Dean's Update - January 28, 2025

Dear Colleagues:

The spring semester is off to a quick start!

For me, it follows fast on the heels of our wintermester Great Texts in Italy program, for which I had the opportunity to teach a course on Dante and the Italian Renaissance. Following Zoom classes the week after Christmas, we traveled from January 4-18, taking in Venice, Padua, Arquà Petrarca, Verona, Mantua, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Bologna, and Ravenna. In the company of excellent students, in beautiful places, with texts of enduring wisdom and beauty—and sustained by splendid repasts—I rekindled my passion for undergraduate teaching.

To be sure, I love the work of serving you as we fulfill Baylor’s mission together. It’s a joy to have a front row seat for many moments of gratitude and celebratory seasons of accomplishment in the life of the Honors College. I also find myself frequently in both heady and lighthearted conversations with our students. Yet for longer than I like to admit, I’ve missed the special blessing and challenge of rigorous, sustained classroom teaching. Returning to the exhilarating, demanding, and humbling work of teaching students did me a world of good.

Through firsthand, daily encounter, it reminded me of how bright and capable our students are, and how exhilarating it is to raise their sights, deepen their questions, sharpen their arguments, and shape their minds and hearts. 

Taking up a teacher’s tasks reacquainted me with the demanding work of preparing and offering a course. Teaching is difficult. We attempt mastery of our subject, acknowledging that our reach often exceeds our grasp. We strive to understand our students, with all the complexities of their lives, because we teach persons, not material. And while striving to master our subject and understand our students, we also need abundant self-knowledge, lest we get in the way of the subjects and students we serve.

It's a humbling endeavor, isn’t it? I finished wintermester with greater insight than when I began it, and with a long list of new texts to read, conversations to have, places to visit, and approaches to take with students. If I have a chance to do it all over again, I want to be better—as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and person. 

In the freshness of the new academic term, may well-kindled passion inspire all of us to our best work in teaching, mentoring, advising, and serving our students.

Of note in the life of the Honors College are both opportunities and causes for gladness:

• All HC faculty and staff are welcome to join me this spring in small groups for personal, conversational lunches at the McMullen Faculty Center. Sign up here and feel free to include a suggested topic if you like. This is a great opportunity to enjoy time with colleagues, share what’s on your mind, get insight or support from me, and have a free lunch.
• Built upon broad, thoughtful contribution, I’m excited that we have an Honors College Strategic Plan worthy of our best work. We already have a few projects underway. In coming years, we will enlist help and identify resources to make progress on each plan element. To guide our efforts, a provisional HC Strategic Plan Timeline is available. Give both documents a careful look, consider where your aspirations and energy can make a difference, and reach out to Scott Moore, associate dean for strategic initiatives, with your ideas and availability.
• Eddie Contreras, vice provost for global engagement, and Bo White, director of study abroad, have invited us to explore long-term leadership of Baylor in St. Andrews. As a potential signature initiative of the Honors College, this faculty-led semester abroad program—located at the third oldest university in the English-speaking world and the U.K.’s most highly ranked university—could further enrich our students’ education and distinguish our research collaborations. A document here helps identify what pursuing this opportunity may involve. Expressions of interest, questions, and ideas are welcome from everyone.
• Thanks to the many faculty, staff, and students—more than 50 of us—who provided leadership for our just-concluded Getterman Scholars Day and Invitation to Excellence programs. These high-ability student recruitment programs continue to thrive. From a record pool of 600 Getterman Scholars applicants—among the top-one percent of college-bound high school seniors—we hosted 40 finalists for interviews on Friday. They joined another 150 additional I2E students on Saturday for our program: But the Greatest of These Is? Love, Longing, and Happiness in Film, Philosophy, and the Christian Tradition. We’ll offer a second I2E program on February 7-8.
• Congratulations to David Shin, postdoctoral teaching fellow in Great Texts, on the publication of Rest: A Theological Account (BU Press, 2024). Praise ascribed to David’s work includes its “creative and original” insight, “inspiring witness to the hope for a fulfilled existence,” and “elixir of grace in our brittle age.” Super work, David!
• Congratulations to Alejandro Castrillón, assistant professor of political science in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, for receiving a Career Stage Award from the Midwest Political Science Association. With co-author Christina Bambrick (Notre Dame), Alejandro was awarded Best Paper by an Emerging Scholar Award for his work, “Defining Digital Rights and Duties: Toward (Better) Deliberation on New Media.” Well done, Alejandro!
• Join me in welcoming Rachel Brinkley, admissions coordinator, as a new member of our professional staff. Last year, Rachel completed her B.S. in biology at Baylor. With work experience in Baylor’s Undergraduate Admissions and One Stop offices—and with first-hand knowledge of the Honors College as a proud BIC alumna—Rachel’s contributions will help us recruit and support students across all our HC programs. Welcome aboard, Rachel!

All the best,

Douglas V. Henry, Ph.D.
Dean of the Honors College
Baylor University
honors.baylor.edu | 254.710.7689