Strategic Projects
The College of Arts & Sciences's six pillars support our commitment to delivering a rigorous and enriching transformational education for Baylor undergraduate and graduate students that also considers the importance of stewarding our resources for maximum impact. The pillars support ongoing and new research and teaching efforts that have and will continue to positively impact communities near and far.
During the next five years, the College of Arts & Sciences will look toward new horizons encouraging faculty, students, and staff to ask a different set of questions and seek outcomes that address some of most pressing issues of our day. To do this, we turn to strategic commitments that advance existing strengths, incorporate themes from the ‘white papers’, and integrate recommendations from four subcommittees. Through this process, three areas of emphasis during the coming five years have been identified that span the disciplinary breadth of the College of Arts & Sciences: The Human Project, The Health Project, and The Technology Project. While independent in some aspects, the three projects also intersect in ways necessary to help solve important problems of the day. The Human Project draws from Baylor’s exceptional scholarship in the arts and humanities with its unique and historic commitment to the Christian tradition. The Health Project is built upon a strong foundation of research and teaching, while The Technology Project builds on existing strengths in data and materials sciences.
To enhance the effectiveness, interdisciplinarity, and strengths of the of the science, humanities, and social science academic departments and programs within the College of Arts & Sciences, potential departmental or programmatic restructuring will be considered to better reflect emerging synergies.
The Human Project
The scope of scholarship and teaching that takes place in the College of Arts & Sciences is multifaceted. In substantive ways, our humanities faculty ask thoughtful and difficult questions that have confronted humankind since the beginning of time. Faculty researching and teaching in the performing and creative arts programs bring to life on the stage, through photographs, visual and digital mediums, and in classrooms with students, the myriad ways the arts and artists attempt to answer the daily challenges that impact the world and the most marginalized among us.
Faculty researching and teaching at the intersection of the humanities and health encourage critical inquiry into the healing practices for the whole person. Faculty researching and teaching in the political and social sciences help to illuminate how the choices we make as a society impact people and communities, how to address ethical quandaries that require critical analysis about the past, present, and the future, and how to use language and culture to bring people together and remind us of the interconnectedness of our global world. Faculty researching and teaching in communication, philosophy, writing, and the literary arts help us to see a world that is and what it can be if we take seriously that words spoken and written shape our world and have enormous power to create a better world for everyone. To say it plainly, our humanities, performing and creative arts, and social science faculty in words and in deeds reminds us that we are human.
We recognize in the College of Arts & Sciences that we are in a pivotal moment in this global world. The real and yet imagined possibilities of AI and Generative AI requires the humanities faculty to ask even more pointed questions, and to seek long-term and ongoing solutions that will help maintain our connection to each other and the natural world.
The Human Project strategic initiative envisions a new and yet undetermined future for the humanities at Baylor; it seeks to cast an ambitious, interdisciplinary, forward-looking approach to being human that refuses to let the most daunting challenges of our time define human existence and identity. Drawing upon Baylor’s historic rootedness in the Christian tradition and the depth and breadth of the liberal arts tradition, The Human Project reimagines the perennial paradox of human existence in our contemporary context: to be human is both a gift and a task.
Through the ambitious vision of The Human Project, the College of Arts & Sciences is committed to renewing the humanities at Baylor through a five-year consultative process accessible to all humanities faculty. This process will be guided by four strategic questions –– synthesized from the white papers submitted by A&S faculty –– that will shape long-term research funding and curricular priorities, including those tied to the coming review of the College of Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum.
- What does it mean for humans to be creatures, to have bodies, to be embodied, to be vulnerable and dependent on the physical world in which we live, especially in an era of upheaval in our climate and natural environment? To answer these questions, we recommend the following:
- Expand research focusing on bioethics, disability studies, and food and ecology.
- Cultivate initiatives that integrate the arts, humanities, and medical humanities into broader health and environmental initiatives relating to being human.
2. What does it mean for humans to think, to pursue truth, to create, to worship, to imagine, and to communicate as and with humans, especially in an era of supercomputers, machine learning, and artificial intelligence?
- Create an A1/Data Ethics Collaborative.
- Communicate how technology and science are necessarily contextualized within broader understandings of human existence.
- Build upon creative work in the arts, including the Christianity and the Arts Initiative.
3. What does it mean to love one’s neighbor, to build vibrant, resilient, and civil communities that affirm diversity, and to become educated and engaged citizens, especially in an era of social fragmentation and polarization?
- Engage in digital and public humanities initiatives that provide a bridge between the scholarly community and the public.
- Build repositories and programs that recognize Baptist history as both expansive and inclusive.
- Strengthen the presence of our humanities and social sciences in the Baylor in Washington programs.
- Cultivate partnerships with national universities and institutions that extend our commitment to the diversity of our campus, community, and nation.
4. What are the effects of increasing nationalism, war, and international inequity on our pursuit of the common good? What does it mean to be globally interdependent, to seek God’s mandate of peace and justice in the pursuit of our common good?
- Advance and broaden our research focus on global Christianity and its interreligious context.
- Cultivate research, teaching, and networks that emphasize ethical global citizenship and leadership.
Through exploration of these questions and others, The Human Project will expand and invite new and exciting approaches to the exploration of humanity and the human good. In addition to building on and promoting disciplinary expertise in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts, the Human Project will foster a richly collaborative and interdisciplinary network of scholarship and creativity connecting the humanities with the College’s two other strategic commitments –– The Health Project and The Technology Project. The Human Project will play a vital role in recognizing the signal importance of the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts to Baylor’s commitment, as envisioned in Baylor in Deeds, to promote groundbreaking and innovative research and teaching as a global, R1 Christian university.
The Health Project
The Health Project reaffirms our longstanding commitment to health-related research and education, while envisioning new opportunities and challenges of the coming decade. The College of Arts & Sciences considers excellence in health and related disciplines to be a hallmark of its identity. As such, we are committed to focusing some of our research efforts to find solutions to tackle a variety of pressing health challenges, including the health disparities impacting underrepresented minorities, low-income populations, and rural communities. To that end, the Health Project encompasses research in two major areas: Environmental Determinants of Health and Behavioral and Mental Health. Both areas will play a central role in prehealth and global education and training, as outlined in the foundational pillars of Transformational Education and Global Engagement. The Health Project also intersects with our other strategic initiatives, The Human Project (through such things as the Baylor Ethics Center, Medical Humanities and the Arts) and The Technology Project (through a focus on materials science/biomedical engineering and computational research in health-related fields).
Environmental Determinants of Health
This interdisciplinary College of Arts & Science effort reflects the core concept that humans are deeply connected with their environment, and that health is tied to the health and sustainability of our surrounding ecosystems. The Environmental Determinants of Health Project calls for collaboration of researchers, physicians, public health professionals, and ecologists to understand the complex environmental causes of diseases, spanning different research areas that include toxicology, microbiomics, water quality and security, tropical and emerging diseases, and global health.
The Toxicology, Diseases, and Infections Initiative addresses the effects of environmental and genetic factors on human health. Our goal is to understand how individual factors such as exposure to contaminants, genetic predisposition, life stage, and residence affect human health. This effort will emphasize the use of 'omics tools (e.g. genomics) and will be led by experts in molecular biology and environmental chemistry. One example is to form an interdisciplinary team focused on developing function-driven experimental and data approaches to yield a high-resolution understanding of the mechanisms that underpin observed phenotypes in complex biological systems, and to develop predictive AI/ML computational modeling approaches for scaling understanding from the molecular to the whole-human scale.
The Baylor Interdisciplinary Cancer Initiative seeks to understand the molecular, cellular, and organismal causes of diseases, aligning with Baylor’s long emphasis on basic and applied cancer research. This group now includes 15 research groups across four departments from the College of Arts & Sciences and two departments from Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences. We intend to continue and expand this collaborative effort by hiring additional faculty who incorporate new data science methods to provide predictive functional models for the cause and treatment of cancer illnesses. We will draw on existing strengths in drug discovery in non-traditional research areas such as nutrition, diet, and the microbiome. By focusing on these intersections, Baylor can contribute to cancer research in unique ways, potentially leading to novel discoveries. We will continue building the research infrastructure to attract collaborative grants across disciplines; longer-range goals might include centers such as a Data Science Hub, a new Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Core, a Natural Product Drug Repository Center, and an expanded Vivarium for Genetic Engineering.
The Baylor Water Security Initiative calls us to be stewards of natural resources and address the problem of water security at local, state, and even global levels. This initiative will address two initial questions. First, how will population growth in central Texas stress existing water resources given Texas’ climate gradient and projected future climate variation? Second, which communities will be disproportionately impacted by water access stressors, and what public policies can offset impacts through technological, conservation, or water use efficiency programs?
In addition to existing infrastructure and faculty expertise, Baylor researchers benefit from geographic advantages for studying water issues and their connection to environmental health. We propose to develop a water observation and adaptation (O/A) network across critical climate and population growth gradients. The network will include a data synthesis center studying local and global water security patterns to develop creative solutions to human and ecological water demands. As the project grows outward, research products will have an increased influence on business and public policy decisions that will feed back into continued growth of the broader initiative. Over the long term, we envision building capacity in research areas involving the water cycle (geo-environmental solutions), engineering (technological solutions), human behavioral and health sciences (conservation and healthcare solutions), and economics (legal and monetary solutions) to complement existing strengths in water quality sciences.
Behavioral and Mental Health for Student Well-being
Health and well-being encompass behavioral, mental, and psychological factors as well as physiological ones. This initiative will investigate the feasibility of collaborative work across existing units in the College of Arts & Sciences, both to improve mental health outcomes for current students and to form the basis for larger research-based initiatives should these initial projects prove successful.
The Baylor Clinical Research Initiative will address anxiety and related mental health concerns (e.g., depression), which are among the more significant challenges facing college students. These conditions are especially prevalent among college students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. We propose The Baylor Clinical Research Initiative to partner with our medical humanities program, the Office of Prehealth Studies, and existing Baylor mental health units such as the Baylor University Counseling Center (BUCC) or the Baylor Psychology Clinic to respond effectively to students experiencing heightened anxiety and related mental health concerns.
The care model might include education, screening, increasing the number of campus service providers via use of novel providers (e.g., trained lay providers), and access to new or refined interventions. Initial efforts will involve working closely with Student Life, the BUCC, and other units to develop training and educational materials that can be used to inform student mental health care, particularly during the first-year experience.
Similarly, mental health is profoundly affected by poor sleep habits, something that impacts more than half of Baylor students. Sleep loss affects the brain and immune system, leading to poorer health, diminished well-being, and lower academic performance. Sleep problems in students often arise from behavioral habits and suboptimal residence hall sleeping conditions; these issues can be addressed on a large scale with cost-effective strategies.
Baylor is uniquely positioned to address these challenges. Our campus contains key resources including scientific experts, dedicated teams of clinicians, leaders in Student Life and Athletics divisions, and a breadth of collaborative faculty across Baylor's academic units. The initiative will explore the possibilities for education and outreach as well as provide practical recommendations for campus living communities to improve residence hall sleeping environments.
The Baylor Clinical Research Hub is designed as a longer-range goal, inviting collaboration from the Hankamer School of Business, Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences, the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, the School of Engineering and Computer Science, and Truett Seminary. Priority areas of collaboration would include: assessment and screening; addressing mental health stigma; intervention development and refinement; processes for increasing treatment engagement; sleep disorders; stress, exercise, and cardiac functioning; and opportunities to improve the acquisition and retention of skills learned during episodes of care.
The Technology Project
One of the 21st century’s most striking technological advances is artificial intelligence (AI) –– a deep learning computational strategy using data available worldwide that is now capable of generating amazingly human-like text and images. We are on the cusp of a world in which careers of all kinds are greatly affected or supplemented by AI. Baylor must support and drive the learning necessary for our students, faculty and staff to keep pace and adapt to these new expectations. These technologies are continually evolving –– creating new possibilities for teaching, research and administration at Baylor. The Technology Project within the College of Arts & Sciences seeks to address these challenges through initiatives in data science and materials science tying into our longstanding commitment to excellence in education and research.
The Data Science Initiative
The Data Science Initiative provides an opportunity to focus on enhancing students’ critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence, as well as to bring our researchers needed resources to compete and thrive in this new technological landscape. Accordingly, the College of Arts & Sciences recommends the following:
- Enhancing Education Opportunities across both undergraduate and graduate programs is essential for cultivating future academic and industrial leaders at Baylor. We propose enhancement of the curriculum across all departments to this end. Initial focus areas will include computational biology and social sciences, laying a strong foundation for interdisciplinary learning and research.
- Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation across departments will be crucial as all fields are affected by big data and AI. The Health Project and digital humanities, for example, will benefit from predictive modeling and the manipulation of large databases for better research outcomes. By integrating subject area expertise with advanced data science methodologists, we aim to provide broad computational support to our research teams.
- Establishing a Data Science Service Hub to expand the existing Statistical Consulting Service, and thus transforming it into a Data Science Hub will provide advanced consulting services in machine learning, predictive analytics, and complex system simulation. This will require recruiting both data science specialists and domain-specific experts who can collaborate effectively to address diverse research and educational needs. This transformation will significantly enhance research capabilities across the College of Arts & Sciences, fostering innovative solutions and insights.
The Materials Science Initiative
Transformative technologies largely depend on advances and breakthroughs in materials science research. The ongoing Baylor Materials Science Initiative’s aim is to design, predict, and characterize new structural and multifunctional materials with potential applications in electronics, optoelectronics, and quantum technologies. This initiative has led to the recruitment of numerous new research faculty members in the College of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering and Computer Science, including the hiring of four distinguished chairs. These well-funded research groups provide impactful learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and are addressing challenges faced by prominent industries. To continue and expand this initiative, we propose several action steps:
- Promoting Materials Sciences Education to allow for the implementation of a new Ph.D. and a new master's program in Materials Science and Engineering, allowing students to work with faculty across departments in both the College of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering and Computer Science. The program is research-intensive and designed to prepare students for future careers in industry, federal research laboratories, and academia.
- Targeting Expansion of Materials Research in collaboration with existing materials science faculty, we will identify areas for future growth in the areas of optical, magnetic, structural, and orbital characterization of materials that is critical for understanding emergent electronic phenomena and for computational modeling, which can provide critical insight into underlying mechanisms giving rise to the electronic and optical properties.
- Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation for the faculty of the College of Arts & Sciences to collaborate across academic unit boundaries. A key focus of the Baylor School of Engineering and Computer Science is on sustainable advanced materials and manufacturing that aims to transform and simplify traditional supply chains to allow faster manufacturing at lower costs. Bioengineering is a rapidly expanding field that combines engineering with breakthroughs in biology, chemistry and physics to create cutting-edge technologies that tackle critical healthcare challenges. The signature research initiatives in Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences overlap in many ways with the College of Arts & Sciences in behavioral, health and rehabilitative sciences. These collaborations will provide opportunities to educate students on the intersection of modern healthcare technology and new ways to solve complex problems.
Creating a Materials Science Center for Characterization will continue to expand materials research supporting infrastructure. Over the last five years, the Baylor Sciences Building Center for Microscopy and Imaging (CMI) has added several critically needed capabilities, including a cryoTEM funded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The CMI has a five-year plan to upgrade the instrumentation to Tier 1, with an estimated cost of about $2.5 million.