Madeline Howard

Madeline is a Waco-born, Houston-raised Senior University Scholar with secondary majors in Classics and German. Around campus, she serves as the president of Eta Sigma Phi, the national honor society for Classics, helps people get creative with historic printing technologies in the Baylor Book Arts and Letterpress Lab, and reads and edits for The Phoenix literary magazine, while off campus she is often at Cha Community sipping on a dirty Wacoco or riding her bike to the Waco library. 

Some of her research interests are language pedagogy, the body and its metaphors in antiquity, and women’s history, culminating in a thesis that serves as a commentary on three plays of Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim, the first known female playwright. Her favorite University Scholars reading list titles were Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky and Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare.

Beyond her coursework, Madeline stays deeply engaged through a wide variety of activities. During the Wintermester 2025, thanks to a scholarship from the Honors College, she participated in the Great Texts in Italy program, touring the country with an eye to its medieval literature and historic sites. Within Eta Sigma Phi, she has served in roles ranging from secretary to treasurer to president, loving the chance to plan events that combine the social, intellectual, and experiential. She has also worked for two years as a Classics Department office assistant and tutor, helping students achieve conversational fluency or study for the MCAT. 

Additionally, through the Sue Margaret Hughes Endowed Internship in the summer of 2026, she worked at the Baylor Book Arts and Letterpress Lab sorting antique type and assisting visitors, an experience she enjoyed so much she stayed on as a student worker. Embracing creative writing later in her Baylor career, she also serves as an editor for The Phoenix literary magazine to help fellow writers share their work. Looking ahead after graduation, Madeline plans to continue teaching Latin.