Centennial Professors Awarded Project Grants

Two University professors have been named 2019 Baylor Centennial Professors by the Centennial Faculty Development Review Committee. Dr. Laine Scales, professor and Master Teacher in the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, and Dr. Sarah Gilbreath Ford, professor of English in the College of Arts & Sciences and director of the Beall Poetry Festival, were selected from 15 applicants for a $5,000 grant toward a research project.

The Baylor Centennial Class of 1945 created the annual award to support faculty development and academic advancement for tenured faculty members. Eligible projects contribute to academic life, professorship, the benefit of the individual and University goals. The projects can encompass a wide variety of elements including travel for study, the development of innovative teaching materials and other professional development activities.

The legacy of the Centennial Professors Award has only grown more impactful as the University positions itself as a top-tier research institution. Research and scholarship, one of the four pillars of Illuminate, Baylor’s strategic plan, will be furthered through the work that Scales and Ford anticipate will result in a book each.

“It’s an honor that the Class of 1945 looked ahead and determined we need to make opportunities for professors to do research that will impact the classroom,” Scales said. “The foresight people had to set aside money and look to the future is wonderful. I think the Centennial Award complements teaching and research together, and at this important time at Baylor as we strive toward becoming a ‘Research One’ university, we need as many opportunities as we can find to tie together research and teaching so that both move forward together, along with our Christian commitments.”

Scales will use the grant to produce a biography of Jewell Legett Daniel, a Texas native, Baylor graduate and missionary to China from 1909-1926. Daniel operated a school for Chinese girls in Pingtu, under the supervision of Lottie Moon, a Southern Baptist missionary with the Foreign Mission Board. Scales will travel to the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archive in Nashville, Tennessee, and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, to study Daniel’s records and letters written to the Foreign Mission Board. Scales modeled a Waco non-profit in 2016 called Good Neighbor Settlement House after the experiences of Daniel and other Southern Baptist women.

Ford plans to write a book on Eudora Welty, American short story writer and novelist, to show that Welty was an innovator, rather than a follower, in the Modernist experiments with narrative. The award will allow Ford to travel to the Eudora Welty Archive at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson, Mississippi, to photocopy and analyze drafts of several of Welty’s short stories.

“I teach a lot of courses in American literature, Southern literature, gothic literature, and in all of these, I incorporate the work of Eudora Welty,” Ford said. “I plan to teach a graduate course in the next couple of years on the work of Eudora Welty, so certainly my research about her writing process would be interesting and helpful to those students. In the spring, I hope to teach a short story course, and what I’m particularly looking at is Eudora Welty short stories. I hope, for my undergraduates, that I’m able to bring the information, the drafts, the background I’ve gotten into that class, so they can see a writer’s process.”

Scales and Ford expressed gratitude for the award and the opportunity it affords them to pursue their research interests which will also benefit their students in the classroom and Baylor overall. Grants like the Centennial Professors Award contribute to Baylor’s academic excellence and success, professor accomplishment and development and the experiences of students.

For more information on teaching awards, visit atl.web.baylor.edu.