Around the State: UMHB and ETBU athletes honored for service

The American Southwest Conference named Price Peden from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and Leah Akridge from East Texas Baptist University as Community Service Athletes of the Year. The award honors a male and a female student-athlete who best display leadership and action in fostering community service on their campus and within the local community. Peden, a four-year soccer letterman from Flower Mound, served in leadership roles on UMHB’s Student Foundation, revival steering committee and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes leadership team. He worked with Love For Christ Food Pantry, Lighthouse Mentoring Program, UMHB Soccer Camps, Feed My Sheep and UMHB Champs Day. He volunteered with several soccer camps and community service projects, and he served as a mentor at Lake Belton Middle School. He was a weekly volunteer and small-group leader at Temple Bible Church. Akridge, who earned a letter four years with the Tigers softball team, is from Lufkin. She served as a Thrive mentor for underclassmen and as a volunteer intern at Immanuel Baptist Church in Marshall, where she also taught Sunday school to youth three years. During the summer, she worked in the nursery and taught the college group at First Baptist Church in Lufkin. She volunteered as a youth softball coach and in a local food pantry. She has been an active part of the ETBU softball team’s pen pal program, sending letters each week to patients in children’s hospitals. Akridge served on the leadership council for ETBU Fellowship of Christian Athletes and in a variety of community service projects.

East Texas Baptist University recently received a $100,000 grant from the East Texas Medical Center Foundation. This marks the third year the university has received grant funds from the foundation to help meet the growing need for mental health care in Smith County and the greater East Texas region. “Our desire is to stand in the gap between East Texas citizens and the need for mental health care in the region,” said ETBU President J. Blair Blackburn. He called the foundation’s support “crucial to the growth of ETBU’s clinical mental health counseling program and the increase in clients that the Community Counseling Center at ETBU-Tyler has been able to serve.” ETBU opened the Community Counseling Center in 2020 at the ETBU-Tyler site and launched a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling degree program at ETBU-Tyler in January 2021. The total number of students enrolled in the program at the Marshall and Tyler campuses has doubled since 2019 as a result of the additional ETBU-Tyler campus. “In a post-COVID world, the mental health needs of all ages have become more acute,” said Thomas Sanders, ETBU provost and vice president for academic affairs. “This investment by the ETMC Foundation provides care for the needs of people today and increases the capacity for more licensed counselors in the future.”

Several universities affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas were named to the list of Military FriendlySchools by VIQTORY, a marketing company for military personnel entering the civilian workforce. Dallas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University and the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor were named to the gold level in the category of private schools offering a doctorate. Wayland Baptist University was named to the silver level and Howard Payne University to the bronze level in the same category. Hardin-Simmons University also was named to the Military Friendly School list. Institutions that appear on the list of Military Friendly Schools are evaluated in areas such as student retention, graduation, job placement and loan repayment for all students and student veterans, using public data sources and surveys.