Presidential Perspective - July 27, 2023

Baylor Students, Faculty, Staff and Parents:

This week Baylor’s Board of Regents is on campus for its quarterly meeting, which also serves as an annual retreat for strategic discussions about the University’s future. As such, the Regents kicked off our series of strategic planning listening sessions, participating in the first of more than 70 listening sessions that will take place campuswide throughout the fall semester.

Baylor has been blessed in so many ways over the past couple of years – achieving R1 status, exceeding our Give Light fundraising goal and being recognized as one of the country’s most trusted universities. The Board and University leadership want to ensure that we continue this incredible momentum while staying true to our mission of “educating men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community.”

New Board Chair Bill Mearse and I will follow up with you with a summary of the Board meeting early next week.

A few updates from campus …

• INAUGURAL BAUGH CHAIR IN PHYSICS: On Aug. 1, we welcome new faculty to Baylor, including Garritt Tucker, Ph.D., inaugural holder of The Eula Mae and John Baugh Chair in Physics. Dr. Tucker is a highly interdisciplinary materials science researcher and teacher who comes to us from Colorado School of Mines, an R1 public university in Golden, Colo. As The Baugh Chair, he will play a key role enhancing Baylor’s overall materials science initiatives, particularly through his immersive research and scientific visualization work. Dr. Tucker is committed to our mission as a preeminent Christian research university and excited about the integration of faith and learning at Baylor.


• PURSUING GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERY: Baylor research is helping investigate a potential groundbreaking new drug to treat newborn babies suffering from hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. Daniel Romo, Ph.D., The Schotts Professor of Chemistry and co-director of the Baylor Synthesis and Drug-Lead Discovery Lab, is among an international team of researchers studying a marine-derived molecule for its ability to stop a key step in a sequence that leads to brain injury. Dr. Romo and his Baylor lab team are studying the molecule’s structure and activity to understand and improve the qualities needed for a drug candidate. The team recently earned a more than $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, and we’re excited to follow this project going forward.


• MOVE2BU: You know the fall semester is getting closer when I am beginning to see more and more students arriving back in Waco. We’re less than three weeks away from our newest Baylor Bears arriving on campus, so make sure you sign up for Move2BU, our most welcoming of Baylor traditions where we help new students physically move into their campus residence halls. The First Gent and I will be there Aug. 16-17 – with my new knees – and we hope to see you as well!


• MORNING BREW: Along with the fall semester, I am ready for the upcoming sports season, so I was really happy to start my mornings this week with my usual cup of tea and Baylor Athletics’ new Morning Brew email. I found it a great way to catch up on all things Baylor Athletics in five minutes or less: bite-sized updates from every program, highlights, exclusive interviews and videos, podcasts for your morning commute and more. I encourage you to support the Bears and subscribe to the Morning Brew.

Thanks so much for being part of the Baylor Family!

Linda A. Livingstone, Ph.D.
President

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Inside the new Point-of-Need Innovations Center Research Lab (PONI) at the BRIC, mechanical engineering doctoral students Victor Rojas and Jacob Hoarston run experiments on a Bond GL7 Friction Stir Welding Machine, one of only two such machines in the United States. PONI Center director and professor of mechanical engineering Paul Allison, Ph.D., and his colleague Brian Jordon, Ph.D., Carlile Endowed Chair in Materials Science, joined Baylor’s School of Engineering and Computer Science in 2022.