December 2, 2002
New provost will guide Baylor's
quest to earn 'tier one' academic standing
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___WACO--If Baylor University's 2012 vision statement is the school's blueprint for the future, David Lyle Jeffrey is the contractor hired to execute the academic construction.
___Jeffrey, 62, has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at Texas Baptists' largest university. In that role, the Canadian will have primary responsibility for building a faculty and academic programs to promote Baylor into one the top 50 universities in the nation.
___That daunting goal stands at the center of Baylor 2012, a sweeping vision statement that calls for lowering student-teacher ratios and increasing expectations for faculty research while at the same time retaining Baylor's Christian character.
DAVID Lyle Jeffrey, newly appointed provost at Baylor University, will lead the academic charge of Baylor 2012, the university's aggressive new vision statement. (Billy Howard/Baylor Photo)
___Since his arrival at Baylor two years ago, Jeffrey has played a significant but unseen role as a first-line screener of faculty candidates at a time when Baylor has picked up the pace on faculty additions. One of his primary tasks as senior vice provost has been to promote the 2012 vision to prospective faculty and to round up the best candidates to bring that vision to pass.
___As provost, he will continue that task, as well as guide the overall academic program for Baylor's 777 faculty members and 14,200 students.
___The challenge of propelling Baylor into what academics call a "tier one" university drew Jeffrey from a 20-year teaching career at the University of Ottawa in Canada. "Tier one" refers to the annual rankings of universities by U.S News & World Report. Only 50 doctoral-granting universities make the top tier of schools, which is populated by the likes of Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
___"What's going on here at Baylor right now is an experiment in Christian higher education the scale, scope and potential influence of which has not been matched for at least 150 years in this country," Jeffrey said.
___Baylor, he added, "has the potential to do something perhaps as significant as anything that has happened in Christian education since the first universities were founded by Christians in the 13th century."
___That opportunity, as he sees it, is to take a liberal arts education, "the heart and soul of Christian higher education," and merge it into a "true research university" while maintaining a Christian character.
___This, Jeffrey said, "is something nobody has had the chutzpah to pull off--not even to dream of."
___Not only is this goal possible, he believes, it is a goal worth doing. So much that he believes he has been called by God to leave a comfortable teaching post in Canada and lend his academic and administrative skills to the task.
___"Baylor has a tremendous foundation, a tremendous tradition to build on," he explained. "Nobody else has the base both historically and in terms of a wide-ranged community--with not just financial resources, but what I would call social capital of the sort that can make this possible."
___That social capital includes Baylor's rich Baptist heritage, its roots in Texas life and influence throughout the Southwest, Jeffrey said.
___The traditional model of a Christian liberal arts school is being taxed today by the demands of a changing academic culture, he continued. "We're in a time in which narrowly defined notions of what constitutes Christian community are being put under challenge."
___Unlike some northern evangelical Christian schools that require strict adherence to a narrow set of doctrinal points or other creeds, Baylor offers a "'whosoever will may come' kind of spirit" in the Baptist context, Jeffrey said.
___"What we say instead to our ... candidates as they come here to consider jobs is, 'Talk to us about the nature of your commitment to God, the way it works out in the totality of your life.' ... We don't make them sign any documents. What we try to do is establish the integrity and the quality and depth of the commitment of the faculty person to whom we're speaking."
___What Baylor aspires to be is not so much "evangelical" inthe sense in which that word came to be known in the 20th century but rather "a community of Christian intellectuals dedicated to the service of higher education and the church," he said.
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY President Robert Sloan (right) stands beside David Lyle Jeffrey at a Nov. 19 news conference where Sloan announced Jeffrey's appointment as provost.
___"Evangelical" is a term that can cover a broad territory or a narrow territory, depending on who gives the definition, he explained. "We are committed to all the central doctrines of the faith, but there is a certain mode of discourse which is appropriate to Baylor, ... which is 'whosoever will may come,' more embracing."
___By "Christian community," Jeffrey said, he means a community that takes the teaching of Scripture seriously and eagerly applies it to modern life, regardless of the academic discipline concerned.
___"Baylor is a wonderful demonstration of the capacity of Baptist tradition to grow and develop in the character of its witness-bearing, ... not just in the religion department or the seminary, but throughout the rest of the disciplines. ... We're not just transmitting old knowledge, but also transmitting new knowledge that will make it possible for the church to bear witness to the world concerning God's care for the world."
___Becoming a research university provides the practical application, he said.
___To illustrate, he cited several new faculty members who teach engineering. One is developing new materials for hip and joint replacements. Another is developing a new generation of prostheses. Yet another is developing a robotic device to disable landmines without risking human life.
___"Now this is new knowledge that is being developed by our researchers, and they're teaching our students how to become those kind of people that create these sorts of things," Jeffrey said. "This is a wonderful development, up from the base Baylor always has had. It takes the strengths and the richness of this tradition and applies it in a very practical way."
___No other Protestant Christian institution is doing this, he insisted. "We're the No. 1 game in town."
___The key, then, is hiring and retaining top-level faculty who excel both at research and in classroom teaching.
___Critics of Baylor 2012, including some current and former faculty, contend that cannot be done--especially while maintaining the Christian and Baptist character that has marked Baylor through the years.
___Jeffrey, though, insists Baylor's goals are not incompatible. He points to recent faculty hires as examples of people who do combine those traits.
___Some critics have cited the university's most beloved professors, like English professor Ann Miller, as people who could not be hired at Baylor today. Miller, who has been named a master teacher for her creativity and excellence in teaching, does not hold a doctorate. New faculty at Baylor must have earned doctorates in their field and must be published.
___Jeffrey lauds Miller as a "magnificent woman" who is "wonderfully gifted, dynamite in the classroom, elegant, charming, a superb teacher."
___But could this favorite of students be hired at Baylor today?
___"Yes, but you cannot imagine that Ann Miller coming in the door to get hired at Baylor today won't have been pushed to have a Ph.D.," Jeffrey said. "An Ann Miller who is 28 years old in 2002 is the same Ann Miller in terms of all those personal gifts, ... but she also has a Ph.D."
___The culture of academia has changed dramatically, so that the expectations of what must be done to become a professor anywhere are different, he noted.
___Jeffrey believes Baylor alumni are right to ask, "Will my kids have classroom experiences with people like Ann Miller?" His answer: "You better believe it. We're hiring those kinds of folks."
___But beyond requiring doctorates, published academic work and research, what are the criteria used in faculty selection at Baylor today?
___"There's no pat formula for that," Jeffrey said, acknowledging many people might be more comfortable if he said, "Here's a formula so we'll know you're in."
___Baylor seeks "people who have not only developed a deep commitment to Christ but who have really tried to think about what that commitment might mean for everything they do in their profession--a sense of personal calling to take their God-given gifts and the abilities of their education and direct them some way ... in the service of the Lord," he said.
___Identifying such people requires spiritual discernment, Jeffrey said, "not to be narrow, but to see, to identify the passions of the heart."
___Although rooted in Baylor's Baptist heritage, the Christian community Jeffrey seeks to build today has room for faculty beyond the Baptist label. Speaking of the kind of person Baylor seeks to hire, he noted: "You can be that kind of a person and be a non-Baptist. You can be a Baptist and not be that person."
___Jeffrey himself brings a mixed background to the table. He was raised a Baptist in Canada, later attended an Anglican church and now is a Baptist again. He and his wife, Katherine, are members of Highland Baptist Church in Waco.
___Jeffrey earned a bachelor's degree from Wheaton College, then a master's degree and doctorate in English from Princeton University. In addition to more than 20 years at the University of Ottawa, he has taught at the University of Victoria, University of Rochester, University of Hull, Regent College and Peking University.
___He is a recognized scholar in medieval studies and in the Bible and literature. He has written or edited 12 books, including "A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature" and "Rethinking the Future of the University." His volume "People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture" was named one of the top 10 books of 1997 by Christianity Today.
___Even though he has not come from the Texas Baptist culture that has shaped Baylor in the past, Jeffrey said he values that influence and seeks to build upon it.
___"There's a lot to learn about Texas Baptist life," he acknowledged. "There will be things I will have to depend upon my colleagues for."
___However, Jeffrey contends Texas in general and Texas Baptists in particular have moved beyond a parochial perspective to become national leaders.
___"Texas Baptists are already expanding their influence. Texas is no longer at the margins of American culture, but at the center in some ways. Right now, Texas is having its day in the sun, ... and that is affecting Baylor. Far more students are coming to Baylor from other states than ever before."
___Jeffrey explained that he was "raised as a boy in a Baptist church where it was hard to grow up and not believe the only people who were going to be in heaven was us." Today, however, "Baptists in Texas I think don't really see it that way anymore. ... We see ourselves as people who are trying to be responsive to the gospel, trying to be faithful."
___This makes Baylor today "both Baptist and serving a wider Christian community," he said. "We are Baptist at root; that's still our heart. But we are serving a wider Christian community."
___With these changes in society and Baylor's aggressive move to become a top-tier research university, some Baylor alumni have questioned whether they will recognize their alma mater in 15 or 20 years.
___"Of course, you will recognize it," Jeffrey responded. "But there will be things about it that will be as different as there are things that are different between your grandchildren and yourself.
___"It would be impossible for us to be faithful to our past as well as to our present ... if we were to try to keep Baylor a museum. We would not be serving Baylor either in respect to the present or the future. We would be in fact hamstringing future generations by doing that. We mustn't do that. The challenges faced by students today are not the same as the challenges faced by students 30 years ago."
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