Dean's Update - October 15, 2025
Dear Colleagues:
We recently celebrated Baylor’s recognition, once again, on the Honor Roll of Great Colleges to Work For. “Hooray!” is a fitting response. With 25 years of service at Baylor—and dozens of visits in professional capacities to other universities in mind too—I know what a great blessing it is to work here.
Beyond the accolades, our annual faculty and staff survey provides important insight into organizational culture, job satisfaction, and more. Although I’ve only begun to receive and review college-level data from the survey, I see wonderful signs of shared accomplishment as well as opportunities to become even better as an Honors College.
We hit 4-year highs in 6 of 11 survey categories: collaboration, faculty and staff well-being, job satisfaction and support, mission and pride, professional development, and spiritual well-being. I’m especially happy at specific statements that received strong affirmation (+90% positive responses) from our faculty and staff. They include:
- The work I do is meaningful to me.
- I understand how my job contributes to this institution’s mission.
- My supervisor/department chair supports my efforts to balance my work and personal life.
- This institution’s benefits meet my needs.
In 5 other survey categories, results vary. Supervisor/department chair effectiveness comes in at an admirable 81% positive response, a touch off from 86% in a prior year. Strong majorities (+60%) give positive ratings for diversity, inclusion, and belonging; communication; confidence in senior leadership; and performance management. However, ratings in these areas are not yet where I hope for them to be.
To shed light on both specific points of strength and areas where attention is needed, our Human Resources Consultant, Nathan Pruitt, has additional data to make available. I look forward to learning more from the GCTWF survey, sharing details, and doing everything I can so that the Honors College is a great place to work for all of us, in every way, each week of the year.
On a related note, survey results from the 2024 COACHE Survey of faculty reflect strong results for us, with HC responses typically ahead of both university and peer benchmarks. Herein lies a treasure trove of data to explore, share, and use to improve our academic community. With help from Mike Stegemoller, our associate dean for faculty, count on more information to come about the COACHE survey and readiness to help at every turn.
Across the HC, please note the following events and points of pride:
- This Tuesday, October 21 at 7:00 p.m. in the Baylor Club Ballroom, our annual Laura Blanche Jackson Endowed Lecture in World Issues will take place. Our lead donors, Frank and Darba Jackson, keenly wish for the lecture to benefit our students, as I do too. Our guest is David Beasley, distinguished professor of practice and public service at the University of South Carolina school of law, former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme (2017-2023) and Governor of South Carolina (1995-1999). Among the renowned few to have received a Nobel Peace Prize, in his case on behalf of the World Food Programme, Gov. Beasley will fly directly to Texas from ongoing mediation efforts in the Middle East to present his talk: “Global Order: War, Conflict, Stability, and the Nobel Peace Prize.” Will you please attend the lecture and encourage—and incentivize—students to join us?
- Last week, I shared word about a comprehensive budget assessment process getting underway. Baylor undertakes it from a position of relative strength. Our enrollment picture is sound, balance sheets good, bond ratings high, and endowment growing. These features of Baylor’s circumstances deserve recognition and gratitude. Even so, it’s important to take stock now, when things are good, of ways to be better stewards. That way, we’re prepared—as Joseph-like viziers storing up grain during good years as hedges against lean years—for further changes in federal funding, student access to financial aid, rising healthcare costs, and the like. I welcome anyone’s advice and questions, so please know that lines of communication are always open.
Every Tuesday from 8:40-9:00 a.m. faculty and staff are welcome to join for prayer in Memorial Chapel. With regular leadership from some of our HC students, our time together includes scripture reading, prayer, and a hymn or two. Each week I’ve attended, I’ve left encouraged and reminded of the life to which I’m called in Christ Jesus, as well as blessed by opportunities to be with students in this special place.
- Congratulations to Lauren Seitz, postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, on receiving the National Communication Association’s Stephen E. Lucas Debut Publication Award. Conferred for her article, “Fighting the ‘Terrible Poison’ of Terrorism: Marine Le Pen’s Rhetoric of Ethnicism and Islamophobia” in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, the award seeks to encourage and reward new scholars in the communication discipline for praiseworthy scholarship. Well done, Lauren!
All the best,
Douglas V. Henry, Ph.D. | Dean
Honors College | Baylor University
baylor.edu/honorscollege | 254.710.7689