By Mackenzie Grizzard | Staff Writer
The future is looking bright for Baylor research with a $4.71 million grant dedicated to the study of patience.
The Baylor Research in Growth and Human Thriving Science Center is a multidisciplinary research center housed in the College of Arts and Sciences focused on the study of human flourishing. A part of the BRIGHTS center, a team of interdisciplinary researchers from several different institutions have received a $4.71 million grant from Templeton Religion Trust. The grant will help launch a longitudinal study on patience, primarily with parents of adolescent children.
Dr. Sarah Schnitker is the founder of the BRIGHTS center and a professor of psychology at Baylor. With the grant, she expects Baylor’s rich reputation of research to continue.
“I see the work of the BRIGHTS center and this grant really paving the way for the type of interdisciplinary research that we can do at Baylor that integrates across departments … and how we might understand our educational mission around Christian formation within our research,” Schnitker said.
Since its founding in 2023, the BRIGHTS center’s research focus includes virtues and virtue development, contextual influences on moral and immoral attitudes and behavior antecedents, and consequences of religiousness and spirituality in relation to flourishing.
Schnitker said BRIGHTS began as a weekly colloquium where researchers convened to share ideas related to human flourishing. Soon this expanded from just the psychology department to the religion, sociology, philosophy and seminary departments.
“I started going around and meeting people across different departments and realized ‘Oh my goodness, there’s so much flourishing research going on, but hardly anyone is talking to each other,'” Schnitker said.
Today, BRIGHTS is a multidisciplinary center that brings together researchers from several different departments around Baylor’s campus. With the help of the grant, Schnitker is excited for the future of BRIGHTS and human flourishing beyond Baylor.
With the grant, researchers will conduct a mixed-method study among parents facing adverse circumstances, including parents of adolescents with developmental disabilities, Muslim-American parents and Southern Californian parents impacted by recent fires.
“It’s really exciting to get this unfolding of not only patience, but we’ll measure spirituality and other virtues and think about how people build that flourishing life over time — especially parents of adolescents who are the most stressed-out parents out there,” Schnitker said.
Throughout the study, researchers will engage affected communities and help produce resources for them as well, according to Schnitker.
Dr. Erik W. Carter, co-investigator and executive director for the Baylor Center for Developmental Disabilities, highlighted the study of patience and the collaboration across departments.
“We are eager to learn with and from parents about what patience looks like in their lives and the difference it makes in the midst of this complicated transition period. The opportunity to collaborate across centers and with such incredible colleagues makes this project especially exciting for us,” Carter said in a press release.
Schnitker connected the BRIGHTS center to Baylor’s new strategic plan, Baylor In Deeds.
“I think at Baylor we can do this in a really distinctive way because we, as a Christian mission, recognize that the spiritual dimension of life is a component of flourishing that’s often overlooked in scientific research,” Schnitker said.
