Dallas Baptist University presented the DBU-Oak Cliff Good Samaritan Award to Scott Coleman and Leigh Gettman-Allen for their Christian leadership and service to the Oak Cliff community in Dallas. Coleman is associate director of Dallas Baptist Association and has served churches in the association 25 years. He and his wife Krisi, who is director of the intercessory prayer ministry at DBU, are members of Cliff Temple Baptist Church. Gettman-Allen was named Miss Oak Cliff in 1996 and 1998, serving as an ambassador for racial reconciliation. Her program “Racial Unity: It’s Up to Us” was shared in nearly every school in the Dallas Independent School District. She is co-author of Modern Images of America: Oak Cliff and serves as an adjunct professor of communications at DBU. She and her husband Billy attend Tyler Street Church in Oak Cliff.
Ten students from the Fred Hale School of Business at East Texas Baptist University will receive Certified Management Accountant scholarships from the Institute of Management Accountants. ETBU students receiving the scholarship are Cayden Adamson, Kara Scott, Slade Austin, Lillie Ziegler, Scott Bright, Joshua Whitmore, Blake Mullen, Haley Brown, Jacey Hicks and Skylar Wilabay. “We are so excited and appreciative that the IMA offers this wonderful opportunity to our students,” said Anthony Sawyer, ETBU associate professor of economics. “The scholarship includes the program entrance fee, registration fees for both of the required exams, study materials and three years of IMA membership.”
The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor signed a letter of intent with the Johanniter Academy of Germany for a three-year international student exchange program. Members of UMHB traveled to Germany in March to begin this relationship with an official ceremony attended by the U.S. Consulate from Leipzig and administrators from the Academy. The student exchange program is made possible by a grant from the German Apprenticeship Training Exchange Foundation. About six UMHB students from nursing, teacher education, and social work will be included in the first-year cohort through this exchange program. They will join six German students to gain professional training for two weeks at the Johanniter Academy in Leipzig, Germany, at the end of the fall 2023 semester. While in Germany, the selected UMHB students will experience German campus life, attend courses and shadow their partners in field placements. In the spring of 2024, the German students will visit UMHB for two weeks, spending time on campus, in class and shadowing the UMHB students in the cohort.
Wayland Baptist University posthumously promoted Bill Hardage, who served the university in a variety of administrative roles during a 40-year career, to vice chancellor emeritus. Wayland’s board of trustees voted to grant the title to Hardage. President Bobby Hall, who served with Hardage many years, praised his “remarkable passion for and loyalty to Wayland.” Hardage, who competed in track and field during his student years, was one of the first inductees into Wayland’s Athletic Hall of Honor. After he earned his undergraduate degree from Wayland in 1965, Hardage coached high school football and track in Lubbock and served as an assistant track coach and physical education instructor at Texas Tech University while earning a Master of Education degree there. He went on to earn a Doctor of Education degree from East Texas State University, now Texas A&M-Commerce. Returning to Wayland, he was track coach, chairman of the physical education department and director of special services.
Buckner Rio Grande Children’s Home received a $20,000 grant from the Maximus Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on supporting community development, health care and youth development programs. The grant will support Buckner’s programs to serve vulnerable children and families in the Rio Grande Valley through foster care and adoption services. Buckner Rio Grande Children’s Home enables foster families to live in Buckner-owned cottages, providing a consistent home environment for children who are in the state’s custody. Criselda Cuevas is the director of administration and operations for Buckner in the Rio Grande Valley.
Anniversary
100th for Highland Baptist Church in Waco. John Durham is lead pastor. About 4,000 people attended the centennial celebration, where the church raised $381,000 to help three church starts in Texas.
Retirement
David E. Garland from Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary after 26 years on the faculty as professor of Christian Scriptures. During his time at Baylor, he served two stints as interim president of the university—in 2008 to 2010 and 2016 to 2017—as well as two years as interim provost and nearly a decade as dean of Truett Seminary. Previously, he served 21 years on the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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