By Cole Gee | Staff Writer
Over 121 years ago, seven women bound together by employment through Baylor founded a social club to support women’s education and social life on campus. That organization would soon be known as the Baylor Round Table.
Originally a social and literary club, in its early days, Baylor Round Table hosted luncheons, scholarly work and book clubs. Women from all over Waco and campus would flock to the club to meet other like-minded and scholarly peers.
Over time, the organization’s popularity grew — and thanks to over a century of hard work and education, Baylor Round Table has created a space on campus for sisterhood and community to thrive.
Dana Lee Haines is the current president of Baylor Round Table and the latest in a long line of leaders, a lineage she said she works every day to live up to.
“Serving as president and carrying on from those before me is a distinct honor and privilege,” Haines said. “Particularly because as I have looked at the list of presidents, there are many that I have known and have been friends with, never imagining that I would ever become president of such an esteemed organization.”
Many members are taking note of Haines’ and the organization’s long efforts to make it more inclusive. Originally for someone to gain membership to Round Table they needed to have a certain status at the university. Haines, along with the rest of the Baylor Round Table board, have changed the organization’s recruitment process. The organization is now open to all women, faculty, staff and spouses regardless of status.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the cancellation of many meetings and events hurt the organization’s membership. However, the Round Table was able to learn and adapt from these struggles. They adopted a full Zoom executive meeting style, which allowed for current and past members who may be off campus to still participate in the organization.
The org now hosts around 150 members, many of them returning members from the organization’s past.
Working alongside Haines is Vice President Meredith Moore. Moore has been part of Round Table since 2019 and has seen up close the good work Round Table has done, especially when it comes to the personal and professional development of students.
“As someone who’s been here about five or six years, it makes me feel like I can connect to that in a small way,” Moore said. “When I serve as vice president, I’m serving a whole history of people who also did things for our students, for our community and for each other here at Baylor. So it’s worth working hard because it’s a lot of work preserving that community for the future.”
Moore, who works for the Center for Global Engagement, said the special event held for international students in November is one of her personal favorites.
The International Student Dinner began in 1957 and was a way for Round Table to celebrate the international student population on campus. The dinner also allows international students to take part in a classic American Thanksgiving dinner alongside their close friends and family.
The idea of family and friendship ties back to one of the organization’s principles: community. Due to the decades of long work the organization has done for campus, Baylor Round Table was able to see multiple generations of women grow and develop into strong leaders at Baylor.
Kathy Hillman has been a member of Round Table since the fall of 1976 and served as President in 1987. She said at the time, the Round Table was one of the few avenues that female Baylor spouses and staff had to congregate. Round Table allowed its members to meet and bond as a family outside of their own homes.
“In the early years, [Round Table] met on a particular Wednesday afternoon and husbands went home at like three or four in the afternoon to take care of the children so the wives could get out and go to a Round Table meeting,” Hillman said. “There were no daycare centers and very few women worked outside the home, so it was to be a way to bring these women into the Baylor family.”
As Baylor began to admit more women and staff, Baylor Round Table began to grow in popularity and size with many members beginning to earn leadership positions on campus as time went on. According to a Fall 2024 report by Baylor Trends, Baylor’s current student population is around 60.7% women and 39.3% male. Baylor also has 579 female professors teaching on campus compared to their 630 male counterparts.
“When it was founded in 1904, there were not a lot of women on campus, and in fact, it was primarily the wives of faculty and administrators,” Hillman said. “There were some female faculty in 1904, but not many. So the organization has grown and changed with time and with the way that Baylor has grown as well, and in particular with the number of women who hold faculty, staff and administrative positions.”
