Around the State: Baylor University announces major gifts

Baylor University announced a $1.5 million gift from Stephen and Lori Angel of Connecticut and their children, Logan Angel of Dallas and Mason Angel of Venice Beach, Calif. The gift from the Angel Family Foundation will support student scholarships within the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work’s Global Mission Leadership program. The donation provides additional support for the existing Angel Family Foundation Global Mission Leadership Endowed Scholarship Fund, effectively doubling the fund’s endowment and creating enduring support in the form of annual scholarships for the program’s participants. The program’s purpose is to contribute to Christ-centered international development through culturally informed education. The scholarship program identifies, recruits and sponsors leaders from communities around the world to study at Baylor, where they enhance Baylor’s global classroom by providing international perspectives to students and faculty alike. Graduates subsequently return to their home countries for transformational service. Alumni serve in 11 countries in areas such as higher education, combatting human trafficking, and ministry, foster care and congregational social work. “We have witnessed the impact that professional social work practitioners can have throughout the world in government and health care, in higher education and nonprofit organizations and through using their skills to provide advocacy, social services and education to their communities. To have partners like the Angel Family Foundation who can extend that impact through gifts such as theirs is something that we celebrate and give heartfelt thanks for, knowing the impact it will have in communities throughout the world,” said Jon Singletary, dean of the Garland School of Social Work.

Houston Baptist University celebrated the groundbreaking for the $23 million Morris Family Center for Law & Liberty complex on March 2. Stewart Morris, age 101, and members of his family participated in the ceremony. HBU founded the Morris Family Center for Law & Liberty in 2013 to provide students an understanding and appreciation of American history and of the nation’s founding principles. “It’s absolutely vital that we maintain the faith that has been handed to us. We intend to promote those important aspects that have to do with human freedom and dignity, worship and faith, and free enterprise,” said President Robert Sloan. “They reflect the human dignities that God has given us and caused us to embrace through Jesus Christ, his Son.”

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor students gathered inside a huge white tent in the middle of campus or listened online to the 23rd annual spring revival March 1-3. This year’s theme was “Awaken,” and Kade Pierce of League City, student pastor of Bay Area Church, was the featured speaker. The Grace Well band led praise and worship. Pierce challenged students need to look beyond themselves to Jesus, the “source of the awakening that we are longing for and looking for.”

East Texas Baptist University celebrated its annual Spiritual Renewal activities on campus with worship services and through prayer and reflection with the extended ETBU family in mid-February. This year’s theme, “Unite,” was inspired by the Apostle Paul’s call for unity and restoration with God and one another found in 2 Corinthians 13:11. Evening worship and morning chapel services featured guest speaker Rechab Gray, a church plant resident with Fellowship Church Memphis, who addressed students via Zoom due to the winter storm.

Baylor University announced a $1.5 million gift from the Prichard Family Foundation and Ella Wall Prichard of Corpus Christi to establish an endowed faculty position that will further the research and work of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, as well as scholarship in the areas of Black worship, preaching and studies. The Lev H. Prichard III Chair in the Study of Black Worship, named in memory of Ella Prichard’s late husband, will serve as an interdisciplinary position that will conduct research and concentrate on efforts associated with the growth, preservation and promotion of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project collection and Black sacred music, Black worship and other relevant studies. “We are truly grateful for the Prichard family’s continued commitment to Baylor University and to supporting excellence in Christian higher education,” said President Linda A. Livingstone. “The Prichard Chair will further Baylor’s work in the preservation of Black Gospel music, but it will go beyond that. The chair will open new areas of research into the cultural significance and into the history of Black worship and the church in America. As a Baptist university, we celebrate this opportunity to expand our study of this significant part of our Christian history and culture.”

The Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas selected the work of Tiffany Bergeron, chair of the department of visual arts at Houston Baptist University, for its permanent collection. “The Barred Owl,” a mixed media painting, is her first artwork for the collection. Additionally, the Museum of Biblical Arts will host a major international exhibition of artists from September 2021 through March 2022 commemorating the heroic response to attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Art produced by HBU artists and instructors Michael R. Collins, Rachel Gardner and Carlos Canul will be included in this exhibition. A publication and a documentary film are being planned for this body of art, which will stay with the foundation in New York in perpetuity after the end of the Dallas exhibition. Each year this permanent collection will travel to museums around the world.

Dallas Baptist University, East Texas Baptist University and Howard Payne University were recognized by Tree Campus USA. The national program, launched in 2008 by the Arbor Day Foundation and Toyota Motor North America, honors colleges and universities and their leaders for promoting healthy trees and engaging students and staff in a spirit of conservation regarding how best to sustain community forests. To obtain this distinction, universities must meet the five core standards for effective campus forest management required by Tree Campus USA, including establishment of a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures for its campus tree program, an Arbor Day observance and student service-learning project.

Baylor University’s board of regents approved construction of a $2.5 million Autism Clinic within the department of communication science and disorders in the Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences. With funding through donor gifts and department funding, the clinic will be located in repurposed and renovated space in the Cashion/Hankamer complex. The clinic will include autism-specific clinical research spaces in Cashion for concussion management; voice, reading and social thinking; motor sensory labs; and preschool and toddler age accommodations. Construction also will include finishes specific to the needs of clients with autism and new research lab and graduate student space in the Hankamer Academic Center.

East Texas Baptist University’s Marshall Grand received the 2020 Overall Historic Renovation Award among hundreds of projects by Ohio-based Ludowici, based on factors relating to appearance, uniqueness, complexity and craftsmanship. Following storm damage to the roof of the Historic Marshall Grand in 2019, ETBU set out to repair the roof and also to restore the building to its original caliber. The university worked with Ludowici, the building’s original roof tile manufacturer in 1929, to produce the specially colored “ETBU Victory Blue” terra cotta roof tiles that would preserve the architectural integrity of the building.

Stephanie Gerow, assistant professor of educational psychology at Baylor University, has earned a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education to fund research that will provide early childhood professionals with behavioral intervention training for children with developmental disabilities. The award—an Institute of Education Sciences Early Career Development and Mentoring Award—provides $493,412 in research funding and is the first of its kind awarded to a Baylor faculty member. “What we find is that kids with developmental disabilities are more likely to engage in problem behavior, and those kids are at a higher risk for having lifelong difficulties without interventions that can improve those problem behaviors,” Gerow said. “For the community agencies that provide important services to children with developmental disabilities, there has been little in the way of research or partnerships to develop sustainable programs for intervention training and implementation. I’m excited that this grant will enable us to partner with these agencies and pursue a standardized protocol for organizations that can improve trajectories for children.”