Around the State: Texas Baptist universities begin school year

Tiger Camp and the first chapel service all students were able to attend together since March 2020 marked the beginning of the new academic year at East Texas Baptist University. Tiger Camp welcomed more than 500 incoming freshmen and transfer students into the ETBU family with a weekend of outdoor games, social events, and information sessions designed to connect them with campus life. Fall semester classes began Aug. 16, and ETBU offered a free COVID-19 vaccination clinic the first week of classes. In the first chapel of the new semester, Senior Pastor James Webb of Bethesda Baptist Church in Marshall encouraged students to trust God is with them wherever they are. “Even though we are going through some challenges right now, he is still able,” Webb said. “Some of you are freshmen, and you’re coming into a situation that you’re not sure of. Or maybe some of you are seniors who are about to graduate, and you don’t really know what the job market will be like once you walk across this stage. I’m here to tell you with God on our side, we can make it through any and every situation. He is a God who is able to protect. He is a God who is able to provide. He is a God who has a purpose for us that is well-pleasing in his sight.”

President Bobby Hall welcomed students to Wayland Baptist University during a convocation chapel, ushering in the Fall 2021 term. Hall introduced the “Fuel the Flame” theme for this academic year based on Leviticus 6:13, which describes how priests in Israel were commanded to keep the fire burning all night for a sacrificial offering. “Just as the priests fueled the flame in Leviticus, let each of us fuel the flame of Christ in ourselves so that it burns white hot in our lives, on each of our Wayland campuses and in our world,” Hall said.

The Abilene Independent School District board voted to name an elementary school in honor of Joe H. Alcorta, who taught Spanish at Hardin-Simmons University for 45 years. Previously, he taught six years at Abilene High School and one year in Brownwood. He and his wife Liandra are longtime members of Beltway Park Baptist Church in Abilene, where he has been a Sunday school teacher more than 20 years. He also has been a workshop leader at the Hispanic Senior Adult Camp and other Hispanic Texas Baptist events.

Generation Z students—generally understood as young people born after 1996—demand a more active and interactive teaching style than their older siblings in the Millennial generation, Kimberlee Mendoza, dean of the School of Languages and Literature at Wayland Baptist University, concludes in her new book, Teaching Squirrels. Her findings reflect research she started six years ago, while working on her dissertation. Teaching Gen Z students “has to be 100 percent active,” whether in a classroom setting or elsewhere, she discovered. “Ninety percent of the students I encountered were kinesthetic (needing to move), and zero percent were auditory. When you think about the old lecturing styles, they are zoned out after 8 seconds,” she said. In writing Teaching Squirrels, Mendoza broadened the scope beyond the classroom—the original focus of her dissertation studies—to show how employers and pastors can use her research to reach their audiences, as well. The book also includes information about previous generations and the evolution of Gen Z. “The idea is to show how to reach all the different generations,” she said. “I think if you understand the different generations, you are more likely to understand the current one and why they are the way they are.”