Baylor Arts & Sciences Spring 2019

Spring 2019

When these Arts & Sciences faculty aren’t at work, they’re probably out making music

>>New A&S Core Curriculum >>Virtual Reality Research >>Tidwell’s Major Makeover >>Q&A with Baylor Theatre’s Stan Denman

FROM DEAN NORDT

A

s high school students make plans to enter college and pursue a career path, what criterion should most guide them in choosing a major? Should they choose majors that will likely lead to jobs with high pay? Or, should they “follow their passion,” whether that leads to a high paying job or not? Students –– and their parents –– have been wrestling with this question for a very long time.

At present, the national landscape in higher education is changing rapidly with greater emphasis on the “practical” academic majors that are commonly believed to lead to immediate employment of a specific kind. This phenomenon seems to have accelerated since the 2008 economic downturn. So, how should parents and their future college students resolve their differences in passions versus practicalities? There’s no doubt that we need medical practitioners, scientists and engineers. However, if they are all we produce, I believe we are missing other aspects of what drives the economy, and we diminish the importance of the human condition or what it is that makes us whole.

About one-half of all students who matriculate as freshmen into the College of Arts & Sciences each fall declare a prehealth concentration, intending to one day become doctors, nurses, psychologists, medical technicians or other healthcare professionals. But many of these students will not complete the prehealth program –– in large part

because they soon realize it is not what they thought it would be as a profession, or because they have discovered that their talents and interests would be better served elsewhere. Then what? And what about the students who matriculated in other disciplines to begin with?

More students than you might think who choose one of the “other” degrees, such as ones in the arts and humanities, go on to successful and satisfying careers, and the reasons are twofold. First, because of the robust core curriculum in the College of Arts & Sciences and the rigors of our individual majors, those students are well prepared to enter a workforce where critical thinking and leadership skills are held at a premium. Just consider the number of successful alumni in the business world (including CEOs) holding an undergraduate degree in the humanities.

Not long ago, I had a conversation with an alumnus with a BA degree who has done incredibly well in the business world. It turns out that his current occupation didn’t even exist when he was at Baylor –– so how could he have been trained for it? Specialized skills are still valuable, however, and our new core offers more flexibility for second majors, multiple minors and even certificate programs to provide a robust degree plan that combines the arts and humanities with professions.

Our arts and humanities degrees also give students a strong foundation to go on to law school or graduate school and serve as an excellent springboard for professional graduate degrees.

The second reason for the success of so many of our arts and humanities majors is that they are following their passions. This is sometimes a more challenging position for parents because of their understandable desire for success along a clear

pathway, especially since a college education is a significant financial investment. I will give myself as an example. My daughter Kaylee was a fashion merchandizing major with a minor in entrepreneurship. She is now a successful jewelry business owner in Fort Worth. I almost blew that one in the advice I was tempted to give her as a scientist (to pursue a job in science, engineering, health, etc.). But, I learned my lesson. She followed her passion. The point is that the major really doesn’t matter as much as passion and commitment to hard work. Worse yet, I told my son Garrison that whatever he did, “Do not get into the golf profession.”

He is now head pro at a golf club in Houston. I’m a slow learner.

My strong suggestion is that we as parents let our children follow their passions. Following the passions of someone else will only take them so far. I know too many people who are less than happy with their career paths because they took the path someone else wanted them to take.

I am not saying you should remove yourself completely as a parent from career conversations with your aspiring college students –– you have a wealth of knowledge at your disposal that your son or daughter does not. But, listen and try to decipher what they are really interested in. Passion will lead them to where they need to go, successfully so.

DR. LEE NORDT

DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES

2

News & Notes

8

Baylor to the Core

Updates on faculty, staff, students and alumni

The revised Arts & Sciences core curriculum will increase academic flexibility

16

Tuneful Teachers

These Arts & Sciences faculty love to sing and play music off campus

22

From Research to Relief

26

Altered Realities

30

4 + 1 = Success

32

Black Glasses

34

Q&A: Stan Denman

38

First Person

40

Our Back Pages

A New Chapter Baylor's 65-year-old Tidwell Bible Building will get a much-needed makeover. pg.

12

Art Up Close

28

pg.

donor-funded A program lets art students travel to museums to study world masterpieces

nthropologist Mark Flinn is helping the Caribbean A village he studies recover from a hurricane aylor faculty and students are using virtual reality B technology in new ways ew joint degree programs are allowing Baylor N students to graduate in less time Baylor's student film festival is celebrating its 20th anniversary L ooking back on two decades leading Baylor’s theatre arts program rehealth student Jonathan Ladner’s miraculous P summer internship The Tidwell Bible Building’s long, complicated history

Baylor Arts & Sciences is a publication of the Baylor College of Arts & Sciences that shares news of interest with the Baylor family. As the University’s oldest and largest academic unit, the College of Arts & Sciences is a community of 25 academic departments dedicated to the discovery and dissemination of knowledge. It is the foundation upon which all Baylor students’ educational experiences are built.

Spring 2019

Baylor Arts & Sciences is produced for the College of Arts & Sciences

by Baylor’s Division of Marketing and Communications.

PRESIDENT Linda A. Livingstone, Ph.D. | PROVOST Nancy Brickhouse | DEAN, COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Lee Nordt | DIVISIONAL DEAN FOR HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Kim Kellison | DIVISIONAL DEAN FOR SCIENCES Kenneth T. Wilkins | EDITOR Randy Fiedler CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Julie Carlson, Courtney Doucet, Katherine McClellan, Kevin Tankersley | PHOTOGRAPHY Matthew Minard, Robert Rogers ART DIRECTION & DESIGN Clayton Thompson, Scott Toby DIRECTORS OF DEVELOPMENT David Cortes, Clayton Ellis, Jim Shepelwich One Bear Place #97344 | Waco, TX 76798 | AS_Magazine@baylor.edu | baylor.edu/artsandsciences

The Baylor University College of Arts & Sciences is 100 years old this spring. On March 21, 1919, the Baylor Board of Trustees decided to formalize a new, modern academic structure for the University, dividing it into six academic units that included the College of Arts & Sciences. As we celebrate our Centennial, we salute the many dedicated faculty, staff, students, alumni and benefactors who have given us a heritage to be proud of.

The John Templeton Foundation has awarded a $2.6 million grant to Dr. Sara Schnitker, an associate professor of psychology in the Baylor College of Arts & Sciences, and coprincipal investigator Dr. Benjamin Houltberg of the University of Southern California.

The grant aims to support widespread, scientifically vetted interventions that build character strengths in adolescents across a diversity of contexts, such as athletic teams, religious organizations, youth community centers and online. “Not only does this generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation allow for excellent scientific research, but it also allows us to make a difference in the lives of real young people,” Schnitker said.

For the second year, Baylor University co-sponsored a special conference in Washington, D.C., during Black History Month that brought together educators, filmmakers, theologians and policymakers to explore ways that film and culture can spark important discussions about race and justice. The conference, “A Long Long Way: Film, Race and Policing,” was held Feb. 1-2 at the Washington National Cathedral. Through public screenings of two films by director Spike Lee, panel discussions and a workshop, the conference took a deeper look at race, prejudice and policing. “It is so meaningful for Baylor to sponsor this program on race and justice at America’s symbolic spiritual home, the site of inaugural prayer services, presidential funerals and important national days of prayer,” said Dr. Greg Garrett, professor of English and one of the conference organizers.

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

2

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Baylor University’s Model United Nations team excelled at the 29th annual American Model United Nations Conference in Chicago, earning top honors and breaking a team record for the most in-committee awards received at the annual conference. Baylor Model UN undergraduates representing South Africa were named Overall Outstanding Delegation by their peers. Meanwhile, members of Baylor’s Model Organization of American States team (shown at right) won awards at the annual Eugene Scassa Mock Organization of American States (ESMOAS) competition as they debated topics including climate change, food security, migrant rights, freedom of the press and fair trade.

Before her graduation in December 2018 with a BA in anthropology, Bianca Hill was one of four students across the country selected as a National Transfer Student Ambassador for 2019 by the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students. The recipients were honored for helping transfer students feel welcome at their new college homes. “Baylor has changed my life and helped me become a healthier, happier and brighter light, while also giving me places that I would not otherwise have to let that light shine,” said Hill, who is now working as a Baylor admissions counselor.

Jiajun (Dylan) Jiang, a PhD candidate in geosciences at Baylor, has won an Outstanding Teaching Assistant (TA) award from the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. It's an award open to all American geoscience graduate students, with only three or four winners chosen each year.

Samantha Yruegas, a PhD candidate in chemistry at Baylor, has been named one of 118 outstanding young chemists from around the world. Yruegas, a first generation college student, has been included in the “Periodic Table of Younger Chemists” created by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. She has mentored undergraduates from diverse, underrepresented backgrounds and is active in the Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists and the Baylor chapter of Women in Science and Engineering.

Alexandra Beard, a senior biochemistry major, received a 2019 Medicinal and Bioorganic Chemistry Foundation (MBCF) Student Travel Fellowship. The Fellowship is a highly competitive travel grant established by pharmaceutical companies to recognize outstanding student researchers. The award enabled Alexandra to attend a MBCF winter conference in Colorado and make a presentation on her latest research.

Dr. Bryan W. Brooks, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Science and director of Baylor’s Environmental Health Science Program, was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) for his outstanding leadership and contributions to science. He also received the 2018 International Environmental Award from Recipharm, a contract development and manufacturing organization in the pharmaceutical industry.

The memory of Dr. Vivienne Malone-Mayes, a professor of mathematics who was the first full-time African-American faculty member at Baylor, was honored with the unveiling of a bust Feb. 26 in Sid Richardson Building near the mathematics department suite. The bust is surrounded by informational panels that detail the life and career of Malone-Mayes, who taught at Baylor from 1966 until 1994, the year before her death.

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

4

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

The American Association of Teachers of Japanese honored Dr. Yuko Prefume, senior lecturer in Japanese, with the association’s annual Teacher Award. The AATJ Teacher Awards recognize outstanding teachers who demonstrate excellence in teaching, advocacy and leadership in Japanese education both locally and regionally.

Dr. Sara Dolan, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the doctor of clinical psychology graduate program, has been recognized as one of 30 “Citizen Psychologists” by the American Psychological Association. She also has received a five-year grant worth almost $3 million from a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to implement a project aimed at improving clinical practice for children who have been victims of abuse and trauma.

Congratulations to the six early-career Arts & Sciences faculty members who have been named 2018-2019 Rising Stars in research by Baylor University: Dr. Kelli Barr (biology); Dr. Tamar Carter (biology); Dr. Julia Daniel (English); Dr. Jeonghun (John) Lee (mathematics); Dr. Jonathan Meddaugh (mathematics); and Dr. Elizabeth Petsios (geosciences).

Robbie Barber, an associate professor of art and art history, has completed months of work designing and building a 19-foot-high giraffe sculpture.

It is joining other works of art in lining the approach to Waco’s Cameron Park Zoo.

Dr. John Haldane, The J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, has been named to “Fifty Minds that Matter: Artists, Scientists, Philosophers, Theologians, Musicians and Architects Who Are Shaping the Modern World,” a list published by the Catholic periodical The Tablet. Haldane is one of six philosophers named on the list.

Dr. Chloe Honum, assistant professor of creative writing, is the winner of the 2019 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship, New Zealand’s most prestigious writing fellowship. The national literary award offers published New Zealand writers, based both locally and internationally, the opportunity to focus on their craft full-time through a stipend and tenure at the Sargeson Centre in Auckland.

PHOTO: JOSH AGUIRRE

Lynnette Geary, University Carillonneur and assistant to the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, performed on Baylor’s McLane Carillon during “Bells of Peace: A World War I Remembrance,” a nationwide tolling of bells on Nov. 11, 2018, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. The national program was designed to honor the American men and women who served 100 years ago during World War I.

A recent book by Dr. Nathan Elkins, associate professor of art and art history, titled The Image of Political Power in the Reign of Nerva, AD 96-98, has received the Best Specialized Book Award in the category of world coins (pre-1500) from the Numismatic Literary Guild.

Dr. Jane Damron, senior lecturer in communication, was selected as the 2019 Collins Outstanding Professor at Baylor by members of the senior class. The honor includes a cash award, recognition in print and at Spring Commencement, and the chance to deliver a special lecture on a subject of her choice to the University community.

JOBS WELL DONE

Dr. Roger E. Kirk, a Master Teacher in psychology and neuroscience and the longest-serving faculty member in Baylor history, is retiring this spring after a career at the University that began in 1958. In advance of this event, the American Psychological Association devoted an entire issue of its newsletter The Score to look back at Kirk’s life and career.

Other Arts & Sciences faculty members retiring in the spring or summer of 2019 include: Dr. Robert Baldridge, biology (at Baylor since 1980); Dr. Rosalie Beck, religion (1984); Melvin Hood, mathematics (2002); Kay Mueller, sociology (1977); Carol Perry, journalism, public relations and new media (2003); Dr. Patricia Pierce, French (1994); Dr. Ronald Stanke, mathematics (1985); Dr. Sara Stone, journalism, public relations and new media (1982); and Elizabeth Vardaman, associate dean for engaged learning (1981).

IN MEMORIUM Since our last issue, we have said goodbye to five Arts & Sciences faculty and staff members who passed away: Dr. Jim H. Patton, professor of psychology, neuroscience and biomedical studies and graduate program director (Nov. 1); Dr. Robert G. Collmer, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English (Nov. 21); Julie Sherrod, former English department administrative assistant (Dec. 9); Dr. Robert G. Packard, professor emeritus of physics and Master Teacher (Jan. 5); and Dr. Thomas L. Charlton, professor emeritus of history and former Texas Collection director (Jan. 25).

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

6

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Adrian Herren (BA ’69), an anesthesiologist and longtime rare book collector from Pensacola, Florida, took the opportunity to return a 400-year-old devotional book to the monastery where it once had a home. In November 2018, Herren traveled back to the Baylor campus to present a 17th century Greek psalter created by a monk at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai to Greek Orthodox hieromonk Father Justin, the monastery’s current librarian.

Herren bought the rare book 20 years ago but decided to return it to the monastery after discovering the book’s origins and learning that Father Justin’s parents attended Baylor in the 1940s.

Dr. Kathy Stepp Tinius (BA ’71), a professor at Amberton University in Garland, Texas, begins her term as the new chair of the Baylor University College of Arts & Sciences Board of Advocates this spring.

She succeeds John Howard Jr. (BA ’85), director of government affairs and public policy at Dell, who has served as chair the past two years.

An entrepreneurial Baylor Arts & Sciences alumna is helping bring a new independent bookstore to downtown Waco. Kimberly Batson (BA ’07) (shown at left in photo) and co-owner Alison Frenzel expect to open Fabled Bookshop & Café in a 6,400-square-foot building in downtown Waco sometime this year. The store will feature 20,000 to 30,000 books, a coffee bar, a children’s section and event space for parties and readings.

Batson (with her husband Blake) also owns and operates Waco’s iconic Common Grounds and Heritage Creamery.

PHOTO: ROD AYDELOTTE, WACO TRIBUNE-HERALD

PHOTO: ROD AYDELOTTE, WACO TRIBUNE-HERALD

John Hill Westbrook (BA ’69), the late Baylor Arts & Sciences alumnus who became the first African American to play varsity football in the Southwest Conference, was inducted into the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame on Feb. 23. A star high school athlete and honor student in Elgin, Texas, Westbrook enrolled at Baylor in 1965 and walked on the football team as a freshman running back. He earned an athletic scholarship and made history in the Bears’ season-opening 35-12 upset win over No. 7 Syracuse in Waco on Sept. 10, 1966. When Westbrook entered the game in the fourth quarter he broke a 52 year-old SWC color barrier.

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

8

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Starting in the fall, students will enjoy a new unified Arts & Sciences core curriculum with greater academic flexibility

BY RANDY FIEDLER

Beginning with the 2019-2020 academic year, students working toward any of the four undergraduate degrees certified by the Baylor University College of Arts & Sciences will follow a totally redesigned core curriculum. The new core is designed to impart a shared foundation of knowledge, essential skills and moral and intellectual virtues while providing increased academic flexibility and interdisciplinary learning.

The new Arts & Sciences core curriculum will apply to students seeking the Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Bachelor of Science (BS) and Bachelor of Science in Aviation Sciences (BSAS) degrees. More than half of all Baylor undergraduates are now pursuing one of these four degrees.

THOROUGH EVALUATION Baylor has a long legacy of excellence in its core curriculum. The University is one of only about two dozen academic institutions nationwide to routinely earn an “A” for the high quality of its core from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).

“The high ranking that ACTA has given to Baylor’s core curriculum is in part due to the breadth of course offerings we require of our students in the sciences and liberal arts,” said Dr. Lee C. Nordt, dean of the Baylor University College of Arts & Sciences.

“But since change in our culture and our world is continual, we can’t simply rest on our laurels. We must periodically review our essential academic skillsets and core curriculum, with the goal of assessing what we teach, and why.”

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

ARTS & SCIENCES 12 /10 BAYLOR BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Nordt’s belief that a broad assessment of the Arts & Sciences core was long overdue led him to initiate a formal review process within the College of Arts & Sciences. In 2012, as a major piece of the College’s strategic plan, A&Spire, Nordt appointed an A&Spire subcommittee to — as called for in ProFuturis, Baylor’s long-range strategic vision — “strengthen the undergraduate core curriculum and deepen our excellence in the liberal arts.”

A&Spire was approved by the College’s Council of Chairs in 2014.

As a result, Nordt appointed a task force under the leadership of Dr. Paul Martens, associate professor of religion and director of interdisciplinary programs for the College of Arts & Sciences, to write a vision document for the core curriculum. After 13 months of work by the task force, the Council of Chairs unanimously approved the vision in May 2016.

The next step in the process was the appointment of a 40-member task force led by Dr. Blake Burleson, senior lecturer in religion and associate dean for undergraduate studies and strategic and enrollment initiatives in the College of Arts & Sciences, to determine the size and content of the new core based on the vision.

“The appointment of Dr. Burleson to direct the vision document planning process and then the final design of the new core was instrumental to its success,” Nordt said. “His leadership was indispensable for the coordination on numerous committees working simultaneously in different areas that then had to be integrated to create the whole.”

The result of the 16-month study by the task force was a recommendation on the components of a new core made to the Arts & Sciences Council of Chairs.

After input on these recommendations was received from faculty in all 25 departments in the College of Arts & Sciences, amendments were introduced. A final vote on the revised core curriculum was taken in October 2017 and passed by a 20-to-4 vote.

Soon afterwards, Baylor’s provost provided final approval.

During the past year, 18 committees totaling more than 180 members, including 22 student members, have been tasked with implementing the new core. And hundreds of faculty members have been spending time creating new

courses or altering existing ones for the new core.

“Many of the committees are providing resources for these faculty in the form of course redesign workshops, interdisciplinary faculty discussion groups, workshops on diversity or virtues, stipends for travel to conferences on pedagogy, and a spiritual retreat,” Burleson said.

Before the start of the Fall 2018 semester, Nordt appointed Dr. Lauren Poor, lecturer in history, as the first director of the Core, and she has been instrumental in implementation efforts.

Poor was recently recognized as one of the top 40 faculty and staff members who had the most positive impact on Baylor students this year, based on a survey of freshmen and transfer students.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS When the new Arts & Sciences core curriculum takes effect this coming fall, for the first time it will be a unified core –– meaning that students pursuing each of the four degrees will have the same core requirements.

Students will be required to complete 15 hours in seven common requirements: Chapel; Christian Heritage; Christian Scriptures; Cultural Events Experience (CEE); The U.S. Constitution, Its Interpretation and the American Political Experience; The United States in Global Perspective; and American Literary Cultures.

“The common courses will provide students with a foundation of shared religious and civic knowledge, and the opportunity to develop essential skills that Baylor has identified as central to the mission of the University and to preparing students for a future in worldwide leadership and service through our Christian commitment,” Poor said.

The CEE requires that students attend 12 cultural events on campus during their four years. These events include art and museum exhibits, theater productions, concerts, poetry readings and films.

“The purpose of requiring the CEE is to allow for maturation and growth in our students’ reception, interpretation and appreciation for fine arts and cultural events,” Poor said.

The remaining approximately 36 hours of the core will be fulfilled in distribution list courses –– where students must

choose at least one course each from nine different areas: Communication and Media Literacy; Contemporary Social Issues; Fine Arts and Performing Arts; Foreign Language and Culture; Formal Reasoning; Literature in Context; Research Writing; and Scientific Method I and II. Students will also take one Lifetime Fitness course.

The new core will be required for freshmen and transfer students starting in the fall 2019 semester.

DISTINCT ADVANTAGES

Nordt said. “It will be more impactful than before.”

Students also will have more flexibility in course selection for their general education requirements and in their elective areas. For example, the current requirements for the BA and BS degrees call for between 65 to 79 hours of general education –– comprising one

College of Arts & Sciences, other Baylor academic units have begun mapping on to the new core to varying degrees.

“These units are interested in the flexibility the new core provides for students to pursue double majors, minors and even certificates, as well as the unified nature around which the courses and experiences were

“We must periodically review our essential academic skillsets and core curriculum, with the goal of assessing what we teach, and why.”

The changes to the core curriculum provide for many advantages. The expansion of required common courses from five to seven will allow students to have more vocabularies, texts and experiences in common with their classmates. The new core also has multidisciplinary courses and upper-level courses that are rarely available in the current core.

“Our new core curriculum is better because it is now more intentional in its course offerings and how the courses are sequenced and interconnected,”

DEAN LEE C. NORDT of the largest core requirements in the United States. By contrast, the new unified core requires approximately 50 hours –– giving students roughly 20 to 30 more hours to take additional electives or pursue second majors, minors or certificates.

intentionally chosen to best reflect Baylor’s greater mission,” Poor said.

For more information on the Arts & Sciences core, including a complete list of courses, visit baylor.edu/ artsandsciences/core.

BROADENING FOCUS While the unified core will apply to all Baylor undergraduates within the

COLLEGE OF ART & SCIENCES CORE CURRICULUM

COMMON COURSES (15 hours):

Effective Fall 2019

COURSES FROM DISTRIBUTION LISTS (34 hours):

→ Chapel → Cultural Events Experience → American Literary Cultures → The United States in Global Perspective → The U.S. Constitution, Its Interpretation, and the American Political Experience → Christian Scriptures → Christian Heritage

→ Communication and Media Literacy (3 hours) → Contemporary Social Issues (3 hours) → Fine Arts (3 hours) → Foreign Language and Culture (9 hours) → Formal Reasoning (3 hours) → Lifetime Fitness Course (1 hour) → Literature in Context (3 hours) → Research Writing (3 hours) → Scientific Method I (4 hours) → Scientific Method II (3 hours)

LIFETIME FITNESS COURSE (1 hour)

COURSES NEEDED TO COMPLETE MAJORS, MINORS AND CERTIFICATES (74 hours) TOTAL: 124 hours* * Baylor degrees require at least 124 hours of coursework

A New Chapter Baylor will soon transform its towering Tidwell Bible Building

BY RANDY FIEDLER

FOR A DEEPER LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF THE TIDWELL BIBLE BUILDING, SEE OUR BACK PAGES ON PG. 40

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

12

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

T

he building in which generations of Baylor University students have studied religion and history will soon receive the first top-tobottom makeover in its 65-year history.

Restoration of the seven-story Tidwell Bible Building is one of the capital projects included in Give Light, Baylor’s $1.1 billion comprehensive philanthropic campaign.

Give Light calls for Tidwell’s 57,000 square feet to undergo a significant renovation to improve infrastructure and “dramatically expand and enhance academic instruction, modernize the learning environment, provide collaboration spaces for students and shape faculty offices for greater interaction with colleagues and students.”

MORE EFFICIENT SPACE When the Tidwell Bible Building opened in 1954, it was home to the departments of religion, history, sociology, philosophy, sacred music and German. Today, it houses the religion and history departments.

The only large-scale renovation the building has had since its opening was completed in the spring of 1979. In that $500,000 facelift, new lights and a newer elevator were installed, air conditioning and heating systems were rebuilt and the entire structure was repainted and carpeted.

In the 40 years since, a number of needs have surfaced due to the growth of the University. The faculty and staff of the two departments located in Tidwell must work to fit comfortably inside a building designed to meet the space needs Baylor had many decades ago.

“The religion department is out of space,” said Dr. William Bellinger, chair and professor of religion and The W. Marshall and Lulie Craig Chair in Bible. “When we hire somebody new, if they are replacing someone who has just retired, we can use that office. But beyond that, we have nowhere to put anybody else.”

Architectural renderings of the proposed Tidwell renovations show a redesigned lobby area.

Bellinger said the lack of available space also is affecting Baylor’s graduate religion program.

“We have a pretty robust graduate program with about 60 PhD students, and they are making a significant contribution to our community. But we basically have no space for them,” he said. “This is a real issue because now, if a graduate student is a teacher of record in a class, we have to have some kind of office space for them. It often is a small office that is shared with two or three other people, and it’s difficult for them to juggle their schedules to make sure they have a quiet, professionally appropriate place to meet with their students.”

To increase their available office space, administrators in the history department have made use of some doit-yourself remodeling projects.

“We have been trying to figure out if we can convert our map room into office space, now that most faculty use electronic maps,” said Dr. Barry Hankins, chair and professor of history. “We have also converted a storage room next to the map room into an office.”

Both department chairs said that what faculty offices are available in Tidwell are not placed and sized efficiently.

Some offices are very large, while other offices are tiny, or are offices with multiple faculty sharing the same space.

And the placement of offices is rarely ideal for collaboration.

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

14

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

“With the renovation of Tidwell, we’ll have a more logical way of grouping faculty offices together,” Bellinger said.

“The new, renovated Tidwell is going to have standard size offices, and everyone is going to have one, including some additional new space for graduate students,” Hankins said. “The efficiency of space is going to be greatly improved.”

The Tidwell renovation plans call for new office and work spaces on every floor, as well as the creation of 13 classrooms –– five 30-person rooms, five 40-person rooms and three classrooms that can hold as many as 60 people each. Both the religion and history departments will have designated seminar rooms, resource library space, staff work rooms and reception and lounge areas. In addition, an elevator will be added to provide unrestricted access to the fourth, fifth and sixth floors.

MILLER’S NEW MISSION Tidwell will gain a large amount of new space for offices and classrooms through what is possibly the most significant design change in the project –– the transformation of Miller Chapel to educational space. Miller Chapel is a large, two-story structure connected to the Tidwell building on the southeast side, and since its opening in 1954, many weddings, musical performances and religious services have been held

there. However, the opening of Truett Seminary’s Paul Powell Chapel, Robbins Chapel in Brooks College and Elliston Chapel in East Village over the past two decades have greatly reduced the number of events held in Miller Chapel.

“Nowadays there is seldom a wedding in Miller Chapel,” Bellinger said. “We do use it for visiting lecturers, and a few choirs use it for rehearsals, but other than that it is used only sporadically.”

The renovation plans call for Miller Chapel to contain two full floors of work space for faculty and students, including more than 30 new faculty offices. The large stained glass windows surrounding the Chapel will remain, and a two-story-high passageway around the inside perimeter of the building will allow sunshine to stream through the windows.

Even though Miller Chapel will no longer host religious services, the renovation plans call for worship space to remain in the building by way of a prayer room to be built on Tidwell’s sixth floor, overlooking the campus.

In addition to changes in the building’s layout, the Tidwell restoration will provide much-needed modern updates to the building’s infrastructure, including heating, air conditioning, mechanical and electrical systems.

Dr. Lee C. Nordt, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, said that giving one of Baylor’s most familiar buildings some

much-needed attention is long overdue.

“The Tidwell Bible Building is an icon here at Baylor University, as every undergraduate student passes through its hallways to take courses as part of their core curriculum,” Nordt said. “But Tidwell is in need of a considerable upgrade. This project will renovate the infrastructure, revamp classrooms and increase much needed space for faculty offices. When it’s completed, Tidwell will be ready to serve many new generations of Baylor students.”

“With the renovation of Tidwell, we’ll have a more logical way of grouping faculty offices together.”

DR. WILLIAM BELLINGER

Sixth floor renderings of the prayer room (above) and second-floor offices inside the repurposed Miller Chapel, featuring the iconic stained glass windows (below)

BOB DARDEN

KEVIN CHAMBLISS

When these Baylor faculty members aren’t teaching or researching, you can probably find them making music

BY KEVIN TANKERSLEY

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

16

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

BOB KANE

PATRICK FARMER

THERESA KENNEDY

There probably aren’t too many places on the Baylor University campus where someone visiting a faculty member might find a washtub bass sitting next to a Ramones calendar on the wall. But that’s what you’ll find in Dr. Bob Kane’s office in the Baylor Sciences Building.

That’s because Kane, an associate professor of chemistry, director of the Institute of Biomedical Studies and faculty-in-residence at University Parks residential community, is one of many Arts & Sciences faculty members who spend part of their free time away from campus as working musicians.

WASHTUB JAMMER Kane started playing drums when he was about 10 and was in bands throughout high school and college. For a while, it was punk rock –– hence the Ramones calendar –– then blues and “Texas stuff.” Now, Kane plays bass and 12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

18

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

is into gypsy jazz of the 1930s, a style attributed to the great French guitarist Django Reinhardt.

At various times, Kane jams with other Arts & Sciences faculty –– Dr. Alexandre Thiltges, senior lecturer in French, and Dr. Scott Spinks, senior lecturer in Spanish (guitars), Dr. Theresa Varney Kennedy, associate professor of French (vocals) and Dr. Simon Burris, senior lecturer in classics (trumpet). Various iterations of this group have played gigs at Waco Winery, Barnett’s Public House in Waco and Valley Mills Vineyards.

“We would love to travel to France to play in the cafes there,” Kane said, “and in fact already have an offer to play at an art gallery opening in Paris…Texas.”

Kane said the inspiration to build himself a washtub bass came from a couple of sources. First was the animatronic band in the Country Bear Jamboree attraction at Walt Disney World, and then he saw Split Lip

Rayfield, a “thrashgrass” band whose bass player, Jeff Eaton, played a onestring instrument that consisted of a gas tank from a 1978 Mercury Grand Marquis, a length of hickory and a piece of string from a weed trimmer.

In addition to the washtub, Kane’s instrument is made from a piece of bamboo his sons cut in Cameron Park and a length of clothesline cord.

“That’s probably a $20 instrument,” Kane said. “The string is probably the most expensive part.”

He has another washtub bass at home, and has plans to soon buy a “real” bass as well.

LONGTIME GUITARIST Sometimes sitting in with Kane’s band is his department chair, Dr. Patrick Farmer, who “grew up in a time where everybody was a guitar player.”

Farmer, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, got his first guitar when he was 13. He stole it from his older sister.

“She wasn’t playing that much,” he said, so Farmer learned and eventually played in bar bands when he was in high school, “and then I played through my college years and through my 20s.” He gave up the instrument for a while as he was earning his PhD at Texas A&M, but picked it up again during his time as a NATO postdoctoral fellow at École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

“When I was a postdoc in France, I had to go out and buy a guitar because I couldn't live for a year without a guitar,” Farmer said.

During his 14 years teaching at the University of California, Irvine, Farmer played in faculty bands before joining Baylor in 2009 as chair of chemistry and biochemistry. In addition to sitting in with Kane and others, Farmer has played in the worship band at First United Methodist Church and travels to Austin to sit in on gigs with musician friends there.

COUNTRY PICKER Another professor of chemistry at Baylor, Dr. Kevin Chambliss, plays lead guitar in a church band and is also a member of a country/Southern rock/rockabilly band called Rackjabbit.

“Our drummer is a retired bull fighter named Jeff ‘Jackrabbit’ Harris, and our lead singer jokes and says he’s dyslexic and calls him Rackjabbit. So it just kind of stuck,” said Chambliss, who also serves as Baylor’s interim vice provost for research.

Chambliss started playing guitar when he was 12 and was eventually in a “really bad high school band” that played covers of songs by Metallica, AC/DC, Poison and other “metal and hairband” groups, he said. “It’s a funny thing. It’s very different than the music I play now.”

Chambliss and Rackjabbit still play covers, but they now feature songs from classic musicians such as Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and more recent artists such as Chris Stapleton.

Chambliss also plays lead guitar in the worship band at Bosque County Cowboy Church. He had never played lead guitar before joining the group.

“I was a pretty decent rhythm guitarist, and we needed a lead guitar in our church band,” he said. So about four years ago, Chambliss began taking lead guitar lessons from Frank Exum in Waco, a teacher with degrees in both classical guitar and jazz guitar.

“It’s really been cool to kind of take some of the jazz approach and play it in sort of

mainstream country,” Chambliss said. “What I didn’t know at the time but I’ve learned is that western swing music, which I love, is all jazz. It’s really helped me get into that western swing genre. The band I gig with, we don’t do much jazz. We’re three chords and the truth, and more about stories than about sound. But it’s still a lot of fun.”

MEDICAL SONGSTRESS Three chords and the truth. That’s a theme that Dr. Lauren Barron references when she’s talking about music as well, especially the music that she enjoys singing.

“All you need are three chords and the truth to make a good song. That’s it. All Willie Nelson songs are three chords and the truth,” said Barron, a medical doctor who is a clinical professor at Baylor and the director of the University’s medical humanities program.

Barron and her husband Dale –– who recently joined Rackjabbit, playing fiddle and mandolin –– are members of the musical group Contemplative Desperados at DaySpring Baptist Church in Waco, along with Dr. Greg Hamerly, associate professor of computer science, on banjo, and his wife, Dr. Ivy Hamerly, senior lecturer in political science and director of the International Studies Program, on cello.

The Contemplative Desperados’ music “has sort of a bluegrass bent to it,” Barron said. “It might be a little more up-tempo than usual. There might be some boom chicka boom sound as well.”

As a child, Barron played piano, flute and guitar, and she was good enough at the

“All you need are three chords and the truth to make a good song. That’s it.”

DR. LAUREN BARRON, CONTEMPLATIVE DESPERADOS piano to play on Sunday mornings at Waco Christian Church, a congregation that no longer exists, during her days as a student at Baylor.

“I got to choose the hymns, so I picked the ones that I could play well,” she said.

Now, Barron pretty much sticks to singing, preferring acoustic jam sessions in a living room or on a patio.

“To me, that’s the best time,” she said, with friends and playing the music of Willie and Waylon and Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Emmylou Harris.

MIDNIGHT MUSICIANS Robert Darden’s favorite part of playing music is getting to sit back and watch people. He’s done that during his entire professional career as a journalist, and it transitions to his role as drummer in the band After Midnight, which is made up of an interdisciplinary group of Baylor faculty and staff.

“I love, as I have since I was a kid, sitting back with the bass player, behind the two lead people who everybody looks at and play in a little place like an SPJST Lodge in Elk or something, and watching couples become couples and couples break apart, families with kids and grandmothers and watching interactions of people,” Darden said.“And you generally don’t go to a dance to have a bad time. You go because you want to have fun and see people laughing and interacting to real music.”

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

20

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

And the real music that After Midnight plays consists of a few hundred songs in genres like rock’n’roll, rhythm and blues, funk and soul.

“We figured out once we could play five hours without repeating” a song, Darden said. And if the band is hired to play at a wedding reception, the members will learn three new songs of the couple’s choice. Many of those songs have made their way into After Midnight’s repertoire.

“If we liked them, we kept them,” Darden said. “But we haven’t always because not all of them are dance songs –– because in the end, we’re a dance band. We get pleasure seeing people dance.”

In addition to Darden –– a professor of journalism, public relations and new media –– After Midnight consists of keyboard player Dr. Stephen Gardner, professor of economics, director of the Mayo McBride Center for International Business and holder of the Herman Brown Endowed Chair in Economics, bassist Lance Grigsby, a senior web consultant in Baylor University Marketing and Communications, and guitarist Dr. Barry Hankins, chair and professor of history. All of the band members contribute vocals.

After Midnight came together around 2000, when Darden, Hankins and Darden’s son Van, on bass, would perform a blues or rock song during a talent night at Seventh and James Baptist Church.

“Bob came to me after we did a couple of these at Seventh and James and said, ‘We really need to think about putting a band together,’” Hankins said.

Gardner signed on, as did a graduate student bass player.

“We have been through a number of bass players, a la Spinal Tap, through the years, partly because they were always younger and they would graduate, or they would leave and join the Army in one case,” Darden said.

Grigsby, who played guitar and had an office near Darden’s, heard the band was in need of a bass player. He learned the new instrument quickly, “and within a very short time was a virtuoso, and it was the best combination and the nicest fit,” Darden said.

While After Midnight plays weddings, birthday parties and class reunions, many of its gigs are benefit events, including a recent one for Ernesto Fraga, longtime publisher of the Tiempo newspaper in Waco, who suffered a heart attack in June 2018 and had to close his publication.

“Most of the shows we play, we’re just donating our time for a good cause,” Hankins said. “The last couple of years we’ve done the Keep Waco Beautiful picnic in the park and we really liked doing that. We don’t care about making any money. It’s nice if we play and get a hundred bucks apiece or something. But we just like to play, you know.”

“In the end, we’re a dance band. We get pleasure seeing people dance.”

BOB DARDEN, AFTER MIDNIGHT

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

22

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Baylor researcher Mark Flinn spent decades studying the people of a small Caribbean village –– then helped them recover after a monster hurricane

BY KEVIN TANKERSLEY

MARK FLINN

from people constantly coming in and out. I needed an agrarian, kinbased community. I had spent part of my childhood in the Caribbean, and Dominica seemed like a potentially great spot. The ministry of health was interested in the work that I wanted to do.”

FAMILY RESEARCH

Baylor anthropologist Mark Flinn began a research project on child health in a small community on a small Caribbean island, he envisioned being there for just a short while.

That was 30 years ago. And while his research is still ongoing, Dr. Flinn’s focus for the last year or so has been helping the village recover from a devastating hurricane.

Petite Soufrière has a population of about 500 people, and is on the east coast of the Commonwealth of Dominica.

“It’s about two-thirds of the way down the arc of Caribbean islands from Florida to the South American coast,” said Flinn, a professor of anthropology.

“I had done previous work in Trinidad, which is close to the coast of South America,” Flinn said, “but the kinds of research questions I was interested in are best studied in a more isolated environment without interference 12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES 24

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Flinn said the initial research project that took him to Petite Soufrière was “primarily to investigate why the psychology of family relationships has such a big influence on health and child development, because it’s a bit of a mystery.”

“There’s all the folk wisdom about stress, but what are the actual nuts and bolts of this linkage between a child being anxious and worried and insecure in their family environment and the physiological outcomes that then have downstream consequences, broad consequences on their health,” he said. “There are critical links among family, community, church and health.”

Previous work on that topic had been subjective, Flinn said, and consisted of researchers asking questions such as, “How do you feel today? Can you put a four or five on that? And is your four or five the same as her four or five?”

“Data had not been objective,” he said.

Flinn, a biomedical anthropologist

who joined the Baylor faculty in 2018 after serving nine years as chair of the anthropology department at the University of Missouri, took subjectivity out of the equation by measuring the stress hormone cortisol, analyzed from children’s saliva samples.

“The idea was that we ought to be able to detect levels of this hormone from saliva just like we can in blood,” he said.

“We did some testing before I went down to see if that might be the case and it seemed to work out perfectly.”

Flinn initially collected saliva samples from 62 children to measure the level of cortisol in each. He obtained repeat samples from some of the children and tested those as well, “to check out that the lab results were reliable,” he said.

Flinn expected that cortisol levels would remain about the same, and they did –– except for two subjects.

“There was this one family where two kids were way off the map,” he said, and their retest showed a threefold increase in cortisol.

“As serendipity would have it, I’d taken notes as I was collecting these samples,” Flinn said. “The second time I came by, the kids were crying under the table because one of them had spilled a glass of water and their aunt was threatening to beat them and they were really stressed out and so the light bulb went off in my head. Oh, my goodness. Maybe (cortisol)

is very responsive to social environment so we could use it as a tool to see what it is that causes children’s stress levels to go up and down.” The insights gained led to 30 years of monitoring hormones, family relationships and health.

Flinn has received several grants from the National Science Foundation to continue his research.

“I don’t want to say I started a movement in this, because once it was clear that you could monitor steroid hormones from saliva, it was a tool that just spread like wildfire and colleagues in child development and psychology got very interested,” Flinn said. “I had a lot of fun giving a bunch of talks. The field exploded.”

In part because of his pioneering research, Flinn was elected as a Fellow of prestigious organizations –– the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Psychological Science and the Human Biology Association. He also received the Distinguished Science Award for the Study of the Family from the Georgetown University School of Medicine.

HURRICANE HELP Flinn’s research in the community of Petite Soufrière took a backseat, however, on Sept. 18, 2017, when Hurricane Maria hit the island of Dominica, which Flinn said gave “real immediate urgency to my work” in recovery efforts.

Maria “went from a tropical storm to a Category Five-plus in a little over

24 hours,” he said. “There was very little warning, and it hit exactly on the community. It had sustained winds over 175 miles an hour. Giant trees that had been there over a hundred years, big old mango trees, were thrown about like matchsticks. Cars were thrown hundreds of yards.”

Across the island, 15 people died according to reports from the BBC at the time, “but no one died in my community,” said Flinn, who has lived in Petite Soufrière for more than 60 months over the past three decades. The roof was blown off the home of Roosevelt Skerrit, the prime minister of Dominica, “but I was taken to safe ground by police officers, thank God,” Skerrit told CNN. Flinn was talking via cell phone with a friend in Petit Soufrière as the hurricane was making landfall, and the friend handed the phone to his daughter, who was hunkered down in a kitchen cabinet “as his house was starting to disintegrate,” Flinn said.

“She of course was crying, and I was trying to console her, and the noise, just the shaking and the banging, was so loud, I couldn’t hear her.”

Her father, meanwhile, had gotten blown out of the house, had his clothes stripped from his body by the wind, but “he got ahold of a rock and held on for dear life,” Flinn said, eventually suffering a serious leg injury from flying debris.

Flinn helped start an effort to fill 55-gallon barrels with clothes and food and solar panels with his former graduate student David Leone, who found a shipping company willing to donate its services to get the barrels to Dominica.

But Flinn didn’t stop with just trying to meet material needs in Petite Soufrière.

Skerrit, the prime minister, was concerned that some communities in Dominica might have been too damaged to rebuild, and that the task would prove too mighty.

“People in this community are not leaving. They’re resolute, and what matters to them is their home and the social ties that they’ve had,” Flinn said.

“I was very encouraging of people who wanted to stay, and I said, ‘I’m with you.’ And I think that mattered to a lot of people who thought, ‘OK, Mark is going to be with us. He’s gonna continue to work here. He’s gonna be back. He’s gonna help us.’”

Many of Flinn’s former graduate students and colleagues who had visited Petite Soufriére also got involved, and that proved to be a key factor.

“I also did my very best to help people there communicate,” Flinn said. “I was

able to get satellite photos and the flyovers from the emergency military aircraft and post those up on Facebook.

With the help of a couple of former graduate students, we could focus in and say, ‘OK, that's your brother’s house, or it was your brother’s house. It’s now gone. Here are the houses that are

- DR. MARK FLINN somewhat intact. Here’s the church in the neighboring village that’s reasonably intact, and the school.’”

Besides wanting to rebuild the community for the sake of the families who had lived there for generations, Flinn also kept his research interests in mind.

“I wanted to interview as many people as I could when I was down there and find out whether there were psychopathologies as consequences of the hurricane, in particular posttraumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders,” he said. “Global changes in the frequency and severity of natural disasters puts urgency into understanding the social and health consequences of such events.”

As Baylor builds on its strong commitment to improving global health, Flinn believes that he is in the perfect place to advance his research while helping people he has grown close to rebuild their community.

“The people of Petite Soufriére are so tough and hard-working and dedicated to their community. They are an inspiration to show what the human spirit can overcome,” Flinn said. “I am so blessed to be here at this point in my career.”

Altered Realities THROUGH THE MODERN technology known as virtual reality (VR), people are able to interact with three-dimensional, computer-generated images so vivid that they feel as if they’ve been physically transported to another lifelike world.

And while the technology has been used for some time to make video games more exciting and realistic, a Baylor University professor is discovering new VR applications that can enhance the experiences of theatergoers.

After earning a BFA degree in theatre design and technology from Baylor, Ryan Joyner received an MFA from Cal State-Fullerton in theatre design and technology, specializing in lighting and sound design. He then returned to Baylor to work as the master electrician in the theatre arts department and lecture part time in sound design. As more students signed up for classes in sound design, a tenure-track faculty position was created in the subject and Joyner was chosen for it in 2014. As assistant professor of theatre arts, he has decided to focus his research on ways to connect VR with live performance.

THEATRICAL ENHANCEMENT Virtual reality is interactive, meaning that it allows for immersive experiences in computer generated and simulated environments. Users wear specially designed headsets over their eyes to view VR content, and Joyner’s research focus was sparkedARTS by using such a headset.

12 / BAYLOR & SCIENCES 26

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Joyner received Google’s first mass market contribution to the world of VR, known as the Google Cardboard –– a simple viewer that can be used with a smartphone. Google Cardboard allows users to affordably observe the immersive technology of VR apps and videos at their convenience. Intrigued by the ease and accessibility of the product, Joyner was inspired to figure out ways he could use VR to enhance theatrical experiences.

“I was looking for a research track that I would be passionate about pursuing for several years,” Joyner said. “When I got my first Google Cardboard viewer, I was amazed at what you could do with your mobile phone and this piece of cardboard to really put the person in a new environment. So, that got my wheels turning about how we could use that same effect to share theatrical experiences. On a basic level, it could be a really easy way to share our own productions at Baylor with a wider audience.”

Joyner believed that applying VR to the theatre would transform shows into experiences that audiences could fully explore and interact with from wherever they were seated, whether that was in a theatre or on a couch at home.

Research into VR technology is aiding Baylor recruiting and putting a new spin on theatergoing

BY COURTNEY DOUCET

“The epitome of this type of (VR) experience would be to attend a performance of a show virtually, so that you wouldn’t have to pay for travel, sit in the nosebleed seats or be a passive viewer,” Joyner said. “You can use VR technology to either be an audience member –– say, from third row orchestra –– or choose to be transported onstage right there next to the performers.”

RECRUITING TOOL With visions of the ways he could experiment with virtual reality, Joyner then began to take steps to acquire the proper equipment –– a special 16-lens camera that can capture 360° 3D imagery. Such cameras are expensive, so he and his department chair came up with an idea for a mailer (shown below) sent out to prospective Baylor students that could be

folded into a VR headset (shown below).

The viewers would allow the prospective students to view VR videos of Baylor events. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions thought it was an innovative way to recruit students and agreed to provide Joyner with the needed equipment.

The VR viewers were an instant success. Before, the rates of interaction for prospective Baylor students receiving direct mail pieces had ranged from 5 to 10 percent. But after students received the VR viewers, their interaction rate more than doubled to 26 percent.

“I’m really proud of it because of the widespread effect that it has touching so many prospective students, and that they have now been able to experience Baylor from across the world,” Joyner said.

INNOVATIVE MUSIC VIDEO Another new use of VR has required collaboration between Joyner, the Baylor School of Music and the Department of Film and Digital Media in the College of Arts & Sciences. They have worked together to produce a virtual reality music video for VirtuOSO, Baylor’s premier A Capella vocal group. Joyner said that creating a virtual reality video of a musical performance is different from creating a standard video, due to the fact that the VR camera captures images and sound from all parts of a room at once.

“It works very similarly to any other type of film in the sense that there is preproduction planning, storyboarding, etcetera. However, since the technology is so different, there are special processes,” Joyner said. “One unique thing about the way VR is filmed is that since it is a 360 degree capture, the production team can’t actually be in the room with the camera and the performers while it’s recording, or else the technicians will be caught on tape.”

While planning for the VR music video shoot, Joyner used his knowledge of sound design to make sure that viewers would have a peak auditory experience by being able to hear each singer individually in the VR headset while watching the video.

“Because I am a sound design professor, I am best with the spatial audio. For the music video, I was able to spatialize each individual person’s vocal tracks with them as they moved around the camera so that their voice comes from where they are visually in the piece, while also making sure the harmonies blended well together,” Joyner said.

Because of the special requirements to correctly record virtual reality, producing and shooting the music video was a bit unorthodox, with every Baylor collaborator providing and exercising expertise in ways that had never been done before.

RYAN JOYNER

“We put the camera in the center of the action. The choreographer would direct the performers in how to move around the camera at different points of the song and adjust their movements and blocking, but every time we did a take, the whole production team would run and hide behind the audience wall. Then we would say ‘and action’ and duck down,” Joyner said. “A lot of it we wouldn’t actually be able to see in detail until the next day once the film was stitched together. We did several takes a day and about two and

VR RECORDING OF VIRTUOSO

a half days of shooting until we felt we had the right take for that music video.”

Baylor film and digital media students under the supervision of Dr. Corey Carbonara, professor of film and digital media and Master Teacher, produced a behind-the-scenes documentary about how the VR VirtuOSO video was made.

The documentary won first place in its category at a film festival sponsored by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) in Hollywood.

“Our students did an amazing job producing that piece, showing exactly how we made the VR video,” Joyner said.

The VirtuOSO VR experience video made its campus debut when Baylor had its “Give Light” philanthropic campaign kickoff in November 2018.

Those in attendance, including Baylor President Linda Livingstone, got the chance to wear a headset and watch the video for the first time.

“There were probably about a hundred people who got to see the VR music video, and just watching them try it, and that being the first piece of VR that they experienced, was really amazing,” Joyner said.

Joyner’s research into new applications for virtual reality has introduced audiences to technology that many have neither seen nor heard about. He appreciates that he can produce high-quality VR content that can be enjoyed by those at Baylor and beyond.

“My favorite part is watching people’s reaction to the finished product, because even though VR has been around for a while and has had all of this hype behind it for the last few years, not a lot people have seen a fully produced VR piece, especially not in a nice quality headset,” Joyner said.

The original Baylor VR recruiting video, as well as 360° VR videos of special Baylor events such as Christmas on Fifth Street and Baylor Homecoming as well as a VR campus tour, can be viewed on the Baylor VR YouTube page.

A Baylor program sends art students to distinguished museums around the world to study masterpieces

PHOTO: TAYLOR STRANDER

BY KATHERINE MCCLELLAN

he most common ways for art students to learn more about the world’s great paintings and sculptures are to study photos reproduced in books, on videos or online. But thanks to a special program sponsored by the Allbritton Art Institute, Baylor University art students regularly travel to prestigious art museums around the world to study masterpieces up close.

Each year, Dr. Sean DeLouche, lecturer in art history, leads students from his 19th Century Art History course on Institute-funded field trips to major art centers. The students use the experiences to view and do research on the great works of art inside a city’s museums. These field trips, both domestic and international, are made possible through funds provided

by Baylor’s Allbritton Art Institute, founded in 1997 by longtime university benefactors Joe (LLB ’49) and Barbara Allbritton of Houston to promote the study of art history.

“The whole impetus for the creation of the Institute has been creating opportunities to put our students directly in front of the original artworks they are studying,” said Paul McCoy, professor of art and art history, ceramistin-residence and director of the Allbritton Art Institute. “The cornerstone of the Institute is granting students the opportunity to stand in front of original art. Through his work, the late Joe Allbritton developed the means to afford the luxury of giving other people this opportunity via the Institute.”

A COMPREHENSIVE ITINERARY

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

28

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

In October 2018, the Institute sponsored a four-day field study in New York City for nine students in DeLouche’s class.

“The objective of the study was to allow the students to see a work of art they were studying for a research paper in my class,” DeLouche said. “This trip allowed them to see the art up close and in person, to study it on their own and talk about it with their peers. In some cases, students actually met with specialists and

is constantly generated in the present –– it comes from discourse. When his students are in front of a physical piece of art, DeLouche encourages them to use their subjectivity and discuss their ideas amongst themselves.

“Meaning is always made in the present. As students of art are studying it, they’re talking about their ideas, exchanging thoughts and generating meaning,” he said. “These ideas must be attached to historical context and the culture or individual that made it.”

McCoy said looking at a work of art is like looking through a window to the artist’s soul. We are able to recognize that the artist didn’t just live in a different period or in a different place, but that they are a different human being.

“We recognize things about our own humanity in the presence of great art,” McCoy said. “To look into the eyes of Edgar Degas in one of his self-portraits, standing in front of the painting and seeing how he made those marks, you have no choice but to see yourself.”

allowed her “to see what working in those fields is like.”

DeLouche said students benefit from leading their peers through the museums and giving mini-lectures drawing from the research the student has done while there.

“When students are on the ground in a museum, and they are responsible for leading a presentation or talking to a curator, they take ownership of their ideas and their thoughts,” DeLouche said.

In early April 2019, DeLouche, who specializes in 18th and 19th century art history, led another group of his students on a field study to Los Angeles to study Neoclassicism and Romanticism at distinguished institutions such as the Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum and the Huntington Library with their important collection of 18th century portraits.

BIG IMPACT FOR STUDENTS

In addition to the semiannual research trips, the Allbritton Art Institute is developing a May minimester class for studies abroad.

“In academia today, this program is unique. Many schools offer field trips in art, but I don’t know of any school in the United States or Europe that has a program like this, where the entire program is underwritten, making the cost to students virtually free,” McCoy said. “There are a lot of schools doing great things in the arts, but it’s impossible to be involved in this program without recognizing how special and unique a program the Allbrittons created at Baylor.”

Junior art history major Taylor Strander and Amanda Smith, a sophomore studio art major with a concentration in printmaking, were two of the nine students who reaped many personal benefits from the fall 2018 trip to New York City. Smith had written many art history research papers before, “but this was the first time I got to see the work while actively researching it,” she said. Strander, meanwhile, said that her favorite part of the trip was the ability to “meet with professionals in the art world, like curators and researchers,” as this

PHOTOS: SEAN DE LOCHE

curators related to the art to talk about their ideas and their research.”

The trip started with a full day at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The MET). The students’ jam-packed itinerary included a visit to the prints collection at the New York Public Library, time at the Frick Collection on 5th Avenue and a visit to the Guggenheim Museum. On the final day of the trip, the students returned to The MET and were responsible for taking the Baylor group around the museum and leading discussions in front of their chosen works of art.

“All nine students planned out the day,” DeLouche said. “They showed off what they had learned from their research, and more specifically, what they had learned during the field study.”

Why is it essential for students to be able to see works of art in person, as opposed to viewing them in a textbook or on a computer screen? DeLouche said that in person, students are able to study texture and observe the brushstrokes of the artist, as well as understand the impact of scale, or size, of a particular work.

“Seeing art share wall space with other works –– works of the same subject, works by the same painter, works of the same period –– puts it in a different context that triggers new ideas and new thoughts about it,” DeLouche said, adding that new ideas might not blossom if students merely view paintings in a textbook.

Seeing artwork in person not only contributes to a student’s research project, but it adds to their reception of that artwork. DeLouche is a firm believer in what’s called “reception theory,” which says that art’s meaning

LOOKING AHEAD

4 +1 =

Joint degree programs in Arts & Sciences allow students to earn two degrees in less time

BY JULIE CARLSON

B

aylor Arts & Sciences student Sydney Graham still doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree after almost five years of study.

But the communication major hasn’t been squandering her time –– far from it. In fact, when Graham walks across the stage at commencement this May, she will not only receive her BA degree, but also a master’s degree in corporate communication. And to top it all off, she’ll move from Baylor straight to a job at a Washington, D.C., museum.

So, how did Graham manage to earn two degrees in such a short time? It’s because she’s one of the first persons to benefit from a new “4+1” program in the College of Arts & Sciences that allows students to work on undergraduate and graduate degrees at the same time.

Known as joint degree programs, 4+1 programs enable students to complete a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in five years instead of the usual six.

The College of Arts & Sciences now has two 4+1 programs in place –– in communication and classics –– while a third program in biology dealing with global health is in the planning stage.

“Joint degree programs are not new to Baylor,” said Dr. Ken Wilkins, professor of biology and associate dean for sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences. “In fact, we have 25 joint degrees. Some focus on earning two bachelor’s degrees or two master’s degrees or a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. These programs are really powerful ways to have an efficient and coordinated approach to developing a specialization in particular areas.”

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

30

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

COMMUNICATION

Graham had no interest in pursuing a graduate degree prior to the introduction of the corporate communication program, but she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do following the completion of her senior year.

Since the 4+1 program would give her additional time to figure that out, she decided to apply on a whim, knowing it would be a rare opportunity.

“I was encouraged by family and friends to explore the option, and once I met with Dr. Lacy McNamee, the director of the program, and other professors, I became more excited about all the potential,” Graham said.

The communication 4+1 program combines a traditional BA degree requiring 36 credit hours with a 30-hour MA degree. One difference is that while students in the traditional program have the time and opportunity to work as a teacher’s assistant, students in the 4+1 program aren’t able to be a TA while completing their degrees.

“The program is not all that different in terms of demands,” said McNamee, associate professor of communication.

“For example, all students take a research methods class.”

Student Ethan Blake, who is pursuing a minor in business administration to go along with his major in communication, finished his first semester in the 4+1 program in December 2018. He found the course work demanding, but manageable.

“My course work would have been a lot easier if I had gone the traditional

route and earned a bachelor’s degree first,” Blake said. “Last semester I took 19 hours, and six of those were graduate level classes. I have traditional graduate students in those classes, and that was intimidating at first.”

The corporate communication 4+1 students also must complete either a thesis that is subject to all standard requirements or an internship practicum.

If choosing the practicum, they must convene a committee and complete a shortened paper and presentation that includes internship faculty.

Graham’s approach to fulfilling this requirement was a bit unusual. She decided to not only complete a thesis, but to also do an internship as well.

“I never had any interest in writing a thesis or applying for a PhD program, but I really found a passion in learning about the complex relationship between occupational stigma and identity. I wrote on the topic several times during the first year of the program but never felt like I was ready to let it go,” Graham said. “Last May, I told Dr. McNamee about the inner struggle I was having just thinking about no longer writing on this topic, and that’s when we decided that doing both a thesis and an internship could be an option.”

For her internship, Graham moved to Washington, D.C., in January 2019 to join the communication and public relations team at Museum of the Bible. The internship led to her being offered a job with the museum following graduation.

“The vast majority of our students will go into the industry,” McNamee said. “There are a lot of jobs, and

Success these are students who benefit from having a master’s degree. They are in high demand.”

CLASSICS The 4+1 program in classics was approved by Baylor Regents in May 2018, along with a traditional two-year master’s program. Students can begin the new five-year program in the fall of 2019, and some current freshmen may be eligible to enroll after their junior year.

Baylor currently has one of the largest undergraduate classics departments in the nation.

Students focus on the cultures of the ancient Greeks and Romans through their history, literature, religion, social and political ideas, and languages (Greek and Latin).

“To understand the ancient world and its cultures as fully as possible, students in classics must first understand the languages in which those cultures expressed themselves,” said Dr. Daniel P. Hanchey, associate professor of classics and undergraduate program director. “As a result, classics students spend much of the early part of their undergraduate experiences in learning Greek and Latin. The 4+1 program will allow our students to take that step and then still another, as they ultimately

produce original research based on the skills and knowledge they’ve gained.”

Hanchey said the classics 4+1 program will have two great advantages for students.

“It will fast-forward the process of our students being admitted to PhD programs, and it will permit them to complete the journey from language learners to readers to researchers in a single setting,” he said.

“Students get the same level of course work and experience. And from a parental standpoint, the financial advantages of a streamlined program are very attractive.”

Graham sees even more benefits that can come from being in a 4+1 program.

“The 4+1 has the potential to open up incredible networking opportunities both within academia and in industry that you might not have otherwise,” she said. “This program has taught me

“The 4+1 has the potential to open up incredible networking opportunities both within academia and in industry.”

— Sydney Graham COMPETITIVE EDGE Today’s students are looking for any competitive edge they can get, said Dr. Kevin Chambliss, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and Baylor’s interim vice provost for research. He said having a master’s degree will give a student a leg up if they are competing against someone with just a bachelor’s degree, while having a master’s degree can also result in higher salaries and quicker promotions.

“I don’t see any disadvantages to a 4+1 program,” Chambliss said.

just how worthy, valuable and adequate I am. My confidence has skyrocketed since I started. I feel like I have come alive in this program, and if you’re willing to challenge yourself and take full advantage of all the program has to offer, you’ll leave changed for the better.”

Celebrating 20 Years of Film Presentation

BY RANDY FIEDLER

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

32

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

WHAT WAS CREATED ON A WHIM

LACK

00:04:29:19

two decades ago by a few Baylor University students has grown into an annual event that attracts an audience eager to see the best work of creative, young filmmakers.

On April 27, 2019, Baylor’s Black Glasses Film Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary with an evening of film screenings beginning at 7 p.m. at the downtown Waco Hippodrome Theatre. The festival began in 1999, when Baylor’s award-winning film and digital media program was simply a concentration in the communication department.

“Some Baylor film students who wanted to showcase their work and that of of their fellow students decided to have a festival and name it in honor of a film professor here who wore black-rimmed glasses,” said Chris Hansen, chair and professor of film and digital media. “They called it the Black Glasses Film Festival in her honor, and the name just stuck.”

In its earliest years, the festival included whatever work that any student wanted to have screened. Over time, however, Hansen and other faculty members decided to make the festival competitive, becoming more like those held to show professional work.

As a result, a committee of faculty members was created to look over films submitted by students and choose only the best ones to include in the festival.

The committee also decides which films will win in a number of competitive categories.

Hansen said students who submit their films to Black Glasses experience the same process that professional filmmakers do.

“We view taking part in Black Glasses as part of the education process,” he said. “Our students submit their films, go through the process of hoping to get selected, and then once they’re selected they have to provide what any film festival requires, including information and a final version of the film to screen. All the things a regular film festival does, we do in miniature.”

Hansen said that many times, student filmmakers competing at Black Glasses are showing their work to a general audience for the first time.

“Screening a film in our department to a classroom of students and faculty is very different than screening it to an audience of people whom you don’t know, and who have bought a ticket expecting to be entertained. They will sit there and see their film screened with a whole bunch of strangers around them,” Hansen said. “It’s both a pressure and a great opportunity for our students to experience that.”

Hansen said anyone who makes it out to the Hippodrome to take part in the festival shouldn’t be disappointed.

“In addition to showcasing the best work of our students, we’re trying to put on films that will entertain a general audience,” he said. “It’s a great mix of things, because our students are doing all kinds of different work –– some comedy, some drama, some documentaries and animation –– so there’s probably something for everyone.”

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

34

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Q&A: STAN DENMAN After serving as the chair of Baylor’s theatre arts department for 18 years, Dr. Stan Denman (MA ’89) stepped down as chair in the fall of 2018 to concentrate on teaching and directing. In this Q&A, Randy Fiedler talked with Denman about his time guiding the University’s theatre program and the legacy he has left behind.

What was it about Baylor that persuaded you to come back and teach after having been a graduate student here?

When I came to Baylor as a student working on a master’s degree I was very impressed with the undergraduate program. I thought that the students were reading things in their sophomore year that I had not yet been exposed to. Even back then it was a good, solid program that department chair Bill Cook and his wife, professor Patricia Cook, had built, modeled on the University of Texas drama program back in the 1940s.

It was a strong program, academically and artistically as well. I also liked the idea that it was at a faith-based university, because that was and is still a big part of how I identify myself as an artist –– as a person of faith who understands the tension that goes on between art and religion, and between faith and creativity.

So Baylor seemed like the perfect fit.

How is Baylor able to have faith and artistic creativity coexist within its theatre arts program?

Sometimes with great tension, for people who don’t understand the arts. I believe that the gifts of creativity are spiritual gifts that go all the way back in the Bible to Exodus, where God chose the first men to build and decorate the temple.

God said that He had given them the gifts of artistry and filled them with His spirit, so the first people in the entire Bible said to be filled with the spirit of God were artists. If we look back to that as our touchstone, then the gift of artistry and creativity is the divine spark we inherit. Artists have an important role in society and in a faith culture. Once people understand that, they understand it’s not about getting the arts to behave well. It’s about getting the arts to plumb the depths of our humanity, to explore our spirit. When people don’t understand that, they think that in order for the arts to be compatible with Christianity they must show nothing controversial or offensive. The thing that I believe moved Baylor Theatre into a new era was when we began embracing the idea that, as artists, if our faith has any relevance in the contemporary world, who else should be asking the toughest questions? We should be. That’s why we don’t believe in dividing the world into the secular and the sacred.

Has that philosophy been difficult for some people to accept?

Sure. There have been times when we have raised a few eyebrows when people have said, “You’re doing what play?” But we never want to take our audience by surprise, and we’ve always tried to let it be known that a certain production is

a play for adults that examines an adult topic such as racism, sexual assault or infidelity. These are things that adults and communities of faith need to talk about –– what are the dangers of adultery or greed? There are times when we just want to be entertained and there is great value in that, but there are also times that, to borrow from the apostle Paul, we want to go for the meat of the Word and not just the milk. A Christian writer once said that artists are the prophets of today –– not because they foretell the future, but that at the risk of the audience’s displeasure they communicate to them the secrets of their own hearts. We risk displeasing our audience by showing them the truth, but if we’re doing our job as artists there are times we celebrate the creation and other times when we warn the congregation.

Are there other elements besides the coexistence of faith and art that sets Baylor’s theatre arts department apart from theatre programs in other schools?

What I tell people is that we try to fall into the gap between the state schools and the Bible colleges. We try to be a place that is not hostile to Christianity, and which wants to actually deepen and strengthen people’s faith. But at the same time, we’re like large state schools in that we provide quality artistry and our standards are just as high. Our goal is to not compromise on either front.

There are other things that set us apart as well. Because of our faith mission we have a very close relationship between our faculty and our students. We really build a supportive community here. And while a lot of theatre programs, like our entire industry, are infected –– and I use that word purposely –– with celebrity, very concerned with what famous actors or actresses might have studied there, we tell our students that celebrity is not the hallmark of success. Instead, success is being gainfully employed and respected by the people that you work with. While we are very proud of our alums who do gain a level of celebrity, we are more concerned that they are doing good work.

in the world –– The Actor’s Studio in New York, where Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward went.

Chris Coleman is the artistic director of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the largest nonprofit theatre in the United States, and Stephanie Ybarra just became artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage. Because our academics are strong we graduate smart people with a strong work ethic. They are in leadership positions, moving and shaking and molding what the theatre is like today in the United States, but people won’t know who they are because they’re not celebrities. However, some of our alums are more well-known –– people such as Derek Phillips, who was on “Friday Night Lights” and “Longmire,” Allison Tolman, who was nominated for major awards for her work on the TV version of “Fargo,” and Kara Killmer, who is on “Chicago Fire.”

Are there any Baylor Bears on Broadway?

Yes. Sherri Parker Lee was on Broadway originating a Tennessee Williams role, with Trevor Nunn as the director.

Elizabeth Davis has done quite well for herself in New York, doing shows off and on Broadway and receiving a Tony nomination. Christopher Henke has been several Broadway shows. Rob Askins was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play in 2015. Jason Hindelang has probably been our most successful Broadway stage manager, doing maybe his eighth or ninth Broadway show now, but because most people focus on actors, you don’t hear as much about the tremendous success of our folks behind the scenes. And Doug Rogers, who had one foot in art and one foot in the theatre while he was at Baylor, is an art director and designer whose career spans from Broadway musicals to animated Disney and DreamWorks films. These are just a few of our successful folks that immediately come to mind. I am certain there are others that I am missing. The list could go on and on with many successes in major regional theatres as well.

Who are a few of those alumni doing good work now?

Is there a way to characterize a typical incoming Baylor Theatre student? What are they coming to Baylor for?

Beau Gravitte is the artistic director of one of the most famous acting studios 12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

The majority of our students come because they want to be an actor on

36

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

Broadway or in film. That’s what they want because that’s basically all they have seen and known. They don’t know all the other ancillary theatre jobs there are that they may find more joy in. I know when I first started I wanted to be a professional actor, but my love and passion is in directing and writing –– being more behind the scenes instead of in the spotlight. So, part of our job when our students come to Baylor is to expose them to all the other avenues of creativity that are within the larger professional world of theatre, and show them how they can use a theatre arts degree toward other ends.

The popularity of theatre arts as a Baylor major has led to some changes over the years, has it not?

Yes. Twenty-five years ago you could just walk in and be a theatre major at Baylor. You can’t do that today. We had to change to a system of admission by audition and interview because the floodgates were opening and that was about to irrevocably change our program –– and not for the better. Now, not only do students have to audition and interview, but we have to pre-screen them even before that because we’ll see a thousand auditions in a year for 30 to 35 spots. It’s pretty competitive. And admission into the program isn’t simply based on performance or vocal ability.

We have to balance that with academic ability and whether a student is a fit for our program. So we audition all across the state of Texas and do national unified auditions in Chicago.

When your students finally leave Baylor, in what ways have they changed?

They’ve learned a lot. They know how much hard work theatre is, and that it’s really not playtime. They hopefully have adopted a strong work ethic.

They’ve also discovered that there is a lot more intellectual rigor to success in the theatre than people think, and that their analytical and leadership skills need to be sharpened. There are a lot of students who come in thinking that they are going to be the lead, and hopefully during their time here they have learned what their place in the theatre should be. Some students who come in thinking they are going to be actors leave as lighting designers or costume designers. That’s not a failure

–– it’s just that they have discovered another aspect of the storytelling team that they excel at. That’s really what college is all about.

Baylor Theatre over the years has enjoyed a loyal audience base and a reputation for excellence on the stage, as evidenced by the many sold-out shows we see each year.

How have you built that relationship with your audience?

The feedback we get is that 9.9 times out of 10, people are surprised at the level of professionalism and the quality of work that we do. It’s rare that someone comes and is disappointed. Everybody is not going to hit a home run every time they step up to the plate –– that’s the nature of theatre. But, I think we have a remarkably consistent record for excellence in design and technology in the performance, and in the voices we have in our musical theatre program. But that’s really taken building over the years. We

try to keep up our standard, and I think that is something our audiences respond to. We have people come and say, “I can’t believe this a student production.” It’s nice to hear that.

Looking back over the time you served as department chair, what are the achievements you are especially proud of?

The growth in the department is one thing. Bill and Pat Cook and all those faculty members before me had built a very solid program, and when I became chair I knew how good it was. I simply began to try to turn our attention outward, to let more people know what a terrific program we have at Baylor, and to begin more intentionally preparing our students for the professional world. As that happened we began to sort of move back into national prominence again, being ranked nationally and mentioned as one of the top undergraduate theatre programs in the country. One recent

ranking put Baylor Theatre at 13th among 341 programs compared nationwide. We’ve almost tripled the size of our student body and more than doubled the size of our faculty and staff. Because we tried to have more of a national presence and even an international presence, we began the Baylor Theatre Abroad program and now send students to Europe and India. We’re really trying to fling our green and gold afar.

Are you optimistic about Baylor Theatre’s future?

Oh yes. My successor as department chair, Dr. DeAnna Toten Beard, is brilliant. She is excellent at academics, and much better at developing curriculum than I was. She will see new opportunities to develop our program that I did not see. She has inherited a highly functional program with an excellent faculty, but you have to constantly be reinventing yourself to stay current. I look forward to seeing what she is going to do.

“WE TELL OUR STUDENTS THAT CELEBRITY IS NOT THE HALLMARK OF SUCCESS. INSTEAD, SUCCESS IS BEING GAINFULLY EMPLOYED AND RESPECTED BY THE PEOPLE THAT YOU WORK WITH.” -STAN DENMAN

FIRST PERSON

A Miraculous Summer JONATHAN LADNER is a senior biology major with plans to go on to medical school. In this First Person essay, he describes how the guidance of a caring Baylor mentor and assistance from an unexpected source helped him to take advantage of a learning opportunity that has transformed his outlook on life.

“My 10-week internship… was not only a rigorous academic endeavor, but also an opportunity to discover what life would be like as a scientist.”

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

38

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

-Jonathan Ladner

I

consider myself to be a relatively nontraditional premedical student. I graduated in 2015 from Midway High School in Waco with plans to pursue a football scholarship at Tarleton University to prepare for a career in coaching.

However, shortly after I moved away from home, my mother was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer that quickly progressed to Stage 4 terminal breast cancer, following metastasis to her lymph nodes, ovaries and spine.

My self-identity was dramatically transformed in the following months as I gave up my athletic aspirations, returned home and began my academic journey. I often brought my mother to her oncologist checkups, MRI scans and chemotherapy treatments. As we sat together in the many medical offices, it became clear to me that I would spend the rest of my life delving into the world of science so that I might help others in their times of need.

I attended McLennan Community College in Waco for my first two years of undergraduate education before transferring to Baylor University in pursuit of a Bachelor of Science degree in biology. In my time at Baylor, I have had the privilege of gaining many valuable skills that will carry me forward in my aspirations of becoming a physician, and I am honored to share one experience that held great significance to me.

In the fall of 2017, I began my first semester at Baylor University as a junior.

I had a burning desire to discover more about what scientific research entailed.

I scoured the internet for summer research positions and stumbled upon an incredible opportunity at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Fox Chase’s nontraditional application process caught my attention, because while there was no generalized form to complete, they did require that a prospective student initiate contact with a staff member to be considered for the program. I reached out to the primary investigator of the Blood Cell Development and Function Lab, Dietmar J. Kappes.

Dr. Kappes and I communicated over the next few months via email and phone, and he nominated me as his research associate for the 2018 summer program. We anxiously awaited news from the stipend committee at Fox Chase about the approval

for the funding of my summer living expenses for the following months. We received word in late March 2018 that I was not selected for funding by the stipend committee. I was extremely disappointed by this news and frantically began seeking alternate routes for funding. I knew that this research opportunity was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I would not give up on easily. So, I put on a nice shirt and walked into the Baylor College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Office the following morning hoping for a miracle. What happened next cannot be explained except as an act of divine intervention.

Having no appointment, I asked the secretary if there were any available deans that I could speak with. After a short wait, I was invited to see Elizabeth Vardaman, the College’s associate dean for engaged learning. I shared my life story with her and talked about the opportunity that I had for the summer.

As we visited, I could see she was listening to me with her heart. She believed in me. With my tumultuous path to Baylor I had often doubted myself, and I cannot emphasize how much this interaction meant to me.

As our meeting concluded, Dean Vardaman told me that there were no guarantees, but she would be meeting with the College of Arts & Sciences Board of Advocates later that week and would try her best to get funding for me. Three days later, she called me and said that the Board of Advocates had selected me to be fully funded to conduct research at Fox Chase Cancer Center. I had been selected as the first recipient of the College of Arts & Sciences Board of Advocates Scholarship in Engaged Learning. The summer arrived quickly afterward, and I set off for my adventure in Philadelphia.

My 10-week internship at Fox Chase Cancer Center was not only a rigorous academic endeavor, but also an opportunity to discover what life would be like as a scientist. On my first day I walked into the Blood Cell Development and Function Lab, where I was introduced to six postdoctoral research associates. I was the lone intern and felt that I was in well over my head, surrounded by so many brilliant professionals. After discussing the current projects, they gave me my first assignment –– to read through an 850page immunology textbook “as quickly as possible.” I realized immediately that

my romanticized ideals of research were far from reality.

As I settled in, one of the postdoctoral associates, Jayati Mookerjee-Basu, took me under her wing and pushed me to absorb as much as possible in my time there.

By the fourth week, I was working closely with her on a research project concerning the transcription factor EGR4. I worked 16-hour days –– totaling at times more than 80 hours a week while in the thick of our experiment. I learned what lab work encompassed from experimentation with transgenic mice, analyzing various tissue samples utilizing flow cytometry analysis and composing figures with our resultant data. I had never been pushed harder in my life.

I kept my head down, worked extremely hard day in and day out and had the privilege of complete immersion into scientific research. I loved every second I spent working in the lab and could not be more grateful for the individuals who supported me in my time there. By the conclusion of the fellowship, I had earned a coauthorship for my efforts. Our paper has been submitted as a manuscript for publication to The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

My experiences at Fox Chase Cancer Center have dramatically transformed my outlook on life. More than anything, I feel that my time in Philadelphia gave me confidence –– confidence that I can step into any situation, as intimidating as it may look, and with my work ethic and resiliency I can accomplish anything I set out to do.

I am now in my senior year at Baylor with only the Spring 2019 semester remaining. My mother continues to serve as my inspiration as she wages her relentless battle against cancer. I plan to take the MCAT in late March and begin my application for medical school in May. I feel very optimistic about the future.

Upon graduating from Baylor, I will continue working as a food server at 135 Prime and shadowing physicians during my gap year to attempt to gain some financial stability before I begin medical school. I cherish and await the opportunity to dedicate my life to the pursuit of knowledge so that I can help those in their time of need, whatever that might be.

Our Back Pages

THE STORY of the

TIDWELL BIBLE BUILDING

BY RANDY FIEDLER

Early concepts for the Tidwell Bible Building (at upper left and right) and the final design (above)

12 / BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

40

BAYLOR ARTS & SCIENCES

GENERATIONS OF BAYLOR STUDENTS HAVE STUDIED RELIGION AND HISTORY IN THE 65-YEAR-OLD TIDWELL BIBLE BUILDING, which will soon

receive a top-to-bottom renovation as part of Give Light, Baylor’s $1.1 billion comprehensive philanthropic campaign.

The building’s history is a long and somewhat complicated one. It’s named for Dr. Josiah Blake Tidwell, who served from 1910 to 1946 as the head of Baylor’s Bible department.

In 1936, 125 of Tidwell’s former students proposed that a $100,000 Bible building be built on campus, named in Tidwell’s honor. Fundraising began immediately, but Tidwell would die in 1946 before the building became a reality. His final words reportedly were, “Oh, if God would only let me live five more years so I could see the Tidwell Bible Building on Baylor’s campus.”

But five years would not have been enough. By the time a groundbreaking ceremony was held on May 28, 1949, the plans for the building had expanded and the fundraising goal had jumped to $600,000.

It would take another four years after the groundbreaking for construction to begin. Time was needed to raise the final $200,000 and realize the vision of architect Guy A. Carlander, who happened to be Dr. Tidwell’s son-in-law.

Carlander drew up plans for what would have been the tallest, most striking building on Baylor’s campus.

The plans called for a 10-story building that would feature “the largest tracery window in the world” –– a glass wall of light 110 feet tall. Electrified images of a cross and a crown would appear inside this illuminated window with the push of a button.

It was a breathtaking vision, but an expensive one. When the lone construction bid came back at $1.5 million –– almost three times the $600,000 available –– Baylor trustees

were shocked. When trustees asked Carlander to downsize his plans to save money, he refused, and the architect and Baylor parted ways. A new architect –– Birch D. Easterwood –– designed a more modest building, with six floors above ground and a basement (and no record-breaking window).

Construction on the Tidwell Bible Building finally got underway in April 1953, and it was formally dedicated at Homecoming on Oct. 22, 1954. Part of the building’s exterior design featured 68 limestone panels, carved by sculptor Ira Correll of Austin, showing scenes from the Old and New Testaments. All 28 of the Old Testament panels were completed and placed on the building, but only nine of the 40 planned New Testament panels have ever been carved and installed. There are currently no plans to add any panels to the building.

When Tidwell opened, it was home to the departments of religion, history, sociology, philosophy, sacred music and German, and also had some offices used by the School of Nursing. Today, it houses Baylor’s religion and history departments.

The upcoming renovation will give new life to one of the most familiar buildings on the Baylor campus.

“Renovating Tidwell is a worthy goal because this building is central to undergraduate education at Baylor, and to the University’s mission,” said Dr. William Bellinger, chair and professor of religion and The W. Marshall and Lulie Craig Chair in Bible.

One Bear Place #97344 Waco, TX 76798-7344

Give Light, Baylor’s $1.1 billion comprehensive philanthropic campaign, will impact every aspect of campus life, from academics and athletics to student life and service learning.

baylor.edu/givelight

Learn more about the priorities of Give Light and how your gift can light the path for Arts & Sciences at Baylor University. It is our moment to expand areas of existing strength and pursue new areas of strategic importance with the support of expanded endowment resources.