NewsBriefs

Baylor team wins moot court contest for 4th straight year

A Baylor Law School team captured first place for the fourth year in a row at the annual Mack Kidd Administrative Law Moot Court Competition, held in Austin on Oct. 23-24.
The team of Jennifer Salim and Wes LeRouax defeated a team from Texas Wesleyan School of Law. Additionally, Salim was named the competition's second best speaker while LeRouax received the third best speaker award. Their brief also won the second place brief award. The win marks the seventh time in 12 years that a Baylor Law team has won the competition.

Event honors first black graduate of Baylor

In the second year of recognizing African-American trailblazers, the Cen-Tex African American Chamber of Commerce honored the late Robert Gilbert, the first African-American graduate of Baylor. After graduating with a bachelor of art degree from Baylor in 1967, Gilbert went on to attend the Baylor Graduate School of Religion from 1970 to 1971.
Gilbert was the first black teacher assigned to a formerly all-white school in Waco Independent School District. He was a well-known civil rights leader in Central Texas and was the pastor of several churches before he died in 1992.
Baylor's 55-member Heavenly Voices Gospel Choir was the featured entertainment at the banquet, held on Oct. 15 in the University's Cashion Building.

Students shred CPA exam

Baylor's accounting program ranks among the top five in the nation for the fourth straight year, according to the results for first-time candidates of the 2008 Uniform Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam released by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy.
Baylor's 100 percent pass rate by graduate students on the Business Environment and Concepts section ranked first nationally. Over 83 percent passed the Financial Accounting and Reporting section--sixth in the country--and over 82 percent passed the Regulation section--ninth in the country.

Engineering, business programs get high marks from U.S. News

The latest U.S.News & World Report rankings placed Baylor at No. 80 among the nation's top national doctoral-granting universities. The magazine evaluated more than 1,400 accredited four-year schools.
Among Big 12 schools cited in U.S. News as "Best National Universities," Baylor is the fourth highest-ranked university, behind UT-Austin at No. 47, Texas A&M at No. 61 and Colorado at No. 77.
Baylor is the fifth highest-rated university in Texas, behind Rice at No. 17, UT-Austin, Texas A&M and SMU at No. 68. TCU, at No. 110, is the only other Texas school ranked in the magazine's top 130.
U.S. News also gave high marks to Baylor's engineering and business undergraduate programs.
Baylor's engineering program moved up nine places to No. 12 among universities whose highest engineering degree offered is a bachelor's or master's degree.
Baylor's Hankamer School of Business moved up from No. 65 to No. 57 in undergraduate business program rankings. Baylor's entrepreneurship program moved up to No. 13.

Entrepreneurship program ranks 4th in nation

From more than 2,300 schools surveyed by Entrepreneur magazine and The Princeton Review, Baylor's Hankamer School of Business has been recognized as having one of the top 50 entrepreneurship programs in the country. Baylor ranked No. 4 in the 2009 undergraduate category of the survey, its highest ever.
The seventh annual ranking reveals the nation's top 25 undergraduate and top 25 graduate programs for entrepreneurship. Baylor's ranking can be seen at entrepreneur.com/topcolleges, along with information on overall trends found with social and sustainable entrepreneurship, experiential learning and entrepreneurship as a means of reaching out both internationally and locally.
Baylor was evaluated based on key criteria in the areas of academics and requirements, students and faculty, and outside-the-classroom experiences.