Dear Friends,

It is quiet on campus as I write these words. Our students are already home. 2020, a year we long will remember, is ending. Advent is here, and Christmas is coming.

The Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning (IFL), Office of the President and Office of the Provost will present the inaugural “Readers Meet the Author: A Virtual Reading Group for Baylor Faculty," an event which will feature author Alan Jacobs, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program, from 3:15-4:30 p.m. Oct. 14.

The event will consist of reflection and conversation with Baylor faculty about Jacobs’ new book “Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind.”

After careful deliberation, we have decided to postpone this year’s Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture on “Living Accountably” until fall 2021. We will announce the exact dates as soon as we can.

As Baylor faculty, we are entrusted with a special mission. For us, excellent teaching always has been about helping students to learn more than just the content of a course. We also hope that our students will learn to seek wisdom, and thus live with meaning and purpose according to their God-given vocation (or calling). The commitments of the Christian faith are not add-ons for a place like Baylor. Instead, since 1845, faith has animated teaching and learning.

The present global health crisis and our swift transition to online education compel us to ask a new question: how might faith animate teaching and learning online?

A remarkable retreat for church leaders occurred recently on the banks of the Frio River in the Texas Hill Country.

Convened by the Soundings Project at Baylor University, 40 pastors and lay leaders from 14 Texas congregations spent three days at historic Laity Lodge, thinking and praying together about the mission of the church and the ways they are being led to minister in the days and years ahead.

Darin Davis, director of the Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University, has been elected to a four-year term on the National Board of the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts.

IFL Hosts Largest Conference in Its History as Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture and Lilly Fellows Program Explore “The Character of the University”

More than 600 scholars and academic leaders from 170 institutions gathered October 17-20 to explore the prospects for moral formation in higher education during the Institute for Faith and Learning’s (IFL) largest conference in its 22-year history.

The Character of the University will explore the challenges and opportunities for character formation in the context of 21st-century higher education. How might educators better understand and practice their shared aims to help students grow in virtue as they prepare to pursue lives of meaning and purpose? How might this task require colleges and universities to re-examine their own intellectual, moral, and even spiritual commitments?

As churches seek to help members discover God’s calling on their lives, they face three key challenges—to involve multiple generations in ministry, provide long-term religious education and teach Christians how to apply their faith in day-to-day experiences, according to initial findings of Baylor University’s Soundings project.

“Stewardship of Creation” will be the theme for Baylor University’s annual Symposium on Faith and Culture, hosted by Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning from Wednesday, Oct. 24, to Friday, Oct. 26.

The Institute for Faith and Learning announces the departure of associate director Jason Whitt. After nine years of service at IFL, Whitt has accepted an appointment as senior lecturer in the Honors Program at Baylor University.

The Institute for Faith and Learning is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Rebecca Poe Hays as project coordinator for the Soundings Project effective June 4.

Baylor University recently was awarded a $1.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to fund a five-year project called Soundings. The project will allow Baylor to serve as an innovation hub for 15 Texas congregations as the university and congregational leaders together reflect deeply and theologically about the nature of vocation.

“The Soundings Project, so generously funded by Lilly Endowment, aims to support the common work of the Christian university and the church, namely to help people lead lives of purpose and significance,” said Darin H. Davis, Ph.D., vice president for university mission at Baylor University. “During the next five years, we hope to explore and nurture, along with congregations throughout the state, new models and approaches to the enduring question ‘How is God calling me — and us — to be faithful?’”

Many of the featured presentations from "The Bible and the Reformation" conference can now be viewed on demand through IFL's vimeo page. Click the headline to see them all.

The Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a lecture by Mark Schwehn, Ph.D., one of the foremost voices in Christian higher education.

Schwehn’s lecture — “From Faith and Learning to Love and Understanding: The Recent Past and Promising Future of Church Related Higher Education” — will be from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6, in Barfield Drawing Room of the Bill Daniel Student Center, 1311 S. Fifth St. It will be followed by a reception. The event is free and open to the public.

The annual Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture this year will commemorate the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the European Reformation, one of the most significant times in the history of Christianity.

“The Bible and the Reformation,” hosted by Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning (IFL), will convene Wednesday, Oct. 25, through Friday, Oct. 27, with speakers examining...

Cultivating Baylor’s Future: Baylor Young Scholars

Led by Dr. Darin Davis, vice president for university mission and director of the Institute for Faith and Learning (IFL), the Baylor Young Scholars Program seeks to foster the next generation of Baylor faculty and administrators by supporting and providing resources to Baylor graduates who are now pursuing advanced degrees at other universities.

The full version of the 2017 Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture is now available online. This includes the titles, times, and dates of all panel and paper presentations as well as presenter information.

This year's symposium, entitled The Bible and the Reformation, features a broad and diverse lineup of speakers and topics. You may visit the symposium's webpage for more information by clicking the headline.

The Spiritual Life and Character Formation Task Force was formed to re-energize a focus around the University’s Christian mission. Chaired by Executive Vice President and Provost L. Gregory Jones, the 20-member Task Force includes representatives from Baylor faculty, staff and students guided by the conviction that Baylor’s Christian mission should animate the entire life of the University.

The Task Force’s three working groups have been led by Darin Davis (Vice President for University Mission), Kevin Jackson (Vice President for Student Life) and Lori Baker (Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives, Collaboration and Leadership Development).

Thomas S. Hibbs, Ph.D., dean of the Honors College and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture at Baylor University, will deliver the 2017 Bailey Family Lecture in Christian Ethics.

His lecture, “Skills, Virtues, and the Christian University: Liberal Learning in an Illiberal Time,” will encourage reflection on the aims of higher education and reaffirm the importance of the moral, intellectual and spiritual formation that a Christian university might offer.

IFL is pleased to announce the Spring 2017 "Forming Character in the Classroom" workshops.

Each workshop will emphasize one or two significant character qualities — such as friendship, courage, wisdom, and justice — that might be part of a vibrant classroom that takes seriously Baylor's commitment to foster "spiritual maturity, strength of character, and moral virtue." The workshops seek to equip faculty to see their teaching and mentoring as crucial expressions of character formation.

The Institute for Faith and Learning is proud to make many of the featured and plenary presentations from the Higher Learning conference available to the public. Click on the headline to visit our media archives page.

IFL is something uniquely Baylor — an organization that provides resources and encouragement to help students, faculty, staff, administrators and others consider and discover the relationship between the life of the mind and the life of faith.

On Friday, Sept. 2, in Roxy Grove Hall, Baylor University students, faculty, staff and alumni explored how friendship can enrich community and cultivate virtues during a panel discussion, “Companions in Hope: Why Community Is Good but Friendship Is Better,” Friday, Sept. 2, in Roxy Grove Hall.