring Jeff Polet, Ph.D., Director of the Ford Leadership Forum at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, the Jackson Lecture will take place on Monday, September 23 at 7:00 p.m. in Alexander Reading Room. Dr. Polet’s lecture title is “Getting What We Deserve: Lapsed Leadership, Global Crises, and Our Ethical Expectations.”
Drumwright Family Lecture. Featuring Megan Murton, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English at The Catholic University of America, the Drumwright Lecture will take place on Wednesday, October 23 at 4:00 p.m. in Armstrong Browning Library. Dr. Murton’s lecture title is “Beyond Consolation: The Virtue of Hope in Boethius and Chaucer.” Additional special programming will join her lecture in recognition of the 1,500th anniversary of the martyrdom of Boethuis.
- I’m happy to announce renewal for a third year of our Undergraduate Research Assistant Program. The program seeks: (a) to provide additional support for research productive faculty; (b) to enlarge the education of undergraduates, extend new forms of mentoring to them, and offer them experience with research methods; and (c) to exercise judicious stewardship, with attention “to the broader market in which we compete for the best and brightest undergraduate” students. Details, including application procedures for faculty interested in exploring this form of research support, are available here.
All the best,
Douglas V. Henry, Ph.D. | Dean
Honors College | Baylor University
honors.baylor.edu | 254.710.7689