President Linda A. Livingstone, Ph.D.
As 2023 draws to a close, President Livingstone reviews an exciting year on campus and looks ahead to 2024. In this Baylor Connections, she highlights some of her favorite moments of the past year, discusses the opening of the Paul and Alejandra Foster Pavilion, analyzes new honors for Baylor and shares Christmas wishes for the Baylor Family.
Transcript
DEREK SMITH:
Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors, and more discussing important topics in higher education research and student life. I'm Derek Smith, and today we are visiting with Baylor University President, Dr. Linda Livingstone. As we approach the end of a semester, a commencement right ahead and heading into Christmas, there's a lot going on, a lot we can look back on and look forward to. President Livingstone, thanks so much for joining us today.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Happy to be with you as we close out another semester. It's been a great year so far.
DEREK SMITH:
I don't know about you, I'm sure you have a lot of things on the calendar that probably signify that to you, but I don't know if it's like that to you. Do you kind of get to the end of a semester and think, "Wow, here we are again"? It's just, I don't know, it always seems like it gets here quickly in some ways.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
They fly by. It's been a great semester, a really busy one for us. But you do get to the end, you go, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe it's time for graduation again." But that's also an exciting time of the year. So we look forward to everything that we get to celebrate at the end of the semester, particularly as we go into the Christmas holiday.
DEREK SMITH:
Well, let me ask you a quick Christmas question. For the Livingstone household, are there any traditions, favorite traditions that you and your family share that you look forward to each year?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
We do have some. It's a little different now that Shelby's out of the house and away working and has her own life. But typically at Thanksgiving, we have our Thanksgiving dinner and then we always decorate our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, and we always watch White Christmas while we decorate our Christmas tree. So that's kind of a fun tradition. We didn't actually do that this year because we were in New York watching our basketball team, the men's team play in the preseason NIT. And then we always go to Oklahoma to see my family and bring them all together. So that's really a fun tradition. We do gifts exchange and all. And this is just a weird thing that my family does: We have a huge tray of Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets that's part of our Christmas dinner with my family, and if they're not there, it's like something's gone wrong.
DEREK SMITH:
That's right.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
So it's a weird Christmas tradition in the Paric family, my family, but it's great and we love getting everybody together.
DEREK SMITH:
Well, that's fun. I think there's a lot of people who might hear that and think, "Oh, that doesn't sound so bad." So that's good. Well, Merry Christmas to you and your family. Hopefully safe travels for you and for the entire Baylor family wherever they're headed.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Thank you.
DEREK SMITH:
Well, another aspect of the Christmas season we've seen here at Baylor, there's big traditions like Christmas on Fifth, but we've also seen things like advent reflections online. There's been a faculty chapel and other chapels across campus kind of signifying near the end of a semester for the Christmas season. What does it mean to Baylor to provide opportunities like that to reflect on the true meaning?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
As a Christian university, obviously one of the most important times of the year is Christmas as we celebrate the birth of our savior. That's really foundational to our Christian faith. So I think it's just a wonderful opportunity as we get through a really busy semester to step back and reflect on the ultimate meaning of Christmas, the reason that's so important to our faith as Christians, and really to look at it as an opportunity to reflect on the future as well and the hope that we are provided as Christians through the birth of Christ. So taking the time to do that is a really special opportunity that we have at a place like Baylor, that you really do not have at a lot of other institutions. Taking the time to do that and doing it in special ways I think is really important for us.
DEREK SMITH:
Yeah, it's great to be able to step back a little bit amidst the busyness. We appreciate that for sure as we visit with President Livingstone. Well, President Livingstone, shifting gears, that construction keeps on moving quickly at the Paul and Alejandra Foster Pavilion, as you and I are talking. There's only a couple of regular season games left at the Ferrell Center. Of course I'm going to ask you about the Foster Pavilion, but first I want to ask you about the Ferrell Center. What are some favorite memories that you have there in this facility?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, the Ferrell Center's been such an important part of the life of this campus for so long. I've heard stories this year about the people that heard President Reagan speak when it first opened up and how special that was. For us, when we were here at Baylor the first time back in the '90s, we have pictures of Shelby when she was just a little girl watching basketball games in the Ferrell Center. I actually got to win a couple of free throw shooting contests at faculty free throw shooting contests in the Ferrell Center when we used to do that at Midnight Madness that we had. But I think when you think about the big picture, just the exciting games we've seen, whether it's basketball for men and women, volleyball, acrobatics and tumbling in recent years, winning national championships there, graduations, watching thousands of our students walk the stage and graduate in the Ferrell Center. We welcome our new students there with convocation and with other events. So it's really been a core part of the life of the university, and many of those activities will continue there. So I think it's really special that we're moving into a new facility, but I think it's also a wonderful opportunity to celebrate a facility that has been so important to really every single student on this campus for over 30 years.
DEREK SMITH:
You mentioned having pictures of Shelby when she was very young. Did you think of those when you were watching her coach on that floor with volleyball? That had to be special.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
It is really fun to watch kind of the way her life has evolved, from being a little tiny child watching basketball games there to watching her coach when she was here with the women's volleyball team. So it is fun to watch that. I know so many families have those stories. One of the things that's been interesting for us this year in basketball, we have sat, at men's and women's basketball, around the same people for the seven years that we've been here. And the two families in front of us at men's basketball have children. Those children were little when we started sitting with them and now they're in middle school or upper grade school. One of the families had another child during this. So it was actually, there's a little bit of a bittersweetness to saying farewell to the people that you've built these kind of family relationships around, watching games and watching their children grow up. We even took pictures together at the last men's game that we were all at together. So I think everybody will have these really fond memories to reflect on, but also great excitement for the future.
DEREK SMITH:
Mm-hmm. Now that's a neat community aspect of that. You mentioned volleyball and A&T and certainly commencement. Those will all continue to call the Ferrell Center home. What's it going to mean for them to have a dedicated home now that there's two less major programs they have to share it with?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, I have to give a lot of credit to the coaches, Coach Drew, Coach Collin, Coach Mulkey, and Coach McGuire for being able to collaborate and partner on sharing that facility. That's really hard to do, and they've done it, and all continue to have unbelievably successful teams. So it will be a huge benefit to A&T and to volleyball to have their own facility. They'll have so much more flexibility of scheduling practices and competitions, and it will help them to continue to be successful at a national level like they are. But we're certainly deeply grateful to those four coaches for the way they've worked together and collaborated to help all of them to be able to share that facility and be as successful as they have been.
DEREK SMITH:
So looking ahead now to January 2nd and 3rd, the opening games at the Paul and Alejandra Foster Pavilion, there's still going to be work that's done after those first games take place, but it's going to be a big celebration. What are you most looking forward to and what are some ways you really sense this is going to impact the university?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, we're so deeply grateful to Paul and Alejandra Foster for walking alongside us with this. Because as much as we love the Ferrell Center, the Foster Pavilion will allow us to have a much more fan-friendly environment, a much better competitive environment. It should be a greater home court advantage for our basketball teams. That actually really matters a lot in basketball. We'll have so many more amenities to bring people together in the facility, whether it's the club locations or the way the concourse is set up. We'll bring students closer to the game. All the fans will be closer to the game. I mean, even those people at the highest seats in this facility will probably have better seats and better views than you had maybe halfway up in the Ferrell Center. So I just think all the way around for our players, for our fans, for the competitive nature of our teams, it's going to be a huge win for everyone.
DEREK SMITH:
What about the community as well? Obviously this is a great community university partnership. As you've interacted with our community members, what's the sense there?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, everybody in the community's extremely excited. As you know, it was a wonderful partnership with the city and with others to make this happen. Just the location, where it is, that really bridges the university with downtown I think is going to be extremely important. And as we know, there's going to be some buildout both in the first floor of the parking garage and then on down the riverfront area with certainly some residential but also some retail options, restaurants and other things. So I think it's going to really help revitalize the riverfront as the city continues to build that out as they work on some redesign of downtown. And then we'll also have some opportunities in a bit of a limited way, but for others to use that facility for some special events and things. Obviously, it's the primary uses for men's and women's basketball. So I think it's going to be a huge benefit to the entire community. And then it's right there, kind of catty-corner from McLane Stadium and across the way from the Hurd Welcome Center. So that corner has now become a really special spot in this community, not just for Baylor, but for the entire Waco community.
DEREK SMITH:
Yeah, it's dramatic driving in day or night. But driving in the other night, you see the lights and things that lit up and just get a sense like, it's really cool, for lack of a better term.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
It is. It's a cool view of the city as you come in across the bridge in I-35.
DEREK SMITH:
Yeah. You mentioned that represents a community partnership. That's important, these partnerships with the Waco and the Greater Central Texas area. What are some other examples of some partnerships that have been meaningful in recent months?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, we care deeply about working with the Waco and McLennan County communities, and that partnership matters a lot to us. And we do many things. I mean, obviously we send tons of students into internships in the city, lots of student teachers throughout the region from our school of education. But I think people saw earlier this year, we announced the Central Texas Cyber Range, which is a partnership with MCC. Representative Sessions was extremely helpful in getting the funding for that. That's going to be really critical to building out a cybersecurity workforce, which we certainly need in this area and across the state and around the country. So that's been a wonderful, wonderful partnership. We have a grant that was recently given to some of our faculty in social work, and they're going to be working on building out enhanced mental health services for our local K through 12 schools. We know mental health is such a huge issue, K through 12 all the way up through universities, which is extremely important to us. I was just at an event this week with our Philanthropy Lab, and this is one probably people aren't that familiar with. It's a class we have every fall. It's a national program, but our students spend the semester studying nonprofits in the community, and they ultimately give money to the nonprofits based on their analysis of those and where some of the greatest needs are. They give away close to a hundred thousand dollars each fall semester. So we've been doing this for 10 years, we've given away over a million dollars into the community. On Monday, I had the privilege to go and be a part of this. The grant recipients were Compassion, The Cove, La Puerta, Transformation Waco, and Talitha Koum.
DEREK SMITH:
Wow.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
So, wonderful nonprofits in our community that our students have gotten to know better and who have then had the privilege to give some resources too. So I could go on and on, but there's many ways we connect in the community that add great value to Baylor, to our students, but we certainly also hope are helping to make Waco and McLennan County a better place.
DEREK SMITH:
Wow, that's great. Yeah, those organizations and other things you just mentioned, those really ripple out into a lot of different areas of our Waco community. Before we move away completely from athletics, I want to ask you, we just finished the football season. I know with you and the first gent, Brad Livingstone, there may not be bigger sports fans on campus than you all. As you think about investing in and growing our programs, what role does athletics play overall in how we look at the university?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Yeah, well, we do love all of our athletic teams and take that very, very seriously on a personal level. But certainly, as it relates to Baylor Athletics, is critically important to our institution, particularly for institutions that play at the Power Five level like we do. They matter a lot. I would say they're huge visibility for our institutions. You have a national platform with college athletics, particularly basketball and football that you do not have in almost any other way at a university. So it really is a wonderful front door into the campus for people who don't know Baylor as well as those that are a part of the Baylor family. It's also wonderful opportunities to bring the Baylor family together. Football brings, we had eight games this season, six, seven, eight times a year, you bring thousands of people together to celebrate the life of the university. That matters a lot to us in terms of building relationships, alumni relations and so on. I would also say it's a wonderful platform for us to share our Christian mission and our Christian message. When you think about the platform our coaches have as they're interviewed by the media, whether it's media days or press conferences or just other opportunities they have, the opportunities our student athletes have, to speak on behalf of the institution, and our coaches and athletes do it so well. But it's a platform for speaking about the things we value, our faith, our commitment to service, our commitment to academics, certainly our commitment to having winning sports programs. And it's hard to have those kinds of opportunities on the national scale you do outside of athletics. So it's important to us, it's an important part of our academic mission because we care deeply about those student athletes graduating, being great students, great community members, while also having the opportunity to perform at the highest levels.
DEREK SMITH:
Your involvement with the NCAA Board of Governors, chair of Big 12 Board of Directors Athletics, on a broad level, takes up your focus in some areas. There's a lot of change taking place right now. So as I ask this, I know there's really no way to even fully encapsulate this, but what are some things that you foresee on the horizon in college athletics that fans can anticipate?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Yeah, we could probably do a whole show just on this, but I'll try to keep this short. But it's a very tumultuous time in college athletics, whether that's because of legal cases that college athletics is facing, potential legislative action at the federal level. We know we have 30 different state laws related to NIL, whether it is work we're trying to do on Capitol Hill. And then certainly, there's ongoing work in the NCAA about what the future might look like and how we might be structured that came out recently. So I think it's so important for us to have a seat at the table to be involved in those conversations, whether it's the roles I play, the work that Mack Rhoades plays, the work that our various coaches play. I do think that the landscape of college athletics is going to continue to change. I think that as challenging as some of the things we're dealing with are, we're going to have to continue to look at how we're supporting and benefiting our student athletes in significant ways to help them to be successful athletically and academically. And I think it's really important that we continue to hold fast to the belief that they are still students. Even as we think about other aspects of how we support student athletes, that we want them to graduate, we want them to get a degree. Because even if they go on to play professionally, which only a tiny percent do, they still need to have a college degree because those careers are very short-lived typically, even if you've been very successful at it. So I think we've got to be flexible. We've got to think differently about how we structure college athletics and how we support our student athletes while trying to maintain the integrity of collegiate athletics as a place where athletes are also students and take their academic endeavors seriously.
DEREK SMITH:
Lots swirling around. Hey, one thing we can say with certainty though, as we talk right now, our basketball teams are undefeated, ranked in the top 10. There's only one school that can say that. So amidst all the change, we look for things we can easily grasp onto. So that's a good one right there.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
That is good. And they've got some tough games coming up.
DEREK SMITH:
They do have some tough games coming up and some great student athletes as well.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Yeah. Absolutely.
DEREK SMITH:
Visiting with President Livingstone, let's talk about some accolades for the university that we've heard recently and a really exciting one. Baylor was recognized as one of Time Magazine's best colleges for future leaders, coming in at number 40, nationally listed with some really fantastic universities, peer institutions. Why do you think we were recognized so highly on that? What factored in?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, one, it was a wonderful recognition. I think you never know when these kinds of things are going to happen and how you're going to come out in them. And we always talk about with rankings, we need to do what we believe we should be doing as a university based on our mission and hope that the recognitions follow that. If you look at our mission, our mission is to prepare men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence, Christian commitment within a caring community. So our mission is to prepare our students to be leaders in the world. So I think in many ways, this sort of just reflects our mission as an institution, as we think about how we prepare students on a daily basis for what they do. If you look across our campus, whether it's the way we do Line Camp in the summer and orientation, the way we bring them in in welcome week, the way we engage them in student organizations, the leadership development we do within student organizations in academic units, the community service we encourage, I mean I could go on and on about the ways in which we work with students really holistically in their experience, both academically and from a student life perspective, to help them grow and develop spiritually, and the dedication to their communities and in their leadership so that they will go out and be leaders in their communities. I mean, 80% of our students are involved in student organizations. That's an unbelievably high percentage. So they're very engaged, they're very committed. We have a very high percentage of our students that do a lot of community service. So I mean, I think you just go on and on. Students come to us who want to be engaged, who are committed, who care about our Christian mission. And I think, ultimately, it all flows back to our Christian mission that is a sense of service outside of ourselves to make the world a better place, to live out our faith as Christians, to have an impact in the world and on others. And I think that's reflected in a ranking like this.
DEREK SMITH:
It's exciting to see that other people see that, and we've seen that many of times, but this is another exciting way to see that. Another area, I think you and I talked about this last year, we're back on it again though, a list, actually it's not a list specifically, but U.S. News ranks top 25 schools in research and in teaching. We are on both of those lists. But when you look at schools that are on both of those, there's only 10, and we're one of them. Teaching and research, top 25 in the nation, how is it that we make sure both of those take place simultaneously so effectively?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, it's something we talk a lot about both on my leadership team with the deans and then even as we do strategic planning because we've always been a very strong teaching institution, and then over certainly the Illuminate strategic plan, but even Pro Futuris and 2012 before that. As we move towards doing more research, one of the things that we've talked about is we have to, as we grow our research profile, ensure that it is integrated with our teaching mission as well. And that as we give students faculty more opportunities to do research, it's also a teaching function. If you talk to our really great researchers, they will talk about research as they engage with their students as teaching. So I think that is part of what we do. And as we hire faculty and our more research-focused faculty, we want to know how they're going to engage students in the research process. So I don't actually see those two as independent functions on our campus. I see them as integrated functions of a really strong and exceptional educational experience, both at the undergraduate and graduate level. And I think that those rankings help reflect that.
DEREK SMITH:
Another one we saw recently, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. That's a publication that produces a list each year of the top 100 degree producers of institutions that confer the most degrees to minority students. And Baylor was recognized on this list at the doctoral level. So in what ways does a growing and diverse student body at the doctoral level, and certainly at every level, enrich us as a Christian research university?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
As you look at the world, whether it's Texas, the United States, you look around the world, the world's becoming much, much more diverse and more integrated across diverse populations. Going back to our mission, we're preparing men and women for worldwide leadership and service. So if we're going to prepare our students to lead in a very diverse world, they need to be in a diverse environment and they need to be exposed to diverse perspectives and ways of thinking and experiences. So this is just a reflection of that as we've certainly grown our doctoral programs. I think some of the doctoral programs where we've grown have been particularly helpful in this. I think it is a reflection of the way our state looks, the way our country looks, and in the importance of students' learning and growing and developing within diverse environments as they go out into a diverse world to lead and serve.
DEREK SMITH:
This is Baylor Connections. We're visiting with President Livingstone. President Livingstone, let's shift gears here now as we head into the final few minutes. We're at the end of a year. It's always a good time to look back, look ahead. Let's look back first. 2023, when you think of 2023, what are some of the favorite moments that come to mind?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
So many things to think about and reflect on that are very exciting. So a few that I will mention, one, last spring is when our board approved a budget that included launching the Baylor Benefit Program, which allows students to come to Baylor with adjusted gross incomes below $50,000 to come tuition-free to our campus. We think that's a huge move forward for affordability and access and certainly something we want to look at and continue to understand and grow. We've started a new strategic planning process, which is very exciting. Did over 90 listening sessions this fall. So that has been wonderful as we look to the future. We look back and see what happened, we'll look to the future. We dedicated the statues of our first two Black graduates, Barbara Walker and Reverend Robert Gilbert. That was a really important moment in the life of this institution as we recognize those two graduates. And then the other thing, it's a broader reflection. Our students have been so engaged on campus over the last year, and I think it's probably a response to their isolation during COVID, but we've been so thrilled to see students deeply engaged, whether it's the student organizations I mentioned, but the Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas on Fifth, homecoming, even in the rain, the dinner we have at our home over homecoming, just record attendance and all these things. So to see our students that deeply engaged and committed to what we're doing is really heartwarming.
DEREK SMITH:
What about looking ahead to 2024? Obviously going to start with a bang with the opening of the Foster Pavilion, but what else is ahead?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, it's going to be a big year on campus. As we move forward, we'll continue the strategic planning process. So by the May board meeting, we should have a new strategic plan to have affirm by the board. So that will be an exciting time, as we say, what's the next phase of growth and development for Baylor and get the community on board around that. We will also be reopening the Honors College Residence Halls, Memorial and Alexander, which will be really exciting. I probably should have mentioned Collins as a look back.
DEREK SMITH:
Oh, yeah.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
It was really exciting for us. And then as part of the Honors College, we also are creating space in Draper for the honors faculty to come together. So we'll really truly have a more real comprehensive Honors College experience. We are also going to break ground for the memorial to enslaved people that was part of the Commission on Historic Campus Representations, honoring those that were enslaved that helped found Baylor at Independence. So that will happen in February. And then one of the great things about a new year is you always have new students coming in. We'll certainly have some new students in January, but then we always have a new large class in the fall, and that just brings new energy and excitement to campus. So I always look forward to certainly wishing our graduates well as they go out into the world, which we get to do three times a year. And then also welcoming our new students that are going to bring new energy and excitement to campus.
DEREK SMITH:
A lot to look forward to, and we appreciate you taking the time to share with us today and throughout the year. President Livingstone, as we close heading into Christmas now, as we do so, is there anything in closing you'd like to just specifically say to the Baylor family?
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Well, I want to thank the Baylor family for their care and love and support of this institution, of our students and our faculty and staff, the ways you come alongside us and support us with your time, your talents, your prayers. What a privilege it is to have people praying for us regularly. Brad and I really just want to wish everyone a blessed and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and we look forward to seeing everybody in the new year.
DEREK SMITH:
Well, thank you very much, and likewise, from all of us who know the Baylor family sends those wishes back. Well, President Livingstone, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family. Hope it's a great holiday season. We'll look forward to seeing you back here in 2024.
PRESIDENT LIVINGSTONE:
Thank you. I look forward to it.
DEREK SMITH:
President Linda Livingstone, our guest today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. A reminder, you can hear this in other programs online, baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.