Tradition in Excellence

Baylor’s Honors College has been nurturing the development of students’ academic accomplishment and leadership skills for decades. Now, with the upcoming dedication of newly renovated facilities in Draper Academic Building and the Honors Residential College, located in Alexander and Memorial Halls, the Honors College is entering a period of even greater impact on Baylor’s campus.

Cultivating Academic Excellence and Virtue

How does the mission of the Honors College fit within the landscape of Baylor’s overall approach to preparing students for worldwide leadership and service? Fundamentally, said Dean of the Honors College Douglas Henry, Ph.D., the Honors College adds a range of academic opportunities for high-achieving students from more than 90 academic majors and faculty across a range of disciplines that build upon the bedrock of a traditional Baylor education.

“Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach often found in honors colleges, we identify and encourage wide-ranging forms of excellence among our students,” said Henry, who has served as dean since 2019. “Programmatically, that translates into four distinct opportunities for students — the Honors Program, the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core (BIC), Great Texts and University Scholars. They can be mixed and matched with each other, and they can be paired with any undergraduate major offered at Baylor.”

“Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach often found in honors colleges, we identify and encourage wide-ranging forms of excellence among our students.”

Douglas Henry, Ph.D.

As a result of this additive approach, Henry noted, nearly one in 10 undergraduates at Baylor traces a path through the Honors College. “At every turn, we emphasize rigorous inquiry, close reading, critical perspective, elevated discussion, artful writing, interdisciplinarity and the host of virtues that are summed up by ‘wisdom,’” he said. “We’re blessed to have the opportunity to unite academic excellence with faithful Christian commitment, while matching both with consummate care for our students and each other. We enjoy watching these wonderful students enrich and strengthen the undergraduate programs of Baylor’s other academic units.”

Established in 1959, the Honors Program has had a profound impact on generations of the Baylor Family, enabling exemplary students to study under the mentorship of outstanding Baylor faculty members. In 2002, the Honors College was created to generate greater coordination and collaboration between the Great Texts and University Scholars majors and the Honors Program and the BIC. These four programs that make up the Honors College allow students to shape what this looks like to support their academic goals in ways that are as unique as their subjects of study, research interests and styles of learning. 

The Honors Program is one pathway for students to join the Honors College, but not all students in the College are in the Honors Program. This program is perhaps what most people are familiar with when they think of a traditional-style undergraduate honors education, marked by special classes, research and a thesis project, providing academic enhancements to students in any major at Baylor.

The BIC offers an alternative to Baylor’s core curriculum that integrates traditional general education subjects into a comprehensive and coherent whole. Coursework explores the interrelation of humanities and social sciences through literature and thought from around the world, providing students with a broad context to understand the contemporary world from a global perspective. 

The University Scholars major allows students the opportunity to craft a unique, individualized curriculum. Exempt from the majority of Baylor’s core curriculum, students work closely with a faculty director to create a course of study tailored to the student’s particular academic and professional goals.

Great Texts in the Western intellectual heritage is the other major offered by the Honors College, built from a curriculum of studying the most enduring and influential works of literature, philosophy and theology, from antiquity to the present.

“Today, as in the past, the charge given to the Honors College is to fulfill a stewardship over the bold aspirations and tremendous talents of high-ability students,” Henry said. “In doing so, we play a unique role in advancing Baylor’s inspiring Christian mission.”

Building Connection and Collaboration

In a $48 million renovation and expansion project, the Honors College renovations include improvements that bring Honors College faculty, staff and students together in office, seminar and classroom space. A major focus area of this renovation project was an emphasis on connection and collaboration. Previously scattered in academic buildings all over campus, Honors College faculty, staff and students now have a home base between the Honors Residential College (HRC) and Draper that creates more opportunities for faculty and student interaction. 

The Office of the Dean, included in the renovation of the HRC, now shares a spacious two-level suite with the academic advising program in Alexander Hall. New office suites in Draper Academic Building represent support spaces for faculty and professional staff within the Honors College’s four programs.

“Baylor Honors College supports 1,400 high-achieving undergraduate students pursuing over 90 academic majors across the university,” said Henry. “Long anticipated improvements for Memorial and Alexander Halls and for Draper Academic Building 
will strengthen our work with these exceptional students.”

The renovation included new classroom and group study spaces, as well as integrated technology that will functionally increase academic collaboration between faculty and students. The overall aesthetic design of the space has been improved as well — every floor appears to be more open, welcoming and bright, visually inviting scholars to gather and cultivate relationships. 

Additionally, Honors College faculty and staff have a newly renovated office space in the Draper Academic Building. Honors College students will now benefit from increased opportunities for conversation with their professors over a meal in Memorial Dining Hall or walking to class through Founders Mall. This new proximity creates space for students and faculty to ponder questions and insights together, collaborate with scholars with a variety of expertise and examine and explore common interests and pursuits. 

Through a greater footprint on Baylor’s campus, and in dedicated spaces that establish more firmly the presence and character of the Honors College, the project provides a more accessible point of entry for all Baylor students to interact with the programs and faculty who make up this important part of Baylor’s community.

A Home for Community and Friendship 

Nearly 320 students call the Honors Residential College home. In their return to their residence halls for the 2024-25 year, they found themselves in significantly improved surroundings in Memorial and Alexander Halls. More importantly, they’ll find the new renovations do not change, but simply enhance, the qualities that drew them to HRC in the first place — intentional community and friendship. 

Made up of Memorial Hall, home to female students, and Alexander Hall, the residence hall for male students, the HRC consists of two of the oldest residential halls on campus. Both have been given a complete renovation similar to that which many of Baylor’s other residential halls have received in recent years. 

Previously two separate buildings, Alexander and Memorial are now connected by the Carona Family Commons, a new building that architecturally and functionally unites the two residence halls. On the ground level, the Carona Family Commons provides new access to Memorial Dining Hall and Alexander Reading Room, along with a new outdoor courtyard. On three upper floors, it enhances residential life through a learning center, study rooms, gaming area, lounge spaces and a community kitchen. 

“Among the many benefits of the renovation of Alexander and Memorial is the addition connecting the buildings on the second and third floors,” Jason Whitt, B.A. ’96, Ph.D. ’08, HRC faculty steward and senior lecturer in the Honors Program, said. “It provides much needed common space for the HRC community, where our students gather to study, play, relax and prepare meals. This space has become the thriving center of the HRC, where students truly can share life together.”

“The addition connecting the buildings on the second and third floors provides much needed common space for the HRC community.”

Jason Whitt, Ph.D. ’08

Whitt and his family reside among the students they serve. In the faculty steward role, Whitt lives alongside students in Memorial and Alexander Halls. Far more than living arrangements, the setup positions Whitt to get to know HRC students personally, guide leaders within the community and promote the ways his students live out their mission in informal gatherings and official activities. 

“In the HRC, we’re always talking about the fact that our goal is to orient our loves,” Whitt said. “We focus on the love of God, love of neighbor and love of learning. The friendship aspect is an underlying part of all this that is really beautiful.”

“These are honors students, so they’re driven,” Whitt says. “What makes it so unique is that you might think it would be a group of Type A students who are always competitive and stressed out. But what we have instead is a place where everyone is valued not for their accomplishments, but for who they are as a person. They still work hard; they’re still driven. But our students live out that our worth is rooted in the fact that we’re beloved by God, beloved by others, and we’re going to act that way together.”

As part of the renovation, residents’ rooms were rebuilt from floor to ceiling. Updated electrical, water and other utilities offer greater convenience, reliability and efficiency.  Every floor is now more open, welcoming and filled with natural light. 

Even the hallways have had a makeover. Now offering more study nooks and community areas, the passages that connect residents’ rooms on each floor also serve as destinations that foster connection by allowing residents to gather and share space with one another.

Memorial Chapel features a new community area in front of the entry. Designed to be used as a “pre-function” space that flows into the chapel, this is a space that can be used before or after events held in the chapel for students and faculty to gather for additional programming or social activities.

Existing community spaces also received updates with an eye toward accessibility while maintaining their charm and architectural significance. The Reading Room, a legacy space that is often used by Honors College programs and entities hosting events and activities for larger groups, now features a ramp for its primary mode of entry for all guests. Even in many newly remodeled buildings, ramps and other accessibility features are often an afterthought. In the Honors College redesign, it was important to communicate structurally that all people belong and that accessibility is a critical feature of this community. 

As he prepares to move into his family’s apartment in HRC, Whitt can’t wait to welcome a new generation of students to facilities designed with their community in mind.

“I love that our students appreciated the buildings’ character,” Whitt continued. “But now we can say, ‘These buildings we call home are as nice and new as anything on campus, and we have this amazing community to share together within them.’”

The Honors College project represents a major investment in transformational undergraduate education at Baylor. It builds on a legacy of nationally acclaimed honors education and prepares the Honors College for even greater impact.