Students and faculty attended the first-ever Global Cultural Fest Thursday at the Hankamer School of Business. The event was dedicated to educating and celebrating the diversity of businesses around the world.
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Leaving the Judge Baylor statue in place serves as a hateful reminder of Baylor’s past in a place intended to remember the lives of the enslaved people who built the original Independence campus. Allowing the statue to stand in the heart of campus diminishes the value of Baylor’s efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive campus.
The women’s and gender studies program is hosting “Living in a Barbie World: A Panel Discussion” on Oct. 10. Three Baylor professors will discuss the movie of the year: the glittering phenomenon in pink that is “Barbie.”
All services offered by the Counseling Center are free, including telehealth services, face-to-face counseling and the mental health clinical support line. However, some programs that fall under the health services category — such as general medical care, medical nutrition therapy and psychiatric services — require payment, which is usually covered by insurance.
At a university whose mission centers around leadership, academic excellence and “Christian commitment within a caring community,” it has become normalized to be religious on a more public scale.
“What we’re trying to do is figure out how we can, as a faculty and staff, come together and bring our culture into our workspace so that students can see our culture too and feel seen,” Diaz-Espinoza said.
Dr. Malcolm Foley, special adviser to the president for equity and campus engagement, said numbers may fluctuate from year to year in regard to diverse populations, but they are relatively consistent and growing.
A 20-year-old organization at Baylor, the African Student Association aims to connect students of all races with their cultures, working to overcome the challenges its minority members face on campus and beyond.
Dr. Karynecia Conner, GSA’s diversity chair, said she organized the gala with the intention to shine a light on what Baylor is able to do for diversity in its research. In her speech, she said researchers should seek research topics as a means of ministry.
“Think of a population at risk, a population that’s vulnerable, a population that’s been marginalized — social workers are there,” Singletary said.
A new season of the ‘Good Neighbear’ podcast is promoting understanding and appreciation for a diverse range of identities — racial, religious and more. By sharing “stories of hope and healing,” the podcast creates a space for respectful dialogue and community-building.
“Minorities in Medicine is exactly what some students have been looking for in a student organization,” Klausmeyer said. “As Minorities in Medicine starts to gain momentum, we hope that underrepresented students can find a space to grow professionally and spiritually to achieve their goals, [because] one of the best ways to find inspiration is to see other people that look like you in positions of leadership.”
Following in the footsteps of figures like Plato and Aristotle, the field of philosophy has historically been a male-dominated area of education. At Baylor alone, only three out of the 13 full-time faculty members are women.
While most Bears go off to have their own adventures during spring break, North Russell Residence Hall residents stick together for their travels. This year, Baylor and Beyond, the living learning community at North Russell, will travel to the east coast for a week in New York City.
“Waco ISD does intend to include the AP African American Studies course in possible 2022-2023 high school course offerings later this school year to gauge student interest,” Cornblum said via email.
Baylor University is growing its diversity, and Dr. George Yancey, professor of social sciences, recognizes the importance of fostering an environment of respect to build strong interracial connections.
It only takes a flame to start a fire. For Dr. Heidi Hornik, chair of the department of art and art history, it only takes a painting to start a collection. Hanging on the wall of her office in the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center is the painting that started it all.
Literature can have great ideological and political power, judging from the fact that literature participates in many other sorts of movements that people tend to think as being “uniquely American,” Sharp said.
The admission of students of color proved Baylor was moving forward. It showed a “point of pride” for Baylor to have international and Black American students attend the university.
“Our goal is that this is not something that becomes novel or special,” director Sam Henderson said. “We think this will be successful if this is really just the start of something that is a normal occurrence.”
Baylor’s work toward diversity and inclusion within faculty, staff and students has changed throughout the years. According to reports from Institutional Research and Testing (IRT) from 2002 and 2021, full-time faculty has gone from a 92.4% white demographic to an 80.8% white demographic. Additionally, there is currently a 38.4% minority student population on campus.
“[Better Together] was created out of this need for religious minorities, and also the religious majority here at Baylor, to learn more about their neighbors and to develop that understanding between groups,” The Woodlands junior and civic interfaith leader Noor Saleh said.
“I’ve been the first to do a lot of things,” Palacios said. “Even in the School of Education, I was the only Latina professor for over 10 years. I’ve been the first or the only at basically everything I’ve done. I’ve been excited about that. I love that I was able to leave my footprints and have an impact on different things that we still continue to do.”
Baylor is a majority white school. Although the number of diverse students has increased over the years, there is still a lot of work to do when it comes to diversifying both the student body and the faculty.
At 88 percent white faculty, Baylor is tied with Loyola University Chicago for having the highest percentage of white faculty among all universities that have 700 to 1,000 faculty members, according to data collected by the Chronicle for Higher Education.
Baylor’s Cross Cultural Ministries program beckons students who want to learn about other cultures and to interact with the diverse group of students the ministry reaches.
Founded by Baptists, funded by Baptists and for years existing almost solely to educate young Baptists, Baylor would not be many people’s first place to look when finding an example of religious diversity.
Two columns have been featured in the Lariat regarding Campus Living and Learning’s requirements for community leaders.
One of them advocated for CL requirements to no longer hinge on the need for a candidate to be a Christian since students of all faiths are in need of the financial assistance the CL scholarship offers.