Douglas Henry, Ph.D.

Since 2019, Douglas Henry has led Baylor’s nationally recognized Honors College as Dean. With responsibility for 1,400 undergraduates pursuing more than 90 majors across the University, in concert with a full-time interdisciplinary faculty of 40 who are renowned for their scholarship and teaching, and well supported by a gifted professional staff, Dean Henry has seen the College to new heights.

Recent points of pride for the College include:

• Completion of a $57.75 million building and renovation project to create a new home for the Honors College at the historic heart of campus.
• Back-to-back campaign annual giving records to the College and securing of commitments for 2 new endowed chairs and 17 new endowed scholarships funds.
• Strengthened faculty satisfaction as measured by COACHE survey benchmarks (appreciation and recognition, cross-silo work and mentorship, institutional leadership, nature of work, shared governance, tenure and promotion, and departmental life).
• Growth in diversity of faculty and staff through strategic recruiting, supportive professional culture, and leadership by example.
• Inauguration of postdoctoral teaching fellowship program built around teaching excellence, professional mentoring, and renewal of intellectually, morally, and spiritually formative liberal arts education.
• Development of major public humanities initiatives, such as 100 Days of Dante, to enable faculty expertise to reach new levels of impact and visibility in service to broad constituencies.
• Increase in number and academic quality of undergraduate applicants, the highest retention and graduation rates in the University, and major investments to support historically disadvantaged student populations.
• Mentoring of numerous student winners of prestigious postbaccalaureate scholarships and fellowships, including Barry, Boren, Clinton, Fulbright, Goldwater, Marshall, Pickering, Truman, Rangel, and Schwarzman.

Dean Henry holds a BA in religion from Oklahoma Baptist University and an MA and PhD in philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and he has taught students in all four of the Honors College programs in courses covering everything from Homer's Iliad to twenty-first-century great books such as Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Cormac McCarthy's Road.

Co-editor of three books and author of nearly 40 refereed and invited articles, book chapters, and reviews, Dean Henry’s scholarly work addresses such varied writers as Plato, Boethius, John Bunyan, Iris Murdoch, Walker Percy, Cormac McCarthy, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI and diverse topics including allegory, divine hiddenness, doubt, ecumenism, freedom, hope, and love. His interest and understanding of American higher education, and especially church-related colleges and universities, is reflected in Faithful Learning and the Christian Scholarly Vocation (Eerdmans, 2003), Christianity and the Soul of the University: Faith as a Foundation for Intellectual Community (Baker Academic, 2005), and The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education (Baylor University Press, 2007).

The former director of Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning (2001-08), he also served six years as the live-in master of Brooks Residential College at Baylor (2007-13) and co-director of a summer abroad program, Baylor in Turkey and Greece (2011-19), in which his students walked the dusty plains of Troy, sailed the wine-dark seas of the Aegean, stood atop the Areopagus, and marveled at Hagia Sophia.

With Gretchen Van Dyke (University of Scranton), Dean Henry was a mentor for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program, a national initiative supporting Ph.D. students interested in teaching in church-related higher-education. His advocacy of thriving Christian intellectual life within American higher education continues through service on the board of the Lilly Network of Church-Related Colleges & Universities and regular consultations and speaking engagements. 

In his occasional free time, Dean Henry’s attention ranges across three book projects: Plato’s Euthyphro and the Character of Piety; Three Rival Versions of Education; and an as-yet untitled academic mystery novel.

Married to Michele L. Henry, professor of choral music education and director of the music education division at Baylor, he is the father of an nineteen-year-old son, Zachary. Dean Henry enjoys cycling, running, college football and basketball, reading, and traveling. He is deeply engaged in the local community, showing the usefulness of philosophy for life by developing a small pocket neighborhood, The Cloister at Cameron Park, and as a lead investor behind Waco's new, community-based bookshop, Fabled Bookshop & Cafe.

Recent Essays and Interviews

• Nicholas Sparks' Counting Miracles, Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and biographies on 103.3 KWBU-FM (February 6, 2025).
• Percival Everett’s James, Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and biographies on 103.3 KWBU-FM (September 19, 2024).
• Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead, Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and biographies on 103.3 KWBU-FM (July 18, 2024).
• Adam Plantinga's The Ascent, Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and biographies on 103.3 KWBU-FM (March 28, 2024).
• David Lyle Jeffrey’s We Were a Peculiar People Once: Confession of an Old-Time Baptist, public interview of David Jeffrey for Readers Meet the Author Series sponsored by Baylor Office of the President and Office of the Provost (February 14, 2024).
• Rebecca Kuang's Babel: An Arcane History, Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and biographies on 103.3 KWBU-FM (February 1, 2024).
• Alexander McCall Smith's The Sweet Remnants of Summer, Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and biographies on 103.3 KWBU-FM (December 21, 2023).
• Who Is Your Alma Mater? Fare Forward: A Christian Review of Ideas, Issue 21 (August 1, 2022).
• Can Socrates be Saved? Law & Liberty, February 14, 2022.
• Paradiso, Canto 1, Video essay for 100 Days of Dante, February 11, 2022.
• Homo Viator and Wayfaring Hope in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal (Fall 2021).
• Inferno, Canto 27, Video essay for 100 Days of Dante, November 8, 2021.
• 100 Days of Dante, The Hugh Hewitt Show, radio interview given to Hugh Hewittt, September 24, 2021 (34-minute mark).
• 100 Days of Dante, Baylor Connections Conversation Series, interview given to Derek Smith, September 10, 2021.
• Pope Francis Challenged Catholics to Read Dante This Year. Let's Do it Together, America Magazine, September 10, 2021.
• 700 Years of Encouragement, BaseCamp Live podcast interview given to Davies Owens, August 17, 2021.
• Co-Celebrants of Being, Fare Forward: A Christian Review of Ideas, Issue 12 (Summer 2021).