Presidential Perspective - November 10, 2022

Baylor Students, Faculty, Staff and Parents:

You don’t want to miss Saturday’s football game at McLane Stadium! We’ll have great football weather for an increasingly rare night game, and our Bears will be playing with a berth in the Big 12 Championship Game on the line against No. 23 Kansas State.

What’s more, we’ll recognize Veterans Day at the game with our Salute to Heroes, which will include a U.S. military flyover. Unfurling a giant American flag during the national anthem will be 125 veterans and active military, who then will join their families in a special section as part of the Baylor Line, as we recognize and extend our appreciation to these true heroes who serve and defend our country.

Some news from around campus:

• For the past 3 ½ years, we all have lived, worked, driven, walked and biked through an active construction zone on I-35. Yesterday was a momentous day as local and state officials, TxDOT engineers and Webber construction team members gathered under the 4th/5th Street underpass for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony. Of course, work continues on the frontage roads and the new T-intersections at 4th and 5th. However, for our senior class of 2023, which has never known an I-35 that wasn’t under construction, enjoy your final spring semester with a completed interstate through Waco!


• Baylor's renowned Institute for Faith and Learning (IFL) has fostered the life of faith and the life of the mind at Baylor and worldwide since its founding in 1997. This week, we celebrate IFL's 25th anniversary as one of a handful of nationally regarded academic centers devoted to faith-centered and intellectually rigorous Christian scholarship that seeks deeper understanding of the ways in which faith might shape and direct teaching and research. IFL's programs in support of Baylor's mission include high-quality research, conferences, student mentorship and encouraging teaching faithful to the Christian intellectual tradition.


• Baylor and Transformation Waco partnered this week on a fun, interactive STEM Day project with students at five Waco ISD schools designed to spark interest in science, technology, engineering and math. Led by Research Impacts in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR), engineering faculty Vincent Leung, Ph.D., and Linda Olafsen, Ph.D., visited the schools with OVPR staff to help students build their own light circuits, which they used to illuminate cards with Baylor images like a Bear mascot, Pat Neff Hall and the eternal flame. This Transformation Waco Instagram video sums up the impact of STEM Day on Waco students. Their reactions? Priceless!


• Todd Buras, Ph.D., chair and associate professor of philosophy, and Phillip Donnelly, Ph.D., director of the Great Texts program and professor of literature, have received a $189,999 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to build on the success of their 2021 summer seminar Disputatio and the Pursuit of Wisdom in the Humanities. Funding will support a two-week, fully residential summer institute at Baylor in 2023 for 25 high school humanities teachers to explore the disputatio, or the disputed question, that empowers the pursuit of wisdom across the humanities. This grant – one of 226 announced by the NEH to support projects nationwide – is another example of our humanities departments leading important national conversations.


• As a Christian research university, it only makes sense that ethics and compliance are central to all we do here at Baylor. This week is National Compliance and Ethics Week, and a great opportunity to spotlight the role this plays across campus. I'm grateful to our faculty and staff who apply the highest levels of integrity to all they do — infusing their work with ethical considerations and standards or applying that same rigor to details that may seem small but are important parts of research excellence. That can be demonstrated through faculty who come together to elevate ethics in their research in the Baylor Ethics Initiative, or through our Research Compliance team in OVPR working in conjunction with the University Compliance and Risk Services Office as they diligently support and protect faculty in research, just to name a few. Ethics and compliance align with our mission, and our growth as a research institution compels us to continually commit to excellence in these areas.


• Quick reminder: Don't let the flu interrupt your Thanksgiving holidays. Get your flu shot tomorrow during the mobile clinic from 12:30 to 1:45 p.m. in Morrison Hall, Room 100.

I hope to see you at the Ferrell Center soon as basketball season is here!

Linda A. Livingstone, Ph.D.
President

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Join the First Gent and me Saturday night as we Sic ’em, Bears!