Larry Lyon

Transcript

Derek Smith:
Hello, and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in-depth with Baylor leaders, professors, and more discussing important topics in higher education, research, and student life.
I'm Derek Smith, and today we are talking graduate education as we head into commencement season with the Dean of Baylor's graduate school, Dr. Larry Lyon. Dr. Lyon serves as Vice Provost and dean of the Baylor University Graduate School, a Baylor alum. He joined the faculty in 1975 and began his tenure as dean in 1998.
Over that time, Baylor's graduate school has grown dramatically with nearly 5,500 graduate students in 2024 across more than 100 academic programs, including 34 Ph.D. programs. This growth played a significant role in the university's attainment of R1 research recognition in 2021. Today, the graduate school continues to add programs in both on-campus and online settings to serve modern student needs. A lot going on. It's been an exciting time, and this time of year is an exciting time.
Dr. Lyon, thanks for taking the time to be with us today on the program.

Larry Lyon:
Glad to do so, Derek, and you're right. This is an exciting time.

Derek Smith:
Well, we're in commencement season. You've been through a few of these. What's distinct about this time of year? Why is it special? How does it make you feel?

Larry Lyon:
For those of us in administration, it's especially significant because the students who are graduating are our product. They're what we do and the fruits of our labor. And you say, well, that's true for all the faculty too. It is, but the faculty see the students on a regular basis and we don't get to do that. And so quite often, the most tangible reinforcement for my efforts are watching those proud students walk across the stage, recognizing their achievements.

Derek Smith:
You hear stories, I'm sure about students throughout the year, but does that pick up as we get into commencement season, you find out where they're going or what's on the horizon for them?

Larry Lyon:
It does. In fact, you hear stories at the very beginning of students who overcame so much to enter our graduate programs -- health problems, family problems, financial problems, overcame those, joined us, flourished, and then you see them at the end and they're graduating and quite often they have already secured really excellent employment from several opportunities. Again, it's that tangible representation of why you're and why you're working.

Derek Smith:
Dr. Lyon, obviously the students make it important, but this time of year is such an undertaking and I know it's always tough to ask a dean to shout people out because inevitably you'll forget that there's too many people to adequately think. But this time of year, is there anyone else that stands out to you when you think about just kind of what it takes to make something like bringing forth a commencement happen?

Larry Lyon:
One of the things that will happen in commencement is that the president will ask the students to give a round of applause to their parents, and that's quite appropriate. But really at the undergraduate level, I would suggest, Derek, that at the graduate level and especially at the Ph.D. level, that maybe the unsung heroes here are the spouses and the children who give up having their mother or their father for significant amounts of time for all kinds of important tasks so that they can earn that degree. And I've often felt like ... In fact, one of the things we do is when the Ph.D. students go across the stage to get hooded, we ask for their family members to stand up, recognizing that it takes a village, it takes a family to produce a graduate degree.

Derek Smith:
Absolutely. And yeah, your students are a few years older, a few steps down in life, and a lot of people play into that. Dr. Lyon, you mentioned when they get hooded, I think a lot of people have been to commencement and seeing the regalia, seeing the attire, and maybe know what's meaningful but don't know why. So could you take us inside that just a little bit, the significance of graduate school regalia broadly, what is that?

Larry Lyon:
It is complex. Every school does it a little differently. Probably it reflects the time at the beginning of higher education, medieval Europe where the churches were responsible for building universities. So the faculty wore clerical garb. They wore a robe just like a cleric would. And to this day, even though most ... Maybe it's not one, but most universities no longer have any religious connection, they still wear the garb of a cleric. The hood, at one point, if you think about monks wearing hoods, they were hooded as well. Today, that hood just goes around the neck and down the back. But Derek, this can go on and on. So the hood, for example, the length of the hood corresponds with the degree. The Ph.D. has the longest hood. The master's degree has a shorter hood. The color of the hood reflects the colors of the university and the discipline.
The chevrons on the sleeves represent the discipline, unless the president, for example, has one more chevron than everyone else, representing the authority that she has. The tam on the top is because when the hood no longer covered the head, now we wear a tam. Although until recently, it was called a [inaudible 00:06:17]. It was a flat cap that went on the top, but that has evolved over time. Almost all universities have a tam. Let's see, in the nineties, this has happened. While I was at Baylor, we went from a black doctoral gown, which was the case in almost all American universities to a brilliant green and dark green doctoral gown, and universities all across the United States are doing that now. They have their school colors dominating the gown.
At one time, that was a European phenomenon, but now almost all universities do it, and I love it. I think our green gown is beautiful. I love going to ... I have relatives graduating from high school, and I see those high school and superintendent administrators up on the stage wearing the green gown. I know they're from Baylor, and it's a point of pride, so. Well, that's probably more than you wanted to know. I would just say don't try to understand all of the nuances. If you come to a commencement, just enjoy it. Enjoy the colors, the dress, the garb, which doesn't exist anywhere else beyond the college graduation.

Derek Smith:
That's great. That's great. Well, thank you for taking this inside. Do you have a favorite aspect of it? Is there ... or is it just all combined?

Larry Lyon:
We do graduation really well, Derek. I've been to other universities for their commencement ceremonies, seen some on television. One of the things that helps us is our school of music. The music that the brass ensemble adds tremendously to our commencement ceremony and again, the riotous colors of ours. I know all these faculty, and then to see them dressed up like this is just intriguing. I mean, if you come to commencement, you'll see these ... They look like giant bumblebees. They're bright yellow with black stripes. Well, that's Princeton. The University of Tennessee looks like a jack-o'-lantern. There's this bright orange and then black. It goes on and on. It's just ... Again, I guess you have to be kind of nerdy to really get into this, but for us, nerds, commencement really is special.

Derek Smith:
We talked about the growth. We've seen nearly 5,500 students this semester, more than 100 academic programs. It doesn't happen without people taking purposeful steps to get there and helping us get to R1. This is such a broad question, but when you think about growth in the time that you've been in this role and seen it grow, what have been some of the biggest catalysts towards growing? Not just growing in terms of size, but also in just elevating the impact of graduate education here at Baylor?

Larry Lyon:
By far, the single most important event that led to where we are now in terms of graduate education and research was a strategic plan called Vision 2012. It launched in 2002. It really redefined Baylor, but before 2002, Baylor was a regional, largely undergraduate university serving the needs of Texas Baptist, which was ... And we did it well, and it was a fine thing for Baylor to do, and that's what we've done for 150 years.
This Vision 2012 said, we're not going to stop doing that, but we're going to do more now, that Baylor is uniquely positioned to offer all types of high-level graduate education and perform cutting-edge research and become a national university, not a regional university, and become a university that is defined in part by the quality of its graduate programs. That was a very controversial strategic vision because it was so different. Why are we changing? Everything's going well.
But 20 years later, here we are. We're R1. Derek, we will have record numbers of Ph.Ds graduating next week. We'll have record numbers of research doctoral degrees next week. We have record numbers of graduate students graduating next week. We have record enrollment for our graduate program. Since 2002, we have been on an upward incline, and that audacious vision way back then has come to fruition and has been proven to be direct.

Derek Smith:
Absolutely, and like you said, we see it and we see it in the number of students out there, the number of programs out there, and to grow like you just described, it's not just adding programs, you've got to build resources and infrastructure. Another really broad question for you, but what have been some key ways the university has added these resources to make sure we can support and continue to grow these programs across campus?

Larry Lyon:
Well, there's a reason why most universities aren't research universities. It's not easy. It's expensive. It requires all kinds of resources. Probably the first thing that we did was the Baylor Science Building. Before that, our STEM programs were weak and had no room to grow. The science building gave us more than enough room for a decade. The second thing we began to do was reduced the number of courses that Baylor faculty would have to teach, going largely from a four-four load to a two-two load each semester. Then with the additional time that the faculty were given, raising the research expectations for books and articles, and grants. So those aren't easy things to do.
Finally, we started raising our standards for hiring in that we wanted to hire faculty who already had research agendas, who had already published articles and books, who had already received grants. Again, everybody wants those kinds of faculty. They're hard to get, but we did all those things and we did them over a couple of decades. The end result of that is that now we have hundreds and hundreds of research-active faculty, working closely with Ph.D. students on projects, our STEM programs, especially when I first became dean of the graduate school, we had almost no Ph.D. presence in the STEM fields. Now, STEM, science, technology, engineering, math are two-thirds to three-fourths of all of our Ph.D. graduates. It's been a major transformation.

Derek Smith:
That's exciting to see, and obviously that's a heavy lift as we can hear that as you talk about that, but I'm curious, were there moments ... When were there moments when maybe you all realized, wait a minute, the compound interest of the work that we've put in is starting to pay off to kind of what we're seeing now, which I know is only going to lead to continued growth?

Larry Lyon:
For me, it was ... You could see it happening. I knew we were on the right track, but President Livingstone in her inaugural presentation to the faculty said Baylor ought to try to be an R1 university. That should be a goal for us. Then she said it again, she said it again. Three times. I counted three times. And I thought, "Well, no president said that before, but I think she's probably right. Let's see." And so I worked with two or three other administrators and faculty here. We did the modeling. And I wrote, "Hey, we're pretty darn close. We can get there. After all of this building, R1 is within our grasp. We need to do this with postdocs. We need to do this with research funding. We need to do this with Ph.D. production, but we're close. We're close on all of those and we can deliver to the president a plan that can get us there quickly."
And somehow, I think as you pointed out, the gradual increase, it never hit me that, my goodness, the dream of 2002, Vision 2012, it took an extra 10 years, but it looks like we could get there, and when I first saw those mathematical models and the slopes and crossing the R1 line, it was ... Again, this is the nerd in me. It was an emotional experience of, look at this, it's within our grasp.

Derek Smith:
Yeah, achieving R1 in 2021 for a lot of people, the equivalent of like what winning a national title or a Hall of Fame induction if we're making an athletic comparison.

Larry Lyon:
It is, and a lot of well-meaning people who knew a lot about this said, "You can't do it, Baylor." I mean, a lot of people knew a lot about athletics said you can't win a national championship, Baylor. And a lot of people who knew a lot about academics said, "You can't become R1." But we've done both.

Derek Smith:
Here we are. Absolutely. Visiting with Dr. Larry Lyon. And Dr. Lyon, as we head into the final few minutes of the program, I want to talk to you about the foundational elements that are helping the grad school kind of grow purposefully, and you mentioned earlier a lot of universities along the way kind of moved past there. They moved on from their Christian foundation or their faith foundation, and that's something Baylor's purposeful about not doing. So as we think about areas, they'll help the grad school grow and stay focused on that intersection of faith, foundation, academic excellence. Let's talk about a few of them. Just give us your insights on these seven foundational elements of the grad school growth. Let's start with elevating our Christian mission. That's one of the pillars you talked about in the annual report that you sent out to faculty this past year.

Larry Lyon:
The graduate school is very aware of its importance in Baylor being a unique university. When the president says the world needs a Baylor, there are several high-quality undergraduate Christian colleges and universities, but when we talk about adding high-quality graduate programs on top of that, that number quickly diminishes. And so what makes us unique and what makes Baylor important to the world has a lot to do with what we do at the graduate level.
Derek, there was a time when I first became graduate dean, well, I'm not sure we want much graduate education. Why not? Well, because graduate faculty and graduate students, they're just not very religious. They're more interested in physics or chemistry and not so much about theology and biblical scholarship. We do surveys on lots of things, including spiritual growth among our graduate students, most graduate students to Baylor expecting to grow spiritually. Most graduate students at the end of their time here getting their degree report that they have grown spiritually. We have programs where people getting their Ph.D. in science and get together with people getting their master in divinity and religion, so you have future scientists and future preachers coming together to talk about their different worldviews. And after that, they both appreciate them. It's not like they change, but they appreciate a different way of looking at things they weren't aware of before.
This is something that is unique among R1 universities. This is something Baylor can do that no one else can do, and so we will continue to emphasize our Christian mission. It is the reason that Baylor has invested the tremendous resources we have in graduate education because graduate education at this level at a Christian university is very unique and very important.

Derek Smith:
A second one is enhancing graduate student recruitment. What does that look like?

Larry Lyon:
The analogy you gave to sports earlier for national championships, it's the same thing. If you think of the faculty as the coaches, the players are the graduate students and we are helping our graduates. Social media is by the way, really good. Oh, Derek, you're helping us as well, and thank you for that. Social media is where we recruit now and people like yourself ... And our faculty aren't the best in social media. They need help in telling their story.

Derek Smith:
We're all getting there.

Larry Lyon:
And so what we're trying to do is tell the story of if you come to Baylor as a graduate student, here's what we can do for you. We offer quite a lot. I'm very proud of the services that we offer our graduate students. We just have to be sure that potential graduate students know about those.

Derek Smith:
Another one is raising graduation rates. What does that look like for our students on campus?

Larry Lyon:
Our graduation rates, back when we were in R2 University were stellar, but we were among the very best. R1 universities do a great job of graduate education. That's not surprising. That's what makes them R1 universities. We're not matching the Princetons and the Harvards and the MITs in graduation rate, but we're aiming for it and we're doing things that ... It's kind of an overall metric. If you do everything else right, it is like wins and athletics. You do everything else right, that the wins will come. You do everything else right, the graduation rate will come. Our graduation rates are getting better. We're doing things that will make them even get better in the future. For example, we're streamlining the graduation requirements. We're making them clearer to the students when they come in. We're helping them with their dissertation, so that doesn't become as much of a problem for them as it might in previous years.

Derek Smith:
Next is aligning the graduate school with the university's strategic plan. I know we've had Illuminate and as we move further into May, we'll soon be hearing about the next iteration of the strategic plan as well.

Larry Lyon:
We are working right now on aligning our goals with the next iteration. We have to wait because it hasn't been fully approved by the board, but let's take Illuminate for example. One of the things that Illuminate called for was a larger presence in the health fields for Baylor. We've done that. We've greatly expanded our doctoral programs in biology and chemistry. It called for a expertise in material sciences and engineering, but we've done that. We've now started a Ph.D. program in material sciences and engineering. How's it in the graduate school? Because it's inherently interdisciplinary, it takes physicists, it takes chemists, it takes engineers. No one school can do it, but it's important and it's housed in the graduate school because the graduate school can support it in a way that one particular department cannot.

Derek Smith:
Next up, many people might not be fully aware just how many hybrid and online students Baylor has welcomed in recent years. They're a big part of the Baylor family. And how is the grad school working to serve them better?

Larry Lyon:
Over half of the graduate students at Baylor are in hybrid programs, online and coming to campus on a relatively limited basis, about 35 3,600 of them all told ... Here's a very positive thing, Derek, which is a bit of a surprise to me. When we asked them at the end of their rear here when they were exiting with a degree, "How satisfied were you with what you experienced? Would you recommend this program to someone else who wants to be a physical therapist or whatever?" The positive responses on those surveys are higher from the hybrid students in those programs than they are from the residential students in our master's and Ph.D. programs. We're doing well. We'll do better. We are launching new programs next year, as a matter of fact, to help the students who don't go to class in Waco to still feel part of Baylor, to feel like this is their university and have the pride in this university that all graduates should have.

Derek Smith:
Next up, R1 level mentoring that relationship between students and faculty as they grow as professionals

Larry Lyon:
At the graduate level, mentoring is teaching. You typically don't lecture in front of a big class. You work with one, two, three students at a time on a research project. You work closely with them. It's a very different kind of teaching and it's not the kind that we have taught and emphasized at Baylor very long, but it is the key to success at the graduate level. So the graduate school primarily under the direction of Sarah Dolan's efforts, Associate Dean Dolan, have initiated all kinds of training programs for our faculty to help them become better mentors. Mentoring is what's expected at R1 universities and mentoring ... High-quality mentoring is what we expect now at Baylor

Derek Smith:
And of these seven areas of focus, last but not least, responding to growing student diversity.

Larry Lyon:
Yeah, the graduate student today is as opposed to when I became graduate dean, as you said, is more likely to be online. That's a very diverse characteristic, more likely to be female, more likely to be older, more likely to be international, all of which means that one size doesn't fit all, that they have different needs and different kinds of support mechanisms. They come here with different expectations, so we have to be attuned to the dynamic nature of graduate enrollment in that the students that we figured out how to serve 10 years ago are not the students that we have now and what do they need and how do we meet those needs, that will be a continuing goal that we'll never meet fully because it's always been redefined as our student mix redefines.

Derek Smith:
Well, if people listening would like to learn more about these areas, these seven we just talked about, if you Google Baylor Graduate School Annual Report, it's all right there and you can see further insights. Well, Dr. Lyon, we're about out of time. As you look ahead to this summer and beyond, what are you most excited about as you think about the future of the graduate school at Baylor?

Larry Lyon:
This may sound odd, Derek. I'm actually looking forward to next year. My last year at Baylor and in the graduate school, and it's not because I'm tired, now I can relax. That's not it at all. I'm excited because I know the future that the graduate school has in front of it. I know that whoever takes my place, we're going to do an internal search because there's so many high-quality faculty at Baylor now that could come in and do a great job as graduate dean. That wasn't the case way, way back when I became graduate dean. We did a national search because the number of faculty with graduate experience just wasn't that great. Our faculty are so good. Our graduate students are so good. Whoever takes my place will have such a skillset. Man, we're going to take off, Derek, and I'm excited. I'll be on the sidelines watching, but man, I don't know. I'm guessing it's kind of like Grant Teaff when he watched Baylor football team succeed after his time and knew that he had played an earlier role in setting them up for that. Lots of sports metaphors here.

Derek Smith:
Sure.

Larry Lyon:
I think I'm going to feel the same way. It's an exciting time to be in graduate education, and I'm excited for the graduate school and how it's going to grow and change after my tenure.

Derek Smith:
Well, you've certainly played a huge role in getting it to this point and setting it up for future growth. Well, we'll congratulate you on your impending retirement officially, but we're not ready to say goodbye just yet. Glad we have another year with you here before that comes.

Larry Lyon:
I am too.

Derek Smith:
Yeah. Well, Dr. Lyon, thanks so much for taking the time to join us and share with us today on the program.

Larry Lyon:
My pleasure, Derek, and thank you for helping us with our social media efforts and our attempts to recruit even better graduate students.

Derek Smith:
Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to get to work with y'all on that. It's a great team you've got for sure. In the graduate schools, we visit with Dr. Larry Lyon, Vice Provost and Dean of the Baylor University Graduate School. Our guest today on Baylor Connections.
I'm Derek Smith reminding you you can hear this and other programs online, baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe to the program on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.