Elisabeth Kincaid
Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning (IFL) offers numerous resources to faculty, staff and students to assist in integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment. Elisabeth Kincaid, a theologian, lawyer and business ethics scholar, was named last Spring as the new IFL director. Here, she shares her path to Baylor and examines why IFL is such a meaningful piece of the University.
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 visiting with Elisabeth Kincaid. Dr. Kincaid was named last spring as the new director of Baylor's Institute for Faith and Learning, a theologian, lawyer and business ethics scholar. She serves as the fourth director of IFL, which was founded in 1997 to assist Baylor in achieving its mission of integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment.
The institute has developed numerous programs in support of the Baylor mission to enrich areas like teaching, research, mentorship, and more. Elisabeth comes to Baylor from Loyola University of New Orleans, where she served as chair in business ethics, and as Director of the Center for Ethics and Economic Justice. She earned a law degree from the University of Texas, did her PhD in Moral Theology and Christian Ethics at Notre Dame. She further serves as associate professor of Ethics, Faith and Culture in Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, and as an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Management in the Hankamer School of Business. A lot of different streams of your work that come together we can talk about. Elisabeth, thanks so much for joining us on the program today.
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Thank you, Derek. I'm thrilled to be here.
Derek Smith:
Great to have you here and talk about the great work that IFL is doing and where it's going. But I want to ask you, so you've crossed paths with a lot of faculty at Baylor, it seems like over the years and been here on campus. What and where have those interactions looked like?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Well, I will say I actually have a long-term family commitment to Baylor. My grandfather served as a regent here all the way back in the '70s, so my family has loved Baylor for a long time, and I really intentionally, I guess, started showing up at Baylor when I was living in Dallas with my family and finishing my dissertation from Notre Dame. My husband was serving as an Episcopal priest in Dallas, and I wanted an intellectual community that was informed by Christian mission and vision. So I started coming down here as I could to get to know the other great ethics scholars here on campus, to go to talks, to go to conferences. I've spoken here myself. I've helped organize some conference with a group of other ethicists, and so I've been, I guess kind of orbiting Baylor as a fan for a long time.
Derek Smith:
Well, and so you saw the opportunity when it opened. What were your initial thoughts when you saw an opportunity here at Baylor and specifically with the Institute for Faith and Learning?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Reading the job description, I thought this job brings together so many things I love and am passionate about. I didn't know a job like this existed, so I was just ecstatic when I saw it and thought there's no way this is going to work out. It's too much of a dream job. I have a background actually working on staff at the University Christian Fellowship graduate and faculty ministries. So I've really had a love for helping faculty and graduate students think about how their faith informs their teaching and research, going back to before I actually started doing academic graduate work. So the idea of getting to do that in conjunction with my own work as a theologian and an ethicist was just amazing, and particularly at a place that I'd come to know and love, really the whole time I had been working in the academy, a place like Baylor, it was just a dream come true.
Derek Smith:
The first few months have been good? So far, so good?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Amazing. People have been so kind and welcoming, and as the person running an institute on campus like IFL, that's committed to helping Baylor faculty and staff before to integrate Christian witness with academic excellence, I didn't realize how committed faculty and staff were at Baylor to Christian mission and identity. I had been blown away by the level of commitment and excitement here. It's beyond anything, even knowing the campus as well as I thought I did, anything I would've imagined.
Derek Smith:
So maybe this is obvious thing to say, but for a university like Baylor, as it grows to remain Christian, takes a certain degree of intentionality and purpose. How much have you seen that with IFL and working with your colleagues?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
That has been one of the most exciting things about this job is the level of intentionality and commitment that I'm seeing within IFL, with the great people in the provost office where I report, and with faculty across campus. And I mean, our issue with IFL has been that there are so many people already doing great work on campus, integrating faith and learning, so many people who are excited and intentional about this work that our question is, which of the amazing opportunities on campus should we focus on? Not, "Oh gosh, we have to create something."
There's so many great things already going on, and we are really starting to see our mission as bringing a lot of those great projects together and spreading the word across campus of what may be going on on another side of campus. One of the things that's been really fun for me is doing some work with the Lewis Harrington School of Nursing up Dallas and getting to bring some of the great things on the Waco campus there, and bringing word about what's going on there, integrating faith and learning back here at Waco. So being a connector.
Derek Smith:
Visiting with Elisabeth Kincaid here on Baylor Connections and mentioned your background, business, theology and law. As you tie those things together, what are some of the questions or challenges that animate your work?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Gosh, well, a big question for me is what does it mean to be a Christian leading in some space in the public square? So whether that's in business, whether that's in the legal field, whether that's in politics, whether that's in the church, I'm really interested in these questions, these questions that are about integration of faith into leading lives where our work witnesses to God. And so, I spend a lot of time thinking about really questions of living out our faith. What does that look like? What does it look like to be an ethical business leader, an ethical lawyer, an ethical professor?
Derek Smith:
What or who were some of the people or paths that led you this way?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
So this was not my plan at all. I was very happy being a staff worker with InterVarsity, actually at SMU, and I met someone who was well-known and loved on this campus, the late William A. Abraham, who then came to Truett Seminary and he was mentoring me a little bit, giving me some counsel, and he said, "Hey, why don't you take some theology classes as part of your ministry work?" And I did and fell in love with theology, and went ahead and got my PhD. So it's a real honor for me to follow in the footsteps at Truett of someone like Billy Abraham, who had such a deep impact on my life and my own call to the academy.
Derek Smith:
So pretty cool that you get to follow him here now.
Elisabeth Kincaid:
He told me when he came here, he said, "Elisabeth, one day, I really hope you end up at Baylor too." So that's been a neat connection.
Derek Smith:
So you've been prior to that or around that, you've been in a private equity, a white collar defense attorney and a minister. If you were to put all those on the table, what are the intersections of the Venn diagram? How similar or different have those roles been?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Well, I will say clearly it took me a long time to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. So when I'm teaching undergrads, particularly undergrads in business classes, I say, "Hey, if you don't know what you want to be in 10 years, that's fine. God has a plan, even if you don't know the plan."
And one of the things I've seen and that I'm hoping to bring to the work of the IFL, is that all of these roles, while it may look different, you may be producing different types of work product. People come back to the same questions, "How does my work matter to God? What is God calling me to do? How can I live a full and flourishing life that integrates my work, my faith, my family, the other things I love?"
A lot of the ethical challenges are very much the same, I think, and I tell students whether I'm teaching legal ethics or business ethics, or pastoral ethics classes, people don't start out saying, "Gosh, I want to make an ethically poor decision."
They make a small mistake and they continue to make it. They become malformed. It's not usually a big ethical failure and whatever field people are working in, you see those same patterns, either that people are being ethically formed to live lives of integrity and character, or they're being ethically malformed, and it's a long, slow process. So that's one of the things I've noticed working across those fields and going from being a white collar criminal defense attorney to someone working in ministry.
Derek Smith:
Pretty cool to hear how those things integrate and to get to see you do those here, as we visit with Elisabeth Kincaid on Baylor Connections, named Last Spring as the new director of Baylor's Institute for Faith and Learning, she also serves on the faculty of Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, and at Hankamer School of Business. Well, I've got to know you a little bit. I think a lot of people who have listened to this are familiar with IFL, but plenty who don't or could use that refresher. So start off high level. So if you're talking to a colleague from another institution and they said, "What's unique about Baylor's IFL? What does it do?" What would you tell them?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
What's unique about Baylor's IFL is that the administration and leadership at Baylor have funded and empowered an academic unit on campus to work to provide resources across the university, to faculty and staff, who are working to integrate their faith with their teaching and research, and academic service. I mean, that is a very strong statement by Baylor about commitment to Christian identity, that most universities haven't been willing to sort of put their money and their time in the same way. And Baylor, of course, is very blessed to have the resources to do this. So just having this vision and leadership from the top is really powerful. And a lot of times when people are thinking about faith and learning, it's very silent. So you say, "Oh, this might be what people in religion do, or philosophy do, or ethics do," but what's unique about IFL is that there's a vision that every area of academic research and teaching can be informed and animated by faith, and that's really wonderful.
Derek Smith:
Well, you probably really, in a way just answered the question I was going to ask, but if you were hoping to connect with a faculty member and encourage them to dive deeper into IFL, what are some of the things you would tell them?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Well, I would first start with some of our key programming. We offer a number of ways for faculty who are wanting to dip their toe into these questions to get involved. We have a very large symposium that we host every year. It's historically been in October, and I will note in the 2025, '26 year, school year, it's going to be in February. So it's not to compete with football. We have about 500 scholars from across the country who come to give papers, hear papers. So that's a great way to start getting involved, is to submit a paper proposal there about an idea that someone might want to bring forward and get feedback about integrating faith and learning in a friendly collaborative environment. So that would be one way to get involved. Another way would be our program called Missio, which is for new faculty, it's monthly lunches, giving faculty the opportunity to connect about Baylor's Christian mission.
I didn't even think about how that impacts their lives. We run a retreat called Communio that gives Baylor faculty a chance to go off campus, to spend time together, to learn. And I want to add, I think this is really important. This is all open to our Jewish faculty members as well. Baylor is a Christian university, and we think that Jewish faculty, our Jewish faculty being involved in this and bringing their faith is very important and enriches everything that we do. So we've got those opportunities. We are also developing some new, more specialized programming. We're bringing some experts in integrating faith and pedagogy onto campus this spring for some specific workshops. We're about to launch some writing and research cohorts to give faculty the chance to come together and talk about how to integrate their research with their faith at a very high academic level.
We're going to run a workshop about writing at a popular level in a way that integrates faith and learning. So one of the things I would encourage them to do, plug into these legacy programs that we have, but also reach out to us, let us know what they're looking for. And as we develop these perhaps smaller, more focused programming opportunities about teaching or research, we would love to plug people in. And if what we're offering isn't lining up for them, we are in a strategic planning phase, we're in a growth phase, and I want to know what faculty need, how can we serve them better? So please come talk to me.
Derek Smith:
Visiting with Elisabeth Kincaid here on Baylor Connections. You mentioned strategic planning. Baylor is growing as an R1 Christian Research University. What does it mean to you to be a part of that at this time too? I know you were at another faith-based to a high-level research university in Notre Dame as you're pursuing your graduate degrees. What does it mean to be part of that here?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
I think it's incredibly exciting. In our symposium this fall, we had a presidential panel, where President Livingston, President David Hogue from the CCCU, and Father John Jenkins from Notre Dame talked about the importance of Christian universities in higher education. And Father Jenkins said, "Look, Notre Dame needs a Baylor. We need to have these schools that are doing very high-level research and are being explicit about Christian identity as a witness to the world, that these are not contradictory commitments. In fact, these are very complementary." And Baylor living that out is a very powerful witness, and I think it's an important process and really crucial for the higher education in this country and around the world.
Derek Smith:
Visiting with Elisabeth Kincaid here on Baylor Connections, you mentioned the symposiums that bring people together from across the country. I feel like that's in a lot of ways, that's a gem here at Kemp's that not everyone knows about. How highly regarded are these symposiums in higher education?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
I mean, I would say I found out about the IFL actually originally through that symposium when I was a grad student. This was a symposium that was on people's list as a place to attend. It's particularly been significant with our other CCCU schools, but we are really expanding to other Catholic schools and to non-Christian schools, but places where there are faculty of faith, who are looking for the opportunity to have these discussions. And it has been fun for me attending my first symposium as a director and seeing the legacy of IFL and my predecessors, and specifically Darren Davis, who was the director for 15 years before me. There are people who've come to the symposium for 15 years. This is really part of their community and a place where they come to be nurtured. And I think this is a significant place for a lot of scholars across the country.
Derek Smith:
So you've been able to get to know some of these long-standing programs and getting to experience them for the first time from this side of things. You also get a look and see where it's going. What are some of the things you're particularly excited about, whether it's just being part of some of the long-standing programs or envisioning what could be yet to come?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
I think, I mean, I've loved these legacy programs and I've been enriched being involved with them. I'm really excited about taking the next step and working with faculty who want to go deeper in their disciplines, in a way that's informed by their Christian faith. For example, I was talking to the dean at the school of engineering and he said, "I want my faculty publishing in top tier journals, in a way that whether explicitly or implicitly is informed by their Christian faith."
And I thought, "What a powerful statement." And I'm so excited to be a resource to faculty who want to do work like that. I'm learning a little bit about that. I publish in business ethics journals, as well as theology journals. And so, one of the things I've been learning as a scholar myself is how to do that type of interdisciplinary work well, and it's exciting to be at Baylor at a time where interdisciplinary research is a key pillar in the new strategic plan. And I think interdisciplinary research as informed by faith is very important.
Derek Smith:
Well, when you think about using the engineering example, there's rapid growth in technology that brings a lot of ethical questions that you want Baylor, we want Christian scholars to be able to speak into you, talk about that interdisciplinary and go, what does it mean to you maybe to kind of be here at the cusp of this time even, when you look at what have you seen about the need? I guess this would be another way for me to ask this, about the need for ethical viewpoints, Christian viewpoints, to speak into just a rapidly changing world.
Elisabeth Kincaid:
I think it's crucial. I'll say, actually, I'm glad you brought this up. The theme for next year's symposium is technology in the human person in the age of AI. So we are creating a forum for faculty from here and around the country to come and engage with these questions. Christianity and insights from Jewish and Christian theology bring deep wisdom, even people who don't share our same beliefs, kind of ultimate beliefs, but bring deep wisdom about the nature of the human person.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to flourish? What does it mean to live a life committed to the common good? And we have to have Christian voices engaging in a serious, thoughtful, prayerful, intellectual way with those questions. And we need it in a world where things are moving very fast. AI, for example, is developing at an incredibly fast rate. Information is, we all know this, exchanged on the internet and social media in a way that is not always well-informed and thoughtful. So to have these voices of people who are experts in their own field and animated by these convictions of faith is really, really, really important.
Derek Smith:
Visiting with Elisabeth Kincaid. And Elisabeth, as we wind down here, we've talked a lot about the work you do and certainly it's very faculty focused. And when you think about people who are professionals in higher ed, but when you look at IFL and the work it does, who all do you see as benefiting from this?
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Well, one of the things we're actually very excited about is we are launching a pilot staff Missio this spring, where we're going to be providing some amount of the support integrating faith to staff, because a university isn't just faculty, staff are equally important, equally have a vocation to higher education. So we're excited about that and about engaging more with staff who are bringing their own faith to this vocation. We're also developing our grad student programming. We had historically been involved with a group called Conyer Scholars and are re-engaging with that group, training graduate faculty who are going to be going out to different institutions in thinking about these questions. We think this is one way that Baylor is going to have a very significant impact on the higher education landscape, is not just what goes on here, but the top-level graduate students we send out.
So we are looking forward to intentionally developing more programming for graduate students, exploring these questions as well. So while IFL's, let's say kind of bread and butter and historical roots are in faculty formation, this is not just about faculty staff. We're staff and grad students. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention our Crane Scholars program, which is a program we have for undergraduates, that's a competitive fellowship program, where we give undergraduate students the opportunity to engage with these questions alongside faculty as well. And then, this isn't just about IFL. The other thing we are trying to do very intentionally and are actually hoping to launch some grant programming process is resourcing people on campus who want to do this work not under the IFL umbrella. We've been providing some funding, we've been providing administrative support, we've been providing publicity. We want to become a hub of publicity about work other people at Baylor are doing, where their faith informs their scholarship. So being a resource and a connector across campus as well as a catalyst
Derek Smith:
Fuses a lot of different areas for sure. Well, Elisabeth Kincaid, congratulations on coming to Baylor after you shared with us at the beginning of the show, you'd have that desire to be here for a while. We're glad to have you here and excited to see what's ahead with the Institute for Faith and Learning.
Elisabeth Kincaid:
Thank you so much. Been delightful chatting with you.
Derek Smith:
Absolutely. Dr. Elisabeth Kincaid, the Director of Baylor's Institute for Faith and Learning, and faculty member in Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary and Hankamer School of Business, our guest today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. A reminder, you can hear this and other programs online at baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.