Baylor Announces New Dean, Dean Transitions
Interim deans for the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education have been named.
Baylor University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs David L. Jeffrey announced at the Jan. 11 spring faculty meeting the appointment of Dr. Diana R. Garland as the first dean of the School of Social Work, as well as transitions in three deanships at the university.
Garland currently serves as chair of social work. She will begin her term as dean in August.
"When I met with the faculty, they expressed unanimously their desire that Dr. Diana Garland be appointed dean," Jeffrey said. "Upon consideration of their persuasive request, and in the light also of my own exceptionally high regard for her management of and advocacy for her colleagues and programs, I recommended to President Sloan, and he has concurred, that Dr. Garland be appointed as inaugural dean of the Baylor School of Social Work."
The School of Social Work was established in 1999 when Baylor began offering the master of social work degree. The program was moved from within the department of sociology, anthropology, social work and gerontology to become a separate department in the College of Arts and Sciences. In September 2004, the Baylor Board of Regents voted to grant independent status to the School of Social Work.
During the past five years, Baylor's School of Social Work has rapidly risen to national prominence for conducting research that informs professional knowledge and skills for addressing religion and spirituality in social work practice. Last spring, the School broke into the top 100 graduate social work programs in the country with a No. 87 ranking in the annual U.S.News & World Report "2005 Best Graduate Schools" edition.
Under Garland's leadership, the faculty has grown from five full-time professors and lecturers to a full-time faculty of 15. Graduate student enrollment in the program has increased from 17 to 65 and undergraduate enrollment has grown 24 percent to 105 students. External funding for research has almost doubled to $1.3 million annually.
Garland earned her undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees, all from the University of Louisville. She joined the Baylor faculty in 1997, after serving as professor of Christian family ministry and social work at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville for 17 years. She also served as dean of the Carver School of Church Social Work.
Also at the faculty meeting, Jeffrey announced transitions in three deanships at the university, effective at the end of the current academic year.
Dr. Wallace L. Daniel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and The Ralph L. and Bessie Mae Lynn Professor of History, will not seek a fourth term as dean after nine years at the helm of Baylor's largest academic unit. Daniel said he will return to research and teaching in August.
"Wallace Daniel has long been regarded as one of Baylor's finest teachers," Jeffrey said. "As a scholar he continues to be deeply engaged in his special field of Russian history in particular. He has asked to be allowed a research/sabbatical leave, and then to return to the classroom to teach not only upperclassmen but also freshmen students. This exemplifies the depth of Dean Daniel's lifelong commitment to undergraduate teaching. Yet he is rightly revered among our colleagues for much more than this.
"No one among our colleagues has been a better citizen, or a more attentive leader among his associates, and no one has more consistently or more eloquently upheld the ideals of the liberal arts tradition, or more consistently been held in the high regard of all his colleagues than Wallace Daniel," Jeffrey added. "Those who have worked closely with him, as I have myself for nearly five years, will be able to confirm that in the exercise of his office he has been a fountain of wisdom, a voice of compassion and an exemplar of probity."
After May, the College of Arts and Sciences will be led by an interim dean while a search for Daniel's successor is conducted. The College of Arts and Sciences offers a comprehensive range of programs through its 26 academic departments. All students take courses in the College as part of their core curriculum requirements and over half of the university's undergraduates are pursuing one of the College's degrees.
"The duties of the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences are the most onerous and all-consuming of all the deans of the faculties, and Dean Daniel's shoes will be exceedingly difficult to fill," Jeffrey said.
"The College will be led by an interim dean while we consider together the gravity of our task in seeking his replacement," Jeffrey added. "But as we rejoice to welcome Wallace Daniel back among us as a teacher and scholar, we also are deeply grateful to him for his extraordinary nine years of leadership."
A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Daniel is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics with honors in 1964 and a doctorate in history in 1973. He joined the Baylor faculty in 1971 as an assistant professor of history, and was later named associate professor, professor, director of Soviet and East European Studies and director of the Honors Program. Before being appointed as dean in 1996, Daniel served four years as chair of the department of history.
As an academic, Daniel has been named a Fulbright scholar three times: in 1969-70 as part of the official U.S.-Soviet Union Educational and Cultural Exchange Program in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg); in 1979 for additional study in Moscow and Helsinki, Finland; and in 1996-97 for research in Moscow and Oxford University on "Religion and Democracy in Post-Communist Russia," one of only two funded studies at the time concerning all of Eastern Europe and Russia.
Jeffrey also announced that Dr. Robert J. Yinger, who has headed the School of Education for the past seven years, will resign as dean at the end of the spring semester to return to teaching and research. The School of Education will be led by an interim dean, while the university conducts a search for Yinger's replacement.
"Bob Yinger has brought to the School of Education unusual thoughtfulness and prophetic insight concerning the future of public education in America," Jeffrey said. "He has guided and encouraged not only performance in the School of Education, but he has urged his colleagues, and indeed all of us, to contemplate the difficult work of trying to reframe the conventions of educational modeling and the institutional practices that must accompany it if we are to build a system of public education adequate to the democratic needs of a changing America. He has done this work through difficult times, both institutionally and personally, and done so with grace and composure."
A graduate of Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash., Yinger earned his doctorate from Michigan State University. Following 20 years of teaching at the University of Cincinnati, he was named dean of Baylor's School of Education in 1998. He currently serves as president of The Holmes Partnership, a consortium of research universities, public school districts and organizations that works to advance reform for the education of school professionals.
Under Yinger, Baylor's School of Education was ranked in the top 75 of the nation's education schools with graduate programs in U.S.News & World Report's "2005 Best Graduate Schools" survey. The School also began restructuring its teacher education program, including the requirement that all Baylor student teachers complete a one-year teaching internship to better prepare them for a career in the classroom. In 1998, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) selected Baylor's partnership with Hillcrest Professional Development School in Waco as one of only 18 sites nationwide to participate in a three-year field test to determine new PDS guidelines. In 2003, Baylor also was one of only three universities selected by NCATE to assist on a national scale-up project of the PDS project. With the Baylor School of Education the only undergraduate teacher certification program in Texas that offers a year-long teaching internship, Baylor's PDS program has now expanded to a network of 10 schools within Waco ISD.
Other changes at the School of Education under Yinger included the development of a new Ph.D. program in higher education and policy and other graduate programs in K-12 administration.
Dr. David E. Garland has resigned as associate dean of academic affairs at Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary after serving in that capacity since 2001, Jeffrey announced.
"David is a productive New Testament scholar and is widely recognized for the excellence of his scholarship," Jeffrey said. "He has expressed a desire to return more fully to the classroom as well as to his scholarship. Though this move will entail a real loss for Dean Paul Powell and for myself, I respect his request, and his colleagues and I welcome the solid academic leadership he will bring back to faculty ranks."
David Garland joined the Baylor faculty in 1997 as professor of Christian scriptures, after 21 years teaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of Oklahoma Baptist University and earned his master's degree and doctorate from Southern. He is the author or co-author of 12 books, including 1 Corinthians, published by Baker Academic, which earned the award of merit from Christianity Today in June 2004. He remains closely connected to local church ministry and has served as interim pastor of 15 churches in Kentucky, Indiana and Texas.
For more information, contact Jeffrey at (254) 710-3601.