Texas Tidbits: Gift for Baylor soccer center

Baylor receives $1.5 million from Florida family. Baylor University received $1.5 million from Billy and Elaine Williams of Naples, Fla., that will create the Williams Family Soccer and Olympic Sports Center, an on-campus, $3.3-million facility approved by Baylor’s board of regents last October. The 14,500-square-foot center will be located within the Julie and Jim Turner Riverfront Athletic Complex. Construction is slated to begin this summer, with anticipated completion in early 2015.

Howard Payne CFO accepts post at Hardin-Simmons. Brenda Alexander, chief financial officer at Howard Payne University in Brownwood since 2001, has been named vice president for finance at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Brenda Alexandereffective May 1. Alexander has served 22 years in higher education finance and administration and 10 years in public and corporate accounting and finance. A graduate of Texas A&M University, she is a certified public accountant and a former partner in the Baldwin, Griffin and Company accounting firm in Hobbs, N.M. She and her husband, Eddie, are members of Coggin Avenue Baptist Church in Brownwood. They have five adult children and eight grandchildren.

DBU receives major gift from foundation. The Dallas-based Hoblitzelle Foundation gave Dallas Baptist University $250,000 for construction of Nation Hall, which will house the Gary Cook School of Leadership. The 20,000-square-foot multipurpose facility at the center of campus will house classrooms, meeting rooms, student reading areas and specialty academic libraries, as well as faculty and staff offices. In recent years, the Hoblitzelle Foundation has supported several DBU building projects, including the Tom and Alicia Landry Welcome Center in 2001, the Ebby Halliday Center in 2003 and the Patty and Bo Pilgrim Chapel in 2007.