Larry Lyon and James Howard

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're discussing graduate education at Baylor in this Graduate Student Appreciation Week episode. Graduate Student Appreciation Week is an annual April celebration of graduate students and an opportunity to honor their contributions and accomplishments. Over 5,000 graduate students at Baylor study across more than 100 programs in a variety of both traditional academic settings and online and professional programs. Together they make up 25% of Baylor's enrollment. This year, Graduate Student Appreciation Week runs April 7th to 11th, and to discuss it, we're visiting with our guest today, Larry Lyon and James Howard. Dr. Lyon serves as Vice Provost and Dean of the graduate school at Baylor. He's retiring this spring after five decades of service to the university, and his leadership has played a key role in elevating the graduate school and guiding Baylor towards significant research growth including R-I attainment.
James Howard is a Ph.D student in the department of History and he serves as president of Baylor's Graduate Student Association, or GSA for short. GSA is a community that strives to enrich the quality of academic and social life for Baylor graduate students and advocate for them on campus. James is married and he and his wife are parents of a young daughter. So I know you're both very busy in different ways, but I appreciate you being on with us, Dr. Lyon and James. Thanks so much for joining us on the program today.

James Howard:
Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

Larry Lyon:
Glad to be here.

Derek Smith:
It's great to have you both here. And right off the bat as we discuss graduate students and what they bring to the university, I think one of your biography points, James, just highlights a distinction there. You're married with a daughter and I'm curious, are you getting much sleep these days and how are you balancing all that?

James Howard:
I'll be honest, we actually, as of four months ago, have a second child now, and so no, getting even less sleep than the question presumes. But I think that just comes with the territory. Having our second child has actually been... We have more experience and you're more used to it. But that's the weird experience of a graduate student is you could be coming in at any stage of life and that definitely is the case for a lot of our graduate students.

Derek Smith:
Well, congratulations to you and hope you do find a little bit of rest as you pursue that Ph.D. in history and do the great work that you are doing. You know, Dr. Lyon, when you think of all the different places our graduate students come from, all the stages of life they find themselves in, what does it mean to you to have them at Baylor and to just see the ways they elevate our community?

Larry Lyon:
Well, it means a lot to me, Derek, but it means a lot to Baylor as well. And in fact, James, I can empathize with you. When I was in graduate school, we had two little daughters and life is full. I didn't say I envy you, I said I empathize with you. Derek, we have, you said, over 5,000. We have close to 6,000 graduate students now, and that number continues to grow. We're over a quarter, we're closing in on a third of the Baylor students being graduate students. A thousand of them are PhD students like James, but we have 2,700 that are online now. That's an area of remarkable growth. The graduate students from all over the world, 1700 of them are international. They're older, they have more experienced. Most of our undergraduates have been a couple of things their whole lives, they've been a child, a son or a daughter and a student. But our graduate students quite often are a husband, a wife, a mother, a father. On top of those things, they have had full-time jobs. Sometimes they keep their full-time jobs while they're here.
They bring a occupational, cultural, geographic diversity to Baylor that we wouldn't have otherwise, we couldn't offer otherwise, and in that way are role models for our undergraduates and help our undergraduates to view a world beyond Waco and beyond their four years here at Baylor.

Derek Smith:
They work with our undergraduate students in labs, in classrooms and just a variety of settings.

Larry Lyon:
That's right. So many of our students are in the health fields as an undergraduate, and all of them will encounter our graduate students in their labs because the laboratory experiences is basic to what they need to learn in order to get into medical school, nursing school, physical therapy programs and so on.

Derek Smith:
It's Graduate Student Appreciation Week as we talk with Dr. Lyon and James Howard. And Dr. Lyon, let's zoom out just a little bit. We gave a few numbers there, but you've seen it grow a lot in your time here at Baylor. How would you describe the graduate school in its place in the higher ed landscape today?

Larry Lyon:
The place is almost unique. We are now a major research university. R-I is the term that has recently gained a lot of publicity here at Baylor, and rightly so. But we're unique because not only are we R-I, but we are a Christian R-I, and you can count those on one hand with fingers left over. We are so different than when I came here. When I came here, we were a small regional Baptist undergraduate university, now we are an entirely different thing. We are something that really makes a major contribution to the landscape of higher education in the United States.

Derek Smith:
Took a lot of work to build from what you described when you got here to where it is now, and it's great to see that and for students James to get to come in and be a part of that. So James, I'm curious, give us the student perspective, if you would. Tell us a little bit about your educational background prior to this and what stood out to you about Baylor as you were looking at it.

James Howard:
Yeah, as Dean Lyon described, the unique Christian R-I university that I attend is very distinct in that my background was only at state schools prior to this. I'm from southern Nevada, so I had done my bachelor's and master's at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. So what drew me to Baylor was not only as Christian identity, but what's tied to that Christian identity is the scholarship is going to be emphasizing those faith commitments and the interest in those faith commitments. So as a student in the history department, this is really a unique place in terms of investigating the history of religion and as it maps onto the United States. That's my particular field. And there's not too many schools that do those overlapping focuses the way that we do. I'm thinking of maybe one other school in a Catholic school in South Bend, which I don't need to name names. But other than that, these state R-I schools will have a historian of religion in a particular area. But we've got a multitude in the history department, and that's just speaking for the history department.
Dean Lyon, he can talk for days about how many humanities and social science disciplines here on campus really emphasize the religious components and the pursuit of those faith commitments as they were in the past and as they are today. I'm thinking right now of during new graduate student orientation, Dean Lyon does this outline where he explains the trends in the religious affiliations of graduate students. And we have remarkable numbers which Dean Lyon can speak to that probably don't compare to other universities in terms of the religious diversity and just the faith commitments themselves. And so that was a huge draw for me because Baylor is just a hotbed for those sorts of topics.

Larry Lyon:
Yes. When I say we're unique in that regard, we may all be singularly unique in the sense that our survey data show that a significant proportion of our graduate students, not just the undergraduate, our graduate students are attracted here because of our religious connection, that our graduate students expect to grow in their faith while they're here and report when they graduate, that they did grow in their faith while they're here because we have programs that allow them to approach their faith from their discipline, that approach their faith intellectually so that they don't have to put their belief system aside while they explore history or chemistry or physics, but they can integrate the two and get better at both simultaneously. That's a special thing, Derek.

Derek Smith:
Well, we see that play out with students. I think you see the growth academic and academic profile and research it's attracted, faculty who bring even more of that back to Baylor and it seems like it all just plays off of each other in that regard. Success breeds more success in that area as we visit with James Howard and Dr. Lyon. James mentioned at the top that you have a unique role, you serve as president of Baylor's Graduate Student Association, GSA. Let me ask you though, first, do you ever see yourself in a leadership position coming here?

James Howard:
Oh, not at all. Yeah, the very first year in the program here, my wife had our first child and it was just trying to survive coursework, which is the experience of every graduate student anywhere. And spring of my first year, I remember asking the department representative for the history department, "What do they do at these GSA assembly meetings?" And he basically gave a very simple answer of, "Well, they eat pizza and they complain about what's going on." And that is indeed too simplistic of an answer, though we do do that. And I nominated myself just because I wanted to be more involved to the broader graduate community and to advocate for the basic needs of what's going on, what graduate students are in need of. And so that year, going into my second year, I was the department representative for the history department, and then my third year I was the executive vice president, and here we are now, in my fourth year I'm the president of the Graduate Student Association. So if you were to ask me three years ago did I think I would be here? Absolutely not.
But it just kind of one thing after another unfolded, I kept getting drawn in to the attraction of what was possible. And you know what's amazing about our graduate student association is that in collaboration with the graduate school, and once again we're going to emphasize this kind of singular uniqueness of Baylor, we actually get so much stuff done because of the collaboration between the two. My very first year there was the discussion of, it was in a post-Covid environment, obviously inflation had affected the entire nation, and there was the question of graduate student stipends. So we're talking about students who are research doctorates here on campus. A significant majority of them do receive research stipends. And within two months of me being a department representative, I remember Dean Lyon in the graduate school invited the entire GSA in to discuss the increased stipend packages as they would occur over the next two to three years. And that sort of transparency, I have never seen anything like that before.
It was an answer to the request in a very quick time manner, and it was fully clear of what was to be expected in the years to come. And so that's just been the case. I could riddle off a dozen other stories of examples like that to show that kind of collaboration between the graduate school and the graduate student association.

Derek Smith:
When you think about, Dr. Lyon, at the top of the show, we talked about James being a husband and a father as he pursues his Ph.D and you painted the picture of students coming from so many different backgrounds, many of whom this is their livelihood while they're at Baylor pursuing their Ph.D or whichever graduate degree they're pursuing. I'm curious, we've seen the graduate student body at Baylor more than double and maybe getting close to tripling now over the last 10 plus years. What does that... I don't know if demand is the right word, but what does that require the university to adjust with and what are some of the ways that it's been fun to work with GSA in supporting that?

Larry Lyon:
When the role of the graduate student increases in importance, it does more and more for the university. We depend upon the graduate students to work with our faculty in the classroom. We depend upon them to help with our labs. We depend upon them to tutor our undergraduates. And when the number of graduate students increase, you simply have to pay more attention to graduate students, listen to their concerns, respond to their concerns, and James gave the example, very tangible, one of the stipend increase. But James, one that you benefited from before your time, one of your predecessors advocated for parental leave for graduate students. Parental leave for students? That was kind of new for Baylor. Yes, they're parents. Well, yes they are, aren't they? And in fact, James, we had parental leave for graduate students before we had parental leave for faculty and staff here because of the efforts of the GSA.
So there have been many tangible changes improving the life of graduate students. But at an intangible level, what James has described is providing input into his own education, feeling some ownership. I take a role in this, I can change the way things are happening, I'm part of it, I identify with it. Well, organizational research tells us that whenever somebody identifies with the larger organization, they do better in that organization. In other words, graduate students at Baylor who identify with the process of graduate education, not just identify with the history department, but the overall process of graduate education at Baylor, do better as graduate students. It's a reciprocal relationship. The university benefits, but so do the graduate students.

James Howard:
Yeah, if I could just add to that. When I was pulled out of the history department and brought into the graduate student association, when you're a graduate student, you can be siloed into your discipline. This is what the GSA offers to graduate students is you get a diversity of perspectives from graduate students from all different backgrounds. You hear their experiences, their life stories, and that really broadens your perspective and just gives you enrichment that you wouldn't experience if you were just isolated in your discipline. And so that has been absolutely influential in shaping the type of graduate student I am today. It's been incredibly fulfilling to have a variety of perspectives kind of filter in and shape who I am. And I totally agree with Dean Lyon in that that sort of holistic approach is practice from the bottom up and top down here at Baylor.

Derek Smith:
On a very personal level, I'm curious, how nice is it as a grad student you think about pursuing these degrees over several years just to hear other students going through the same feelings you are when you're kind of in that messy middle or seeing students succeed and move on and know that that can be you too.

James Howard:
Absolutely. The collegiality within the GSA is so strong. Whether you're doing an intensive part of your lab for STEM students or you're going through comprehensive exams for our social science and humanities students, everyone's really supportive of each other and they collaborate. We have a bunch of group techs supporting one another, and it's a really fulfilling experience to be a part of that collective work in that sense because so much of our work can be individual work. I've really cherished that aspect.

Derek Smith:
This is Baylor Connections. We are visiting with Dr. Larry Lyon, vice Provost and Dean of the graduate school, and James Howard, a PhD student in the history department and president of Baylor's Graduate Student Association. A little bit of a transition here, Dr. Lyon. We talked to James, and as he pursues his degree, one of these days he's going to go out. In a minute, James, I'm going to ask you where you want to go and what you want to do with that. But I want to ask you, what does it mean to you? How can people who don't think about graduate education maybe as much envision what it means to have Baylor graduate students going out into the world and the places they go? How does that elevate Baylor in the higher ed community?

Larry Lyon:
I think, Derek, that when people think about our graduate students, some of it is easy to understand. Our largest graduate programs are in nursing. Well, nursing goes out in the world and makes life better. That's clear. If you're getting a master of business administration, you go into the business world. If you get a physical therapy degree... If you get an education degree, you go and you help in the public school system or the private school system. But if you're like James and you're earning the PhD, that gets a little fuzzier. A lot of people don't even know a PhD and aren't real sure what those letters stand for and what do they do and why should Baylor be producing these anyway. Not just what do they do to help Baylor, but what do they do for society? You're not the only one that's asked that. In fact, our regents have asked me that on occasion and in response to their questions, we maintain a database of where our PhD students go upon graduation, what they do for the larger society, and I keep them categorized into different areas.
For example, just in the last three years, in the military, we have got a research scientist with the United States Air Force. We have a professor at West Point in pharmacy. We have a senior scientist at AstraZeneca, we have a toxicologist at Eli Lilly, in the United States National Laboratories. We have a mathematical statistician at the Centers for Disease Control. We have an aerospace engineer at NASA. In industry we have a geoscientist at Exxon Mobil, a solutions architect. And no, I don't know what these things are. A solutions architect at General Motors, a data scientist at Microsoft and even larger still are those that go into nonprofits. Baylor's PhDs are especially attracted to nonprofits. The chief data officer for the City of Dallas is a recent Baylor PhD. The vice president of the National Use Movement is a new Baylor PhD. And then larger than all of those are those that go into higher education. And most of our PhDs that go into higher education go into R-I universities just like Baylor.

Derek Smith:
So if we visited... Last year, we had the first research doctoral commencement ceremonies that's grown so much. We've been able to have their own special ceremony for them. Imagine if we surveyed those individuals receiving those doctoral degrees. We'd find a whole lot of interesting places like you just described.

Larry Lyon:
We would indeed.

Derek Smith:
Well, James, what about you? When your time is done here as a PhD student, what do you hope to do?

James Howard:
The primary motive for me is to become a tenure-track teaching-oriented professor at a university somewhere. But I also know that these experiences I've had in the graduate student association, I'm not going to hold onto that too tightly. I am kind of open to whatever God has for me in the sense that I could go into some alternative academic routes such as administration, work in higher education in a leadership capacity. I'm open to really anything. And I think that's the beauty of a graduate education is that you're constantly adjusting and adapting and gaining more skills and experiences along the way. And that's something that, as Dean Lyon has just mentioned, is quite exceptional about our graduate students, is that they go on to do things that don't compare to other institutions. In the history department, for example, we have an incredibly high placement rate at these teaching-oriented colleges that for how small we are, is quite shocking that we are able to compete with big schools such as Ivy League schools. We had a PhD student in the history department outplace an Ivy League student at a school out west.
And so that sort of aspect of where we're able to place people because of our distinct Christian identity and the wide vast market of Christian liberal arts colleges in the U.S gives me a lot of hope as a PhD student in the history department. I'll say that.

Derek Smith:
Well, to hear students going places like that or beating out Ivy League students. Dr. Lyon, you've got a little bit of a competitive streak in you somewhere. I know that probably makes you very happy, as it does all of us who love Baylor.

Larry Lyon:
Yeah. James is going to do very well. It's the nature of being a graduate student at this stage to worry about the future, and having a couple of children increases that worry. I get that, I've been there, but I don't worry about James.

Derek Smith:
Going to do great work for sure. And appreciate you jumping on with us today, James, and sharing your story. And as we head into the final few minutes of the show today, I want to ask you Dr. Lyon, we mentioned it very briefly, people around Baylor know you are approaching retirement here at the end of this semester, 50 years of service, so many of them at the helm of the grad school. So I'm curious, what's the mix of emotions you're feeling as you kind of see the end of the semester on the horizon?

Larry Lyon:
Yeah. Wow. 50 years. That's a very long time, Derek. Emotions, they are mixed. I'll admit, some anxiety, some wistfulness, but more than anything else, much more than anything else, pride. I'm very proud of what we've accomplished here at Baylor. We did it. We created a Christian research university and we never lost our emphasis on our faith. We never varied from the centrality of undergraduate education. James would tell you that the historical evidence for that doesn't support our ability to have done that. Many people doubted us, and rightly so. Frankly, I had some doubts. But we did this singular thing, this very important thing, and I could not be more proud of Baylor University and where it is today.

Derek Smith:
Well, it's been exciting to see, and I know so many people are appreciative, myself included, of the role you played over a lot of years in helping move Baylor towards that and supporting and encouraging and putting the work into that growth. And maybe you just described it, but I'll ask you, as you pass the baton to the next person, what are you most excited about, whether it's for the university or the grad school specifically?

Larry Lyon:
I'm excited for our future, Derek, because Baylor is in such a better place than it was 50 years ago. We now have the faculty, the staff, the students, the financial base, the physical infrastructure to compete. You have to have that. We didn't have that 50 years ago and that's why it was so hard, but we have it now, and we have belief. Many people, as I said, rightly doubted that we could do this at an earlier time, but I see, at Baylor now, broad, deserved self-confidence that, yeah, we can do this. We're already R-I. We didn't lose our faith. We didn't lose our emphasis on undergraduates. Let's just keep on. Most of the people that have joined the last four or five years, well, of course, why not? For someone who's been here as long as I have, that is a very rare thing, a very surprising thing to see people at Baylor being so self-confident, so full of positive views for the future. That's why I feel like, without a doubt, Baylor's best years are in front of us.

Derek Smith:
Well, Dr. Lyon, you're not there yet, but in this forum, we will wish you well in retirement and thank you for all you do, and I hope we'll still see you at the football and basketball games and other events around campus.

Larry Lyon:
You will, Derek. Absolutely.

Derek Smith:
That's good. Now, James, I don't know if you have time for football or basketball or whatever events would be your choice to go to when you have free time, but hopefully there's a little of it in there for you.

James Howard:
I try to go as many as I can.

Derek Smith:
That's good. Well, hey, we appreciate you both coming on. James, happy Graduate Student Appreciation Week to you and you as well, Dr. Lyon. I want to thank you both for helping paint the picture of just all the ways that why we should appreciate what graduate students bring to Baylor.

Larry Lyon:
Thank you, Derek.

James Howard:
Thank you.

Derek Smith:
Glad to have you both with us. James Howard, PhD student in the Department of History and President of Baylor's Graduate Student Association and Dr. Larry Lyon, vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School, our guests today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. Reminder, you can hear this and other programs online, baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.