Baylor Line Magazine | Fall 2025

2025 | c o v e r a g e b e y o n d c a m p u s

M A G A Z I N E

VO IC ES Walmart’s CFO Puts People Over Profit

A NA LYSIS New Grads Face an Unstable Job Economy

PRO FIL E Rod Aydelotte Captures Life One Moment at a Time

DISRUPT I O N

F E AT U R E The World Through the Lens of Greg Davis

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The Baylor Line

contents The Baylor Line Staff KOURTNEY NERING (‘22)

Fall 2025 | Vol. 89 No. 1

opening

04 EDITOR’S NOTE Disruption takes many forms – the good, the bad, the changemakers, and the awakenings. Sometimes a chapter develops the story in a way which cannot help but color the rest of the story. Editor-in-chief Kourtney Nering reflects on blips that disrupted her timeline, and encourages readers to do the same.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

JONATHON PLATT (‘16, MA ‘19)

features

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

KASSIDY TSIKITAS (‘25) DIGITAL EDITOR

NINA UM (‘23, MA ‘25) EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE CEO

19 THE NOTICER Greg Davis has scoured the globe for all the right shots, collecting stories and award-winning scenes along the way

31 IT’S A NEW WORLD In 2025, grad school rules as enrollment increases during an unstable economy where AI is looming.

SAPHIANA ZAMORA (‘22) CHIEF OF STAFF

35 OWEN LIND & THE BIRTH OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AT BAYLOR

At age 91, Dr. Owen Lind vividly remembers the cacophony of righteous noise at the end of the tumultuous 1960s and how a different voice quietly emerged: a sudden awareness of the environment.

The Baylor Line Fellows KATE DUSEK (‘29)

41 A LOOK INSIDE DR. FRANCESCA PENNER’S LAB AT BAYLOR How early parenting and child outcomes connect, and the woman behind the work.

45 ROD AYDELOTTE ON THE ART OF MOMENTS After 44 years at the Waco Tribune-Herald and 16 years teaching at Baylor, photographer Rod Aydelotte pictures possibilities for students and life.

JASLYN HEALD (‘26)

KALENA JONES (‘25)

RENNE OLATERU (‘28)

49 THE ARTS CELEBRATE OUR COMMON HUMANITY Amjad Dabi’s journey from war-torn Syria to the Lone Star State was bittersweet, but a community of kind and caring people helped ease the transition for this Baylor alum.

53 SKYE PERRYMAN ROSE FROM BAYLOR TO BECOME A DEFENDER OF DEMOCRACY

As a litigator for two global law firms and now leading the nonpartisan legal organization, Democracy Forward, Baylor alumna Skye Perryman demonstrates what it means to stand up for our democracy.

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The Baylor Line Foundation Board of Directors classic

Officers

Directors

President

Kaye Robinson Callaway (JD ‘09)

Karen Walden Jones (‘86)

57 BL CLASSIC: A TALE TOO TRAGIC A final chapter is written to the international friendship of Gordon Wilkerson and Reza Emam.

President-elect

Sharon McDonald Barnes (‘78)

George Cowden III (’76, JD ’79) Laura Hilton Hallmon (’96, JD ’99) McKenzie Oviatt McEntyre (’20, JD ’24)

Secretary

Lindsey Davis Stover (‘99)

Jackie Baugh Moore (’86) Tony Pederson (’73)

Treasurer

Robert Morales (‘93) Chair of Editorial Board

Robert F. Darden (‘76)

Stacy Mays Sharp (’76) Maleesa Johnson Smith (’16) Madeline Sneed (’16)

voices 07

IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHN DAVID RAINEY From small town Angleton, Texas, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey’s life lesson of leadership begins with how you treat people.

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TALES FROM THE GREEN ROOM

The Baylor Line’s flagship podcast The Green Room brings conversations by Baylor alumni, for Baylor alumni, about the Baylor Family.

BEHIND THE COVER

The cover is our take on the cover of our Summer 1993 issue, featuring a character we’ve lovingly come to know as Summer Bear throughout this year’s content. Today a storm rips through, disrupting Summer Bear’s serene beach scene.

With a little bit of sand, some props, and a lot of elbow grease, the team came together to craft the set of this photo by hand.

The Baylor Line is published by The Baylor Line Foundation (formerly Baylor Alumni Association). Mailing address: PO Box 2089, Waco, Texas 76703.

Copyright © 2025 by The Baylor Line Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in Texas, USA. This publication and its trademarks are the property of The Baylor Line Foundation and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written permission from the Publisher. Website: baylorline.com. The Publisher reserves the right to change publication schedule without notice. The Baylor Line is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit and independent of Baylor University.

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The Baylor Line

Friends:

EDITOR’S NOTE

I cut my teeth as a young journalist the same way many Waco journalists do: reporting on whatever fell on my desk at the Waco Tribune-Herald. The beat was, at times, mundane. The hours were long. My car’s mileage was rising. And I often wondered what caused me to stray from my original bigwig plans to be a neurosurgeon that led me here.

Was it the genetics class I failed that dampened my confidence? Was it a journalism professor who opened my eyes to a career I’d never considered before? Was it just a wild hair? Perhaps it was a delicate combination of each — plus all of the moments in my life that seemed out of place at the time but led me here, right where I’m meant to be.

That’s what this issue of Baylor Line Magazine is all about –— Disruption. In fact, the very collection of pages before you went through its own series of twist, turns, and changes of plan before becoming the piece of art you see today. Early this year I set out on creating the Influential Issue, pondering the little things that ripple through life and the people who make a difference.

But we think Disruption — the title that stuck — more clearly defines the message we’re after.

And in rummaging through the archives for the perfect Classic article to close this issue, this quote from 1985’s A Tale Too Tragic stuck out to me:

When we read a chapter in a book, we cannot know in detail what is to come in following chapters — only what we have read so far.

Certainly, in the case of Gordon Wilkerson, his family, and the family of Reza Emam, the book is not finished. But this chapter ... has developed the plot in a way which cannot help but color the rest of the story.

Disruption is the uncertainty of chapter one, and the grand adventure revealed in the final chapter that you never could have foreseen. It’s taking a stand against the status quo and coming out on top. It’s those moments and decisions — big, little, offhand, and intentional — that sway the trajectory of our lives. Sometimes it’s the kick you need to get your life together. And sometimes it’s just the beginning of the story.

When you’re on page one, you can’t foresee how the book will end. I hope as you flip through this issue and read the stories of the Baylor Family you take a moment to reflect on the moments of disruption and influence in your own life.

All my best, K ourtney N ering ( ‘22 ) Editor-in-chief, The Baylor Line

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Hall of Fame A W A R D S

C E R E M O N Y

Save the date for February 28th in Waco, Texas. The best and brightest of the Baylor Family has a stage.

baylorline.com/event/hof26/

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VOICES

I N C ON V E R S AT ION W I T H

JOHN DAVID

RAINEY

John David Rainey leads with empathy, putting people over profit in the boardroom.

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From small town Angleton, Texas, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey’s life lesson of leadership begins with how you treat people.

By Jonathon Platt, CEO Editor’s note: In this episode of The Green Room, CEO Jonathon Platt headed to Bentonville, Arkansas, to chat with Walmart CFO and Baylor alumnus John David Rainey.

The two unpack Rainey’s career in three major companies: United Airlines — formerly Continental Airlines — during its time of transition in a post-9/11 world, PayPal in its transformation into a global tech company, and now Walmart. From throwing luggage with ramp workers to knowing every associate’s name, Rainey’s success story is rooted in his hands-on approach, family, perseverance, and creating communities in a corporate role.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOHN DAVID RAINEY

I’ve made a few small edits to this transcript for readability, clarity, and brevity. If you’d like to hear this interview in full, jump over to baylorline.com/john-david-rainey.

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Jonathon Platt: You’ve gone from earning your BBA and your MBA at Baylor in the early ‘90s to CFO roles at United Airlines, PayPal, and now, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. That’s a journey that’s taken you from flight decks to Silicon Valley to the Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. When you think back to being a young Baylor student walking across campus, if you were to draw a through line from that young man to the leader you are today, what would it be? What’s the same about these two men?

John David Rainey: Very clear to me is the emphasis on people and how you treat them. I never felt like I was the smartest person in the room or the most qualified, in some cases, but I always placed an emphasis on how you work with people, how you treat people.

I actually worked construction before college and during college, and you work with all walks of life there. There were a couple of summers where I was the only English speaker on the

construction crew, and I think that really informed me in terms of how I work with people and notably placing equal value on everyone regardless of your title, or where your parking spot is, or how big your office is. That’s been common from that young man all the way through who I am today. It’s important to me to know the janitor’s name and talk to them and greet them just like any other executive.

You’ve credited professors, like Dr. J. William Petty and Dr. Terry Maness, with shaping your leadership philosophy. Was there a class, or an assignment, or even just a single piece of advice from them that you still carry with you into boardrooms or your office every day?

I was very much an average student in undergrad, and I decided I was going to go straight through to grad school. I didn’t really have anything else going on at the time, so I applied and I did not get in. I remember that rejection letter and the punch in the gut it was 8

like it was yesterday. It was one of those seminal moments in your life where it’s like, “Wow, what am I going to do now?”

I went into the admissions office that afternoon, and I asked them to give me another chance. I said, “I think I’m the type of student that you would want in your program.” And the dean of the department said, “Look, you need to write a formal letter and apply for this.”

And I did. I wrote it that afternoon. About three weeks went by and they said, “We will admit you. We’ll give you that second chance.”

And it was that point in my life where I sort of changed my academic trajectory. I decided that I am never not going to achieve something again in life because I didn’t work hard enough.

And to be very clear, I was perfectly capable in undergrad, I just didn’t work hard enough. And I went on to make among the highest grades in my graduate class.

Dr. W. James Truitt, who was the head of the economics department, had the capstone class in macroeconomic theory – the class that everyone dreaded in grad school. And I think I made a 4.0 in that class. Because of my performance in that class, he actually asked me to work in the economics department selling Scantrons, and eventually to teach a few classes. I think that set me on a different trajectory.

Dr. Petty, importantly, in grad school was the one that really stimulated my interest in finance. We did a lot of valuation-type work

in his classes and that was the first time in my academic career where I felt like I really love this, and I would love to do this for a living. Up to that point, I had switched majors a few times, I didn’t know what I was going to do, and that was the crystallizing moment for me.

I had Dr. Maness in undergrad. We developed a great relationship after I graduated, and I have just huge respect for what he did as the head of the business school.

You rose through the ranks to CFO at United Airlines – which was Continental Airlines when you started – to the point where you were making billion-dollar decisions, while also learning the details of airport operations and aircraft maintenance. You approached it with what you described as a boots-on-theground approach. Where do you think you developed that leadership style?

I think there’s an element of servant leadership in there. I’ve never been afraid to roll up my sleeves and get into the details of things.

In fact, one of my favorite moments when I was at United was when I actually went out on the ramp and threw bags with the ramp workers, loaded a plane. I said, “We’re not doing this with cameras, this is not for publicity,” but I want to earn the respect of these people. And in the airline business, you largely have unionized workforces and that tend to have a more of a Rainey sits alongside other Walmart executives at the company’s 2025 Investment Community Meeting.

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The Baylor Line

Rainey was quoted on CNBC’s Cramer’s Mad Dash in July 2025.

combative or adversarial relationship with management, and I wanted them to understand that I’m no different than they are and that I want the same thing.

I think that came from my family, my parents, and even my grandparents – having that attitude that nothing makes you above any type of work or more special than someone else, and I think it’s important to demonstrate that with actions.

How do you think young leaders and executives can model your version of servant leadership?

I spoke to a group of students at Baylor several years ago, and I was telling them, “You’re getting ready to embark on this next chapter of your life and people are going to ask you, ‘What you’re going to go do?’” And I told them, “The more important question probably that will influence your career is how are you going to go do it?” It’s not the what, it’s the how, and I still believe that to this day.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about me that has enabled me to accomplish this on paper. But the way that I’ve comported myself, the way that I’ve operated with others over the years – I try to lead in a way that brings out the best of others and makes everybody feel like they have a voice. If you talk to my leadership team, they will tell 2025

you a common trait that I have is when I’m in a meeting, I want to hear everyone’s opinion, even from the lowest rank in the room.

You mentioned leading by example. How do you balance being an example and also being mindful that they’re watching you all the time?

I think that is one of the hardest things for executives. Every single action that you take, someone is evaluating, and in our worst moments, people are judging us. If you show up to meetings when everyone’s watching and you’ve got the best version of yourself, that’s great. But people are also evaluating you by the water cooler, and how you speak to colleagues, and all of those things, and that’s what develops your brand over time.

Sometimes it’s difficult in a business environment to demonstrate your faith.

Certainly, as a leader, I don’t want to push my faith on anyone else that may have a different belief. And the adage that I’ve always held to is a quote from St. Francis, “Preach the gospel at all times, use words if necessary.” And I think regardless of your faith or if you have faith at all, that’s actually a really good way to lead. Let people see who you are through your actions – in all times, at your weakest moments – and you actually don’t need to say a lot if you do that.

You spent nearly two decades in aviation before the opportunity presented at PayPal helped you realize you’d gotten comfortable and that you didn’t want to 10

fear new things. What goes through your head when you’re choosing to make those kinds of leaps, and how do you manage the learning curve of being in a new place – maybe being scared of new things – against losing confidence?

In 2015, I got an outreach from PayPal about becoming their CFO. And like a lot of us do, we list our pros and cons: What if I stay? What if I go? When I really reflected on what was motivating me at United Airlines, they were the wrong things, like what my next title will be, or how much money I’m going to make if I stay here. I realized that’s fleeting, you can go chase that anywhere. I wanted to get out of the car in the parking lot in the morning and be inspired to go into work and be excited about my job, and the idea of learning a new industry did that for me.

When I started at PayPal, the best way I can describe it is it was like learning a foreign language for me. I had become fluent in the airline business having worked there 18 years, and it’s humbling to be a senior executive and go to a new industry and have the lowest level people in the organization know far more than Rainey rings The Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange in January 2024.

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what you know.

Honestly, I felt like for the first six months, I was dragging down every conversation at work because I couldn’t keep up, and I was simply sort of drafting off everyone else. It was about six months in when there was an inflection where I felt like I’m started to contribute a little bit. Then, not only did I learn it, but I also learned it well in a way that I could go out and communicate it to investors and get them to understand why they should buy the stock and things like that.

And that experience emboldened me when Walmart called. I knew I can do this. It’s not easy, but I can go to the retail business now and do the same thing.

How are you staying well-balanced, happy, and healthy in life outside of work?

I feel like I bring a better version of myself to work when I have that balance. There have been periods in my career where I’ve just worked ungodly hours and have no balance, and that’s not sustainable long-term. I like to work out, and I realized a long time ago I have to do that in the morning, because if I don’t then something else is going to get in the way later in the day.

The other thing that’s always been important to me is spending the right amount of time with my family. I’ve been fortunate enough that I have been able to prioritize and achieve always having

The Baylor Line

Rainey served on Nasdaq’s board of directors. dinner with my family through the years. I don’t mind working late, and we work all the time with mobile devices these days, but for me, I always wanted dinner time to be that time when devices are down, and we have all four members of the family there. I remember when I first became CFO of United, I was flooded with requests for people to want to have dinner with me. I told my assistant after a couple of weeks, “I’m not going to do it this way.” I said, “Look, I will have two business dinners a month, and that’s it.”

And I don’t care if the president of the United States calls – if they’re number three, then they can get on the list for the next month, because I want to spend time with my family. You have to draw some lines. You have to determine what’s important to you. I think having that balance is really important, and it enables us to bring that best version of ourselves to the work environment.

One of my favorite stories in researching you was when you were at PayPal and you and the other leaders, through a volunteer program, learned that some of the employees at PayPal were visiting and utilizing a food bank. Can you walk us through, one, what you felt in that moment as the CFO, and then how you and the leadership team and the other key stakeholders involved ultimately made the decision to invest millions in raising wages, cutting healthcare costs for employees, and providing stock to every team?

There was somebody that had been running customer service for us – PayPal’s largest group 2025

of employees – and when the person leading that group decided to leave the company, I took it in addition to my CFO responsibilities, and I threw myself into that. It was humbling to run a group like that not having that experience.

As I talked to some of my leaders, there were stories about some of our employees that actually were needing to go to food banks, and there was actually one employee that had been sleeping in their car. And I was like, “How can that be?” This individual was in Omaha, Nebraska, and that didn’t seem right to work for a company that was seemingly that successful, but that success wasn’t flowing all the way down through its employees.

So I talked to my leaders in the customer service group. What could we do to make an impact here? And we decided that we could take a couple steps in terms of increasing wages and also giving them stock that would actually have an operational benefit to us. That was a group with a lot of turnover, and you spend a lot of time training an employee like that – all these things cost money. And what we did was take an analytical approach to this to say, “If we spend this amount of money to compensate them more, we actually think that we can reduce attrition and training costs by a certain amount to defray most of that cost.” From there, the CEO basically said, “We’re going to do this for all employee groups. We have an opportunity to pay people more appropriately than what they’re being paid today.” That really caught wings, and I was really happy to be on the leading edge of that.

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VOICES

TALES FROM

THE GREEN ROOM A podcast from

Hosted by CEO Jonathon Platt, The Baylor Line’s flagship podcast The Green Room brings conversations by Baylor alumni, for Baylor alumni, about the Baylor Family. Converging at Baylor, interviewees bring stories from all walks of life and diverge on journeys of extraordinary heights (literally), on the big screen, and across the world.

To hear full interviews with all the guests, visit baylorline.com/podcast/.

ALEXANDRA BENDA

Former United States Marine Corps Reservist; Deployment Strategist at Air Space Intelligence Q: “What was it like learning you’d be flying with the Marine One squadron?”

A: “When I was even at Baylor, I remember seeing that the first female that was ever a Marine One flew President Bush and President Obama. … It was in the news because that was a big deal. … I remember in the back of my head thinking, ‘Man, it’d be really cool to follow in those footsteps and get to fly the president someday.’ … Framing my career and perspective, I was able to be successful in my first six years [as a Marine], which enabled me to apply to go to the presidential helicopter squadron. … They don’t take just anybody.”

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AMANDA HAYES ROARK

Booking Producer at Bloomberg TV Q: “How do you make sure work and life stay in equilibrium while working in demanding positions?”

A: “That is the ongoing question. That’s something I’m always working on learning more about and fine-tuning. The example that comes to mind is this most recent election day, November 2024, with my fellow booking producers. They were talking about how everyone’s holding up with just a long day of anticipation. … I’m a believer in trying to stay calm, whatever way that looks like for any individual, even if the environment around you is stressful.

DR. JETER BASDEN

Retired Director of Ministry Guidance; Professor Emeritus of Religion Q: “If you could go back and talk to that student on campus who’s finding his way, is there anything, any advice you’d give him?”

A: “I’d say try to figure out who you are, a student. Understand your strengths, understand your abilities, and play to those strengths.

God created you uniquely. And then build on those strengths by your educational experiences. It’s not a one size fits all. Every student is unique. I would encourage them to explore right at the undergraduate level. Take courses that interest them and follow your interests. I think those are God-given as well.

Follow your strengths, build on who you are.”

REV. DR. ERIC MATHIS

Associate Pastor at First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C. Q: “Baylor prepared you spiritually for the work you do now. If there’s a student who’s experiencing some of the same curiosity, confusion, or even pain you were experiencing, what do you think they need to hear in order for them to know it’s going to be OK?” A: “Truett was very, very Texas Baptist. What I wish I would’ve gotten more of there was a more ecumenical perspective, a more global perspective on Christianity and on the church than just Texas Baptist. The church is about much more than that, and I wish that bigger picture would’ve been painted a little more for me.

“I would also say I’m someone who came out as gay later in life and I think a lot of that and coming out later is my own challenge. … I do think that any institution does a disservice to its students when they don’t give them the space to name and explore fully who they are and also to set that in the context of the God who created them.”

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Host Jonathon Platt brings The Baylor Line’s newly renovated podcast studio to life with heartfelt stories from the Baylor Family. | Photo by Sophia Malouf

DR. FELIPE HINOJOSA

John and Nancy Jackson Endowed Chair in Latin America; Professor of History Q: “How did being raised in a predominantly Catholic, MexicanAmerican sanctuary church impact your approach to teaching, to scholarship, and even to advocacy?”

A: “I’m not your typical history professor that’s going to give you a timeline of dates and quiz you on ‘What date did this happen?’ I’m a person of faith.

I’m a preacher’s kid. There’s probably going to be some preaching going on maybe every once in a while, not to proselytize or convert students, but to raise questions of morality and ethics in the history classroom. ... I want them to leave somewhat troubled, asking questions, and hopefully being able to go into different settings in their universe. I think that’s why people are trying to go after [history], or change it, or keep it from being taught, or exclude it from the curriculum. Because people know just how powerful it can be.”

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DR. CORETTA PITTMAN

Vice Provost for Community Engagement and Belonging Q: “What values did your predecessor Dr. Stephen Reid hold, and what are some of your plans to enhance those values even further in the Baylor Family?”

A: “One of the things I love about Steve Reed is that he’s a kind human being. I think sometimes in this fast-paced world that kindness is seen as a weakness, so I value the fact that when he’s engaging with people across ethnic groups or racial groups or gender or whatever, he’s just kind. …

He also believes in grace. When people make mistakes, he extends grace to them. I want to keep that in mind as well. I’m not going to be perfect, and I want somebody to give me grace in my role or just as a human. …

We ought to be looking out for each other, and that’s something that I have watched him do as well.”

AMBASSADOR DOUG SILLIMAN

President of Arab Gulf States Institute; Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Q: “You mentioned the high school teacher who really awakened your interest in political science in foreign service. What do you remember about their conversation with you?”

A: “Her name was Carolyn Hines. And I said, ‘Ms. Hines, I’m going to take Latin IV for my senior year,’ and she said, ‘That’s great. You’re the only Latin IV student, so you’re going to get an A and instead of studying Latin, you’re going to help me develop a curriculum and help me teach an English as a second language class.’ …

She also called my father and said, ‘Mr. Silliman, when Doug graduates from high school, as a present you should send him on a trip somewhere outside the United States. He needs to see something other than the United States, just to whet his appetite for the rest of the world.’ Mrs. Hines and her husband paid for me to go on a three-week trip to Europe. …For all of you out there who are in education programs, who are teachers, who want to be good teachers in the future, you really can make a difference with your students.”

LISA HANNA

Head of Public Affairs and Policy Communications at Delta Air Lines Q: “Before working in government and policy in Washington D.C. you worked at a local Waco TV station. What do you remember most about being a young journalist navigating the news scene?”

A: “When 9/11 happened, I remember being in the newsroom that morning.

I had just gotten to work and watched the plane fly into the second Twin Tower. … I remember going out to [President George W. Bush’s ranch in] Crawford … and just standing out there and witnessing the unbelievable situation that we were in – history. We had been attacked. Our president had just landed back in Texas. … Our world will never be the same. …

Just realizing that you’re actually getting to cover history in the making and that day in that moment changed lives for eternity.”

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WANT MORE OF THE GREEN ROOM? LISTEN TO FULL EPISODES NOW AT BAYLORLINE.COM/PODCAST

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Every pour tells a story.

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2025

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FEATURE

The Noticer

By Jonathon Platt (‘16, MA ‘19)

Greg Davis has scoured the globe for all the right shots, collecting stories and award-winning scenes along the way.

G

reg Davis (‘92) thinks there’s a meaningful moment of time between when you wake up and when you’re actually awake. “[It’s] right before you open your eyes. . . You wake up and then you open your eyes. But it’s brief. It’s little. It’s a sliver,” he explained.

This sliver of space between waking up and being awake can sometimes linger. Some mornings it can sometimes feel like the lights are slowly turning on, your body slowly warming up.

Then, there are the mornings when that space, that threshold, that sliver is very brief. When the lights come on all at once and you rocket awake in bed. A synapse connecting. The right neurons firing. Something clicks and you’re bolted upright.

Back in February, Greg had one of those mornings.

Before his eyes completely opened, before his mind was even fully in a rational space, a thought came to him and he knew it was Truth. He sat up.

“In that moment, before I opened my eyes, but when I was awake, I got hit by a lightning bolt. . . It was like, BAM!” It all became clear to him. Some people call these an epiphany. Greg calls this a God Wink.

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PHOTO BY CURTIS W. CALLAWAY

Left: Greg plays his mother’s piano — a statement piece in his Fort Worth art space. | Photo by Curtis W. Callaway Right: Greg shows off his art space, complete with prints of his works over the years. | Photo by Curtis W. Callaway

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f you were to walk into Illuminate Art Space in the Cultural District of Fort Worth today, I don’t know if I could predict what your eyes would be drawn to first. This is the home of Greg Davis’ award-winning photography, and where he and his wife, Amy — an artist herself in the jewelry world — host the shows of many artists.

There is so very much to admire in their perfectly curated studio — photos and prints and souvenirs and books of art and, naturally, an upright piano. The piano was Greg’s mom’s.

There’s a sign above the front door in memory of his great-grandmother. (She was adopted by George Loving — son of Oliver Loving. Yes, for you history buffs that’s the Goodnight-Loving Trail’s Oliver Loving.)

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Greg’s Baylor degree placed prominently and proudly by the front door. Greg promised he didn’t rearrange its placement just for my visit. I believe him. He’s a fourth-generation Bear. He

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had his dad’s Baylor ring ready to show me along with a few more collectibles from his family’s deep ties and love for the Green and Gold.

On every wall of Illuminate, perfectly placed in a precise and what you immediately know is a proper order, are the scenes from Greg’s storied career.

Dozens and dozens of scenes from his time as a photographer. Scenes that span the globe and stretch the edges of what stories you thought possible for a photo to tell.

Along the back wall of the front room, a television rotates through other works.

A mantle rests below the TV with a series of cameras and trinkets. One of those cameras changed Greg’s life. What today we would consider an awfully simple, considerably cheap camera captured the image Greg is most widely recognized for: The Blanket Weaver.

He purchased the camera, an Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom with only 4 megapixels (your iPhone has 12-times that), in the summer of 2004.

“When I took off around the world for a year, I knew I wanted to photograph, but I didn’t jump into a professional-grade system,” he said. “It was just, ‘I need something small, something to stick in my pocket.’”

That little silver Olympus fit the bill.

Greg chose to travel the world for a year in order to escape the years of pain and waves The Baylor Line

of tragedy he had just lived through. Though, “lived” might not be the right word there. When he left for his yearlong trip, Greg felt like he had survived what life had thrown at him . . . barely.

“From 2000 to 2004, I had five family members die,” Greg recounted. “I was attacked by a gang.

I’ve got 40 stitches in my head and neck from a violent gang attack. I lost 95 percent of my money in a bad financial move, which was a significant amount.

I was 33. I was working in big tech [when the industry was booming], so . . . it was significant. I was cheated on by a woman that I was in love with, and my heart was broken into a million pieces.

And then I flipped my car three times and rolled my car. Unscathed. I didn’t get on my knees at that moment, but it wasn’t long after that that I surrendered and that’s when... I quit drinking.”

Through God and a lot of hard work, Greg began to heal himself. He was saved

by Jesus, but he also had a life to rebuild. He met with a therapist.

“I went and talked to this therapist and I’m talking to him and in the middle of our session, he stood up and he goes, ‘Hi, my name is Mike and I’m an alcoholic.’

I was like, ‘Oh.’ He sat back down. He goes, ‘Greg, I have to share my story with you. I was in a bar when I was about your age…’ and I don’t recall the details right now personally, it’s been a while since I thought about it. But he said that someone broke a bottle, cut him, and I think . . . it might’ve been his neck too, but yeah, he also was hurt by someone in a bar with a broken bottle. Same thing.

“That was pretty powerful. For me, it’s almost like [a trail of] breadcrumbs, God Winks, I call 2025

them. [And I knew], ‘Oh, okay, I’m supposed to be here. I’m supposed to hear that.’ . . . When he stood up and did that and shared that, it was an epiphany. [Like God telling me], ‘You’re on the right path.’ Yet another God Wink in this line of these things that continues. Continues to this day.

They still continue. But after that, I got sober . . . and I sold it all in 2004. And I took off for a year.”

Through all those God Winks, the coincidences, and especially the tragedies, the invitation from a friend to join an epic year of globetrotting brought Greg to what he knew he wanted to do: photography.

“I was looking for a change,” Greg remembers.

“And so I was like, ‘Yes, I’m in.’”

So, with his little Olympus camera, off he went.

Over the course of their journey, Greg developed a friendly, healthy competition with his friend.

“They would go off and do their thing as a couple. And I would go off and do my thing solo,” Greg explained. “But we would circle back to where we stayed and we would share photos.

And he had the same exact cameras I had, same exact camera. So I’d show him pictures and he’d show me pictures . . . So it kind of created this — guys are guys — it created this competition, if you will, but it wasn’t spoken. Just ‘I need to get some better pictures tomorrow.’ And then we started both doing it just without mentioning it, and it created this sort of intention for our trip.

I knew I wanted to be on that trip taking great photos. The best I could. It was the chance of a lifetime.”

They traveled to 14 countries in nine months before reaching Vietnam. Greg finds himself on a trail in a remote village named Sa Pa. The people of Sa Pa are mostly Hmong, an ethnic group from East and South Asia. While it is not known exactly where the word “Hmong” comes from, Hmong people have, historically, suffered tremendous oppression, enslavement, abuse, and pain. Until the 1970s, they were often called “Miao” people, but this term translates to “barbarians” or “wild.” Literally, this translates as “Sons of the Soil.” I read where this loosely translates to our word for “slave.” Thankfully, Hmong leaders and scholars began advocating for a change. While “Miao” meant “slave,” they advocated for the term that better defined their people: “Hmong” or “free men.”

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“

I’d never seen a woman with blue and green hands before . . .”

This is, of course, a reminder of the power of language, the importance of our words. To believe oneself a slave will keep you trapped in enslavement. To break free, to free yourself of your demons and debts, to change your own mind, can open the world to you. But only if you are open to it. Only if you’re ready. Sometimes God will help you with the readiness — heck, sometimes he’ll pick when you’re ready for you — but the rest is on us. It takes a leap of faith on our part.

Like Greg took when we set out with a camera to travel the world. One morning on his trip, while in that village of Sa Pa, Greg woke up freer than he had ever been. And God was waiting there with all the readiness.

While walking along the dusty trail outside Sa Pa, Greg saw a woman ahead of him.

“She was in front of me and the grass was tall.

We were walking through on a single track trail, and her hands were flashing as she’s walking away from me, blue and green,” he recounted.

That stood out to Greg. He noticed the uniqueness, the beauty.

“I’d never seen a woman with blue and green hands before, so I said, ‘Hello, excuse me. She turns around, we’re in the mountains, and it kind of spooked her, so I backed away and kind of belittled myself a little bit. I asked her, without speaking her language, with [sort of] signing, pointing to my own hands.”

“What’s on your hands?” he asked.

“She looked down at her hands. She had to think for a moment to try to explain what she did.

And she pointed to herself, she made a weaving motion. She tapped each hand, she dunked them into two vats of something I didn’t know exactly, and I just... something told me, ‘Have her hold her hands out.’”

A God Wink. A nudge because Greg was ready.

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“I took one picture with that camera and didn’t think anything about it. She turned around, she walked off, looked at me like I was crazy. And off I went. Didn’t think anything about it. I’d The Baylor Line

been doing this for nine months. So it was just connecting with people.”

Greg looked up to God and said, “Thank you.

That was lovely.”

2025

The Blanket Weaver is the photograph that changed Greg’s life. He has been searching for find these hands again for over 25 years. | Photo courtesy of Greg Davis Photography

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He had no idea what that single photograph would open for him. He just had gratitude for the brief moment of connection and the opportunity to do what he loved. As a free man.

When he made it back to the United States, a friend recommended he sell his photographs.

“Why not? I’ll give it a shot,” he said.

From the first day at this first tent, that photo — The Blanket Weaver — has been a hit.

“From the very first day, I haven’t been able to print them fast enough really. It’s been unbelievable. And this image in particular has surfaced as my signature piece, really has helped define my work and my career. And it’s been very special to me.”

To be honest, I think Greg is still surprised by its success. Maybe he is not surprised by the photograph’s success or that the story of this woman connects with just about everyone who sees it. But, in his humble way, Greg struggles to understand why he was given the opportunity to capture that moment. He still scratches his head at why God picked him.

Of course, it is because of that very humility — and the story of love, family, tragedy, struggle, surrender, and salvation that built Greg’s humble nature — that God chose him to notice this scene and capture it. To say he is still obsessed with it 20 years later is an understatement. Give him a few minutes and he will tell you everything.

Though he only had a brief moment with this woman, he has studied and researched and built a broader understanding of such a simple photograph of colorful hands. I’ll let him explain.

“It is all based on Indigo dye. She’s a Black Hmong villager, and this is pre-oxidized and oxidized Indigo. This is to dye the hemp, and this is to dye the silk. They embroider with the silk and they use the hemp to do the whole outfit.

She wears this key ring. Is it a key ring? Is it a wedding ring or is it part of her work?”

See what I mean? Obsessed.

But, wait. There’s more.

“One of her pinkies is half a digit longer than the other. If you look at them [on me], they’re even.”

Greg held up his hand to show me what he meant. Then he pointed back to The Blanket Weaver’s pinkie.

“Here, they’re a little bit longer. And this pinkie is about half a digit longer. And then if you draw a fist really strongly, really bear down on closing 25

your fist, pay attention to where your pressure points are, pay real close where you feel pressure.

Really squeeze. Where are your pressure points?

So she’s left-handed, seems to be, she’s working harder with this left hand than she is with her right hand. So I’ve always said I wanted to go back and try and find this woman.”

Why, I asked Greg.

It’s simple, isn’t it?

“This woman changed my life,” Greg answered with what seemed like the very beginning of tears and a wide smile.

R

emember how Greg shot awake in bed one morning a few months ago?

The God Wink that left him shouting, “AHA!” That realization was Greg knew he had to go back to Vietnam. It was time to find her and offer his sincere thanks for changing his life.

He had some doubts. It was kind of last minute. Visas would be difficult to get. Flights would be expensive, if available. But the doors kept opening. Easy visa approval. The flights fell right into place. The right guide — a friend of Greg’s with a world of connections through this region of Vietnam — was available.

“I wanted to be in those mountains on March 9th and looking for this woman,” Greg explained.

“I connected with [my friend, Phil], and went over to their place. I sat down and I said, ‘I’m here to find a woman.’ [Phil] said, ‘Well, can you tell me a little bit more?’ I said, ‘Twenty years ago, I was in the mountains here and I took a photograph of a Black Hmong villager with indigo blue and green hands, and I want to try to find her. And I wonder if you can help me.’ And he said, ‘I think we might be able to help you.’

And [Hua], his wife, said, ‘Well, can I see the picture?’ I showed them the picture. She looked at the picture. She’s like, ‘Let me see the picture of her face.’”

At this point, Greg paused. He sighed. There was grief, regret in his voice. “‘I don’t have a picture of her face,’ [I explained]. And she’s like, ‘What?!’ She goes, ‘All you have is this?’ And I was like, ‘That’s all I have.’”

She handed the photo back to Greg and she walked away. She walked off. A fool’s errand to find some woman with indigo hands in a village of people who weave indigo with their hands.

The Baylor Line

The Apprentice, Burma | Photo courtesy of Greg Davis Photography

Nectar of Immortality, India | Photo courtesy of Greg Davis Photography

The Wigman | Photo courtesy of Greg Davis Photography

Rudraksh Baba, India | Photo courtesy of Greg Davis Photography The Lair of M.N., India | Photo courtesy of Greg Davis Photography 2025

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Greg stands in front of a print of his photo, Rudraksh Baba, taken in India. | Photo by Curtis W. Callaway “Here,” Phil said. “Let me introduce you to my two adopted daughters, Cha and Zuh.” Cha and Zuh came in. Maybe they could help scour the village for The Blanket Weaver. They asked to see the photo. Cha held the photo, her eyes widened. Greg was confused. Cha set the photo down on the table and held her hands out.

One pinkie was shorter than the other.

They were all wide eyed and gape-mouthed.

Soon, they set out — Greg, Phil, Cha, and Zuh — looking for The Blanket Weaver. It had been 20 years. As they walked, Greg struggled to put the pieces back together. The terrain had changed. Or had it? There were new houses. Or were there? The trails had merged together. Or had they? He thought this was the right place, but, even if it was, he knew the odds were slim.

“It had really changed, because I had spent the previous two days trying to find this trail that I thought that I was on 20 years before, but I couldn’t because there’s so much development,” Greg said. He knew they needed a better system.

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Divide and conquer wasn’t working. Phil had an idea.

“So, here’s Phil and his family,” Greg explained. “Well, [Phil] said, ‘Okay, girls, we’re going to go downand here’s the deal.’”

Phil asked a few clarifying questions. She was Black Hmong, right? Right. It was 20 years ago, right? Yes. How old did Greg think the woman was at the time? Greg guessed 45 or 55.

Something in that range.

“Well, that’s going to make her 65 to 75,” Phil said. “The average lifespan in this area for ethnic minority, it’s about 55. So, we’re looking for a woman with [blue and green indigo died on her] hands [and pinkies that aren’t the same length]. She might not even be around. So, we’ve got a real challenge ahead of us here, but we’re hopeful.”

The next day they met back up.

Phil said he had run the numbers. Greg recounted the conversation.

“There are 7,000 Black Hmong,” he said.

“There might be a Black Hmong village, and then a Red Hmong village, and then a Striped Hmong. And on and on, so they’re kind of The Baylor Line

mixed. But [Phil] goes, ‘Of the villages down there, there’s about 7,000 people, Hmong people, in four different villages. And they’re kind of spread out a little bit. Of that, 3,500 are female.

Half, so 3,500. Of 3,500 women, how many are in the age group beyond life expectancy do you have?’ [Phil] goes, ‘I can only estimate, but you’re probably looking for maybe 100 women.’”

Greg paused to let that sink in.

“In this whole valley,” Greg paused again.

“There might be 100 that are 65 to 75 years old.

The odds were not in their favor. But they had hope. And a plan.

“It was raining the night before pretty heavily so it was really muddy and really challenging, and trails were super challenging,” Greg recalled.

“But we made our way down into this valley with these two Hmong girls, just me and [Cha and Zuh]. And they were excited.”

They were Greg’s runners. When they would see a house or when someone had told them where a house should be, the girls would run up the hill. Their father had given them a script.

First, Greg explained, they needed to ask if there was an old woman in the house. “Because if there’s not an old woman, sorry, got to keep moving. There’s no time to be farting around with it. They would just ask, ‘Is there an older woman?’ And, if not, say, ‘Okay, thank you so much.’”

If there was an older woman, their next job was to find out her age. Sixty-five to 75 or so.

If they found an older woman about 65 or 75, then the game was on and they could try to communicate with her. Ask to see her hands, compare the photo, tell the story. See if she remembered meeting an American photographer on a trail in the valley below over two decades ago.

It was all hit and miss. Sometimes the age would match, but not the hands. Other times, the other way. It was an adventure, but there was a growing sense of dread. Was this all in vain?

After an hour and a half, Cha let Greg know she had a lead. A woman named Song matched the demographics. He made his way up and stood by as Cha and Song began exchanging bits of information in Hmong. The woman confirmed a foreigner took her photo years ago.

She described him as having a beard, darker than Greg’s is now.

“This was the first real hit we got,” Greg 2025

explained.

He asked Song to hold out her hands. The pinkies were a little off. Greg felt like it was not exactly the same as his photo, but enough to warrant further questions. Things kept lining up.

“We’ve been talking for about 20 or 30 minutes so far,” Greg recalled. “And I’m going, ‘Oh my God, did we just find her?’ What do I do now?

Hug her? No? I don’t know yet. ‘Can you ask her where she took the photograph?’ And she walked out on her porch and she pointed up, and it was all rice terraces, and there was a water buffalo up here, and there’s a tree up there. She goes, ‘Right up there by that tree.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think this is her. I don’t remember crossing the river that day.’”

Close. So close.

Greg snapped a few pictures of Song’s hands, and made sure to take a photo of her face this time, too. He grabbed a few videos. All just in case. But he didn’t think it was her. He didn’t remember crossing the river that day.

No luck the rest of the day, but Greg was still thinking about this woman when he made it back to his room that night.

Circle of Gratitude Too, Kenya | Photo courtesy of Greg Davis Photography

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He dug through his email and found his journal entry from that journey in March 2005.

“I had never read it since then, I don’t think.

So, here I was in my cabin with this possibility, and I read my journal. And in my journal it says, ‘Went on a hike today in Sa Pa, beautiful area, met some locals, even skipped some rocks with a local. Hiked about six or seven hours.’

Ever the showman, Greg paused for dramatic effect, a smirk curled on the side of his mouth.

Then, his voice sprang to life with cheer and he thrust his hands in the air.

“I’m like, ‘Holy shit! Skipped rocks with kids!

Where do you skip rocks?! In. A. River. Could it be? Yes, it could have been! So, now I go back to Phil and I’m like, ‘Guys, you’re not going to believe this but I did cross that river that day, and we need to go back up. We need to go back up there and just keep talking.’”

They went back the next day to further investigate. Greg brought the photo back out.

In the background of the photo, behind The Blanket Weaver’s hands, you can see a red scarf.

Song recognized it.

“She goes, ‘That red, my sister bought me that red sash,’” Greg explained. “It was kind of like a jacket thing, a sash. [The woman continued,] ‘My sister bought me that in a market about 20 something years ago. My sister and I wore this.’

And Phil goes, ‘Holy shit.’ I was like, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Black Hmong don’t wear red. They don’t wear red. That Red Dao wears red, that’s not a native Black Hmong thing to be wearing.’ And for her to point out that her and her sister bought that in a market, and they both wore it during this timeframe is really telling.

“So we asked her, ‘Can you come back up to Sa Pa? And we’ve got some indigo dyes, and would you put your hands in indigo so we can see more of the lines?’”

Song agreed and the next day showed up in a beautiful, handmade outfit.

Here, the storyteller in Greg takes over. He has to explain the significance of what she wore that day.

“So she came up, full dress, full dressed in her outfit. Women work on their outfit for a year.

They grow the hemp, they harvest the silk, they grow the indigo, they weave and embroider these outfits all year long. And then for Tet — their New Near in January — they all come out in their new outfits. And they wear those outfits while they’re working on the next year’s outfit.”

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This meeting was in early March. Song’s outfit would only have been completed two months prior.

“When she was sitting around the house she was just regular sort of hanging in loose clothes.

But when she came out on the town she had this outfit,” Greg explained.

She dunked her hands in the blue and green indigo the group had prepared. It all looked scary close. The lines matched up. Greg was busy photographing the whole thing. All while standing in awe and amazement.

“I was 80 percent sure at that point,” he said.

Greg collected the photos — the original Blanket Weaver that had captured so much fame and the ones he just documented. He sent them to a contact for forensic analysis. Could it prove this was, indeed, the same woman? Three hours later, they heard back. A 95 percent match.

That’s when the celebration began. They united all of Song’s family.

Before going back up the hill for what turned out to be Song’s celebration, as a means of double-checking, Amy had compiled a list of other analysts and sent them to Greg. He scanned the names and that night had sent the photos to one that stood out in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“The Hmong people partnered with the Americans during the Vietnamese war,” Greg explained. “And when the Vietnamese won the war, the Hmong people were ostracized. A lot of them had to get the heck out of Dodge, especially those that were really embattled with the Americans and fighting the Viet Cong. So, a lot of those people ended up in St. Paul, Minnesota.

So, here’s this guy. I look down the list, bing, it just jumped out at me. [I remember thinking,] ‘St. Paul, oh my God, he’s going to care. He’s going to know about the Hmong’s plight. He might even have friends that are Hmong being from St. Paul.’ So, I fired one email to him, including the first report we got back and the pictures.”

The next day, Greg was leaving for the airport, when up rides Song on a motorbike. She had a bag, in it, a gift for Greg.

“In that bag is that outfit that took her a year to make that she was wearing a few days before.”

Greg couldn’t believe it. Without a translator, he couldn’t convey the depths of his gratitude, but he did his best. They smiled with each other, shared a private moment of gratitude and joy.

The Baylor Line

“And the guy next to me on the airplane got an earful because he was the first person to hear this story,” Greg said with a laugh. “Well, I get back and I got sick on reentry back into the U.S., and I’m in bed for, I don’t know, four or five days.

And I get an email, out of the blue. Ding! Elite Forensic Services from St. Paul, Minnesota. Super professional drawings . . . all these technical terms for all these locations [on the hands], and this, and that, [and how] this doesn’t change, and a full analytical opinion of hands, pictures from The Blanket Weaver in 2005 to Song’s in 2025.”

Another paused. And a solemn look “100 percent not a match.”

“NOT a match?!” I blurted back at Greg.

“Not a match. 100 percent,” Greg confirmed.

He said the person from St. Paul explained, “‘Any person who gave you the positive, I challenge you to get in touch with them, but you’re probably not going to hear back from them because no one’ — these are his words — ‘no one in their right mind would say that this is a match. This is not the same person.’”

I could feel the grief in Greg’s voice. I asked him how all this made him feel.

“I’ve been wanting to do this forever,” Greg said. “Twenty years of this. This was the thing.

And to be so close, but it turn out not to be the one . . . I’m really torn.”

“I have to look at it as how it happened is how it’s intended to happen. Otherwise, it’ll haunt you,” Greg said. “Life will haunt you if you have these expectations. Just let it be what it is. . . . I’m just the vessel for something greater, and now that story continues on.”

What seemed like tears were forming in the corners of Greg’s eyes again. He broke eye contact with me. Maybe trying to keep himself grounded. He glanced up. A little smile came back. Maybe he was saying a short prayer of thanks for the journey, even despite the outcome.

As he glanced back down, he looked over at Amy. She was watching him. They caught each other’s gaze.

Just like that. I watched as Greg relaxed. His pain gone. His angst washed away.

Greg Davis may not have found The Blanket Weaver, but — in that brief moment — I watched and saw 2025

all I needed to know. Greg had found the woman that mattered to him in Amy. The rest is all just a journey.

B

efore I left Illuminate that day, Amy and I had a moment to chat.

She fixed me a glass of water and we talked. When you talk to Amy, her eyes make you feel like the only person in the world. They’re bright and captivating. She doesn’t just give you her attention, she focuses intently on you. As if anticipating every syllable.

She told me about how she and Greg met and their story of dating long-distance — during COVID, I might add. Before they met, she had prayed for something.

She said it took a while after her divorce, but, finally, Amy found herself praying to meet someone. She told God she was ready.

“But, I had one request,” she said. “Can this person be someone who notices things?”

A Noticer of life’s most precious moments, the big things, and the important-but-quiet details, the small things, the beauty in others, and the uniqueness of a moment.

Turns out, God was listening.

Because He gave her Greg.

A fellow artist, a fellow traveler, a fellow tender, loving, vibrant soul, but, most importantly to Amy, a Noticer.

Greg and Amy admire a few of Greg’s works. | Photo

by Curtis W. Callaway

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FEATURE

IT’S A

NewWorld

By Leslie George

In 2025, grad school rules as enrollment increases during an unstable economy where AI is looming.

W

hile there may be no signs that a tepid United States economy is abating this fall, enrollment in law schools and other graduate programs across the country is booming. Graduate enrollment in the U.S. reached over 3.1 million students this past spring, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, surpassing pre-pandemic levels by 7.2 percent. Some 4.5 percent of those are enrolled in law schools.

This trend is not new, said Dr. Ray Perryman, president and CEO of The Perryman Group, an economic research and analysis firm based in Waco. “We also saw it during the 2008 economic crisis,” Perryman said. “When uncertainty or an economic slowdown is affecting opportunities, the relative attractiveness of an additional degree increases.”

“The economy is normally a factor when it comes to graduate enrollment,” said Dr. Christopher Rios, Baylor’s associate dean for enrollment management. When the job market is down, he noted, those already in

31

the workforce who lose jobs or struggle to advance in their careers often see graduate school as a way to enhance their resume.

“At the same time,” he added, “many recent bachelor’s graduates see grad school as a good place to weather the storm.”

Unemployment for U.S. college grads between ages 20 and 24 is at more than a 10-year high, according to The Wall Street Journal, which also reported that entry-level hiring is down 17 percent since April 2019, and employers are increasingly demanding three to five years of experience for jobs that new graduates used to get. Encoura reports the unemployment rate for recent graduates nationally is 5.8 percent. That number jumps to 52 percent for four-year college graduates who are “underemployed,” defined as holding a job that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree, according to Inside Higher Ed. Another factor that makes graduate school attractive is that it’s a good investment, said Perryman. Graduates with advanced degrees in health, business, and law are not having the same problems as other

The Baylor Line

undergraduates when it comes to finding jobs, he noted. Baylor Law has proved exceedingly successful on that front this year, according to a Reuters analysis of data released in 2025 by the American Bar Association. Baylor Law achieved the thirdhighest employment rate in the nation for its 2024 graduating class. Some 94-95 percent of Baylor Law’s juris doctor graduates secured full-time, bar-passage-required positions within ten months of graduation.

Baylor came in just behind Cornell Law School, which had a job fulfillment rate of 96.43 percent, and No. 1 Duke, which had a 97.83 percent rate.

Baylor Law School graduates have long been recognized as practice-ready, and that reputation continues to resonate strongly with employers. “While the national legal market is currently absorbing new graduates at an exceptional rate, we are also seeing sustained demand for experienced talent in our region,” said Jeremy Counsellor, dean of Baylor Law School. “Employers consistently seek out Baylor Law School graduates for their rigorous training, practical skills, and ability to contribute immediately in professional settings.”

Applications to Baylor Law School for fall 2025 have increased by nearly 40 percent year over year, and the applicants’ academic credentials have also improved.

Besides an uncertain job market, Dean Counseller offered an additional explanation for the drive in applications. “The recent change in LSAT format may have prompted some students to apply sooner than they otherwise would have,” he said.

Despite the increase in applications, Baylor Law is not expanding its overall enrollment beyond current levels. “We want to maintain our low student-to-faculty ratio and the collaborative, student-centered environment that defines Baylor Law School,” Counseller said.

In other news for law schools around the country, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on affirmative action in college admissions, racial and ethnic diversity among law school students remained stable

2025

10-Year High The current unemployment rate for U.S. college grads between ages 20–24

3.1 million Students enrolled in grad school in the U.S. in spring 2025

40%

Percentage that applications to Baylor Law School increased for fall 2025

1 in 4

Number of jobs that could be impacted in the near future by generative AI

17% 5.8% 52%

Percentage entry-level hiring is down since April 2019

Unemployment rate for recent college grads

Percentage of four-year college grads who are underemployed

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in 2024, with the percentages of Black, Hispanic, and Asian first-year juris doctor students nearly the same or slightly improved compared to 2023.

Another reason for the grad school surge, Perryman explained, is because of the way AI is impacting jobs. “It’s a nuance that didn’t exist in 2008,” he noted. “In 2025, we are seeing people who want to level up their skills to deal with the dramatic changes coming for some occupations.”

Current estimates indicate that as many as one in four jobs could be impacted by generative AI, Perryman said. “This strongly suggests that adaptability and continuous ‘upskilling’ will be absolutely critical,” he continued, “and schools should be preparing students with this inevitable evolution in mind.”

Consultant Dr. Mary Landon Darden, president of Higher Education Innovation, LLC, agrees. “We are seeing a shift into programs that offer higher education certificates that don’t require a traditional graduate education,” she said. “Sometimes employers want to keep the employee but want their skills in certain areas to be enhanced — and that is attractive to the student. A certificate program can be more user-friendly than a traditional graduate education.”

In that respect, Baylor’s Graduate School, where enrollment is up this year, Rios said, is on course: “The fastest growth area over the past five years has been in our professional, online, and hybrid programs specifically designed to meet the needs of working professionals.” Baylor is also beginning to offer graduate certificates based on credit-bearing graduate courses that give specialized education training in ten distinct areas, including business analytics, cybersecurity, learning design and technology, and RF and microwave engineering.

“Every major technological revolution in human history, dating back to the wheel about 5,500 years ago, has ultimately created more jobs than it displaced,” noted Perryman, “but it also made some skills

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As the use of AI rears its head into learning spaces, how do students and professors keep up? Professors featured in The Baylor Line’s partner article, How AI Has Influenced Higher Education–And How Baylor is Hopping Onboard, chime in.

“As far as I know, the students are using [AI] for all kinds of things. Now if the question is, ‘What are they allowed to use it for?’ That’s a different question.”

Dr. Pablo Rivas, assistant professor of computer science

“If you’re using it as a tool, you can do more. And that’s great for society, I think. Baylor has reached a good balance in demonstrating that we’re thinking about these things and actively investigating AI ... and at the same time, allowing professors to maintain their academic freedom.”

Dr. Andrew Freeman, assistant professor of computer science

“The more I used it, the more I started doubting myself as a writer and a thinker. You can’t bury your head in the sand anymore. You really have to educate yourself, because otherwise you’re just going to get plowed over and left behind.”

Dr. Kara Poe Alexander, managing director, Center for Writing Excellence

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obsolete along the way.”

For example, he points out that while some legal firms may increasingly use AI for certain tasks, including contract analysis, e-discovery, and legal research, AI-related fields requiring legal expertise are simultaneously emerging, for example around data privacy, cybersecurity, the environmental impact of data centers, copyright law, and AI regulation.

Looking ahead, Baylor’s Christopher Rios noted that nobody knows if this surge in grad school enrollment will continue.

Analysts predict that falling birth rates after the 2008 economic crisis have precipitated a potential steep decline in undergraduate applications starting this year, known as the “demographic cliff.”

“It’s just hitting colleges now,” he noted. “We’re all waiting to see how the demographic cliff may affect graduate enrollment. My guess is that the growing need for advanced degrees in the professions will mitigate the kind of headwinds undergraduate enrollment is facing.”

And the demographic cliff may not be an issue in every college. “From the reports I’m seeing, enrollment in graduate and undergraduate programs is way up for HBCUs and traditionally women’s colleges,” said Darden. Her explanation is simple: “Why would any student want to go to a college where they will be discriminated against,” she said, pointing to President Donald Trump signing executive orders against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts and his record of putting women’s health in danger.

“On June 27 of this year, the president at the University of Virginia, James E. Ryan, was forced to resign under pressure from the Trump administration’s Justice Department because of the university’s DEI efforts,” Darden said. “It’s monstrous. To me, it makes perfect sense that wherever you start legalizing racism, people who are impacted are going to avoid those places.”

Rios and Darden are concerned about other changes in federal policy that may impact enrollment. “Reductions in research

2025

funding and student visas will have a large and immediate effect,” Rios explained.

“Many research universities have already begun shrinking their incoming classes.

And the recently unveiled efforts to end the federal GradPLUS loans could have a devastating effect — either by limiting the range of people able to afford graduate school or by exacerbating the existing student debt crisis.”

“Federal partisan meddling in programs like the Public Service Loan Programs (PSLP) will not only impact enrollment but, ultimately, society,” posed Darden. “The PSLP has made law school more affordable for public interest lawyers who want to get into legal aid, public defense, and nonprofit work,” she said. “As of March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Department of Education to exclude participation by nonprofits that he doesn’t agree with — those that work for women’s health or immigrant rights, for example.

“It’s outrageous. It’s flatly unconstitutional.

And that’s just one.”

Looking ahead, Darden said her mission is nothing less than transforming higher education. “Fifty percent of college courses were already online before COVID,” she noted. Only 15 percent of prospective college students will be in the traditional 18 to 24 age range, she added. “Eighty-five percent of undergrad and graduate students in the future will be non-traditional.”

The enrollment demographic cliff can probably be made up for — institutions of higher education will just have to be proactive, not reactive.

“Those of us in higher education need to be curators now,” Darden continued, “and look at industry and technology as partners, and offer STEM programs along with how government should work, and have students also understand subjects like environmental protection law and how it all fits together.

Our students are global now, and include working professionals, retired boomers, and folks switching careers, as well as teenagers.

It’s a new world.”

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FEATURE

OWEN

LIND and the Birth of

Environmental Studies at Baylor

By Robert F. Darden, Editor Emeritus

The building of a better environment will require in the long term a citizenry that is both deeply concerned and fully informed. Thus, I believe that our educational system at all levels has a critical role to play.”

–President Richard M. Nixon

A

t age 91, Dr. Owen Lind still vividly remembers the cacophony of righteous noise at the end of the tumultuous 1960s — Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement — and how a different voice quietly emerged, one that captivated the Baylor Family: a sudden awareness of the environment. Students and faculty alike turned to Silent Spring, A Sand County Almanac, Future Shock, and The Greening of America. And Baylor heard.

Lind remembers — because he was there.

The first official reference at Baylor to the “environmental movement” — a grab bag of very real concerns related to pollution, renewable energy, and overpopulation — appears in a press release citing a September 1969 report that detailed the University’s response to the need for “problem-focused education,” as outlined by President Richard Nixon’s Environmental Quality Council (EQC). The report strongly recommended that universities fund interdisciplinary environmental studies.

Baylor was one of the first schools to respond to the EQC’s request. President Abner McCall assembled a committee of some of Baylor’s

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most respected professors, including David Pennington of the chemistry department, O.T. Hayward (geology), Victor Strite (English), W. Merle Alexander (physics), David McHam ( journalism), Chuck Edwards (political science), Mike Morrison (law), Fred Gehlbach (biology), and Richard Scott (economics), headed by Dan McGee of the religion department. The committee was charged with creating the curriculum for what was called the Institute for Environmental Studies.

McGee’s committee proposed a new degree with classes drawn from various other majors.

The degree, which also needed to be coupled with an existing major, was first offered in fall The Baylor Line

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE TEXAS COLLECTION

1970. Lind, then assistant professor of biology, was named as the first director. And thus began a remarkable 50-year career at Baylor, keeping the school at the forefront of the new discipline internationally.

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Lind, still exuding energy and confidence, remains engaged in the environment, particularly his lifelong passion, limnology, the study of lakes. He’s also got a mind like a steel trap, with an excellent memory for details, people, and places.

Lind grew up in Emporia, Kansas, graduated from William Jewell College with a major in biology in 1956, and soon found himself with the Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Company in the development and final test and distribution of the Salk polio vaccine, working primarily with monkeys as test subjects.

After four years, Parke-Davis paid for Lind to attend the University of Michigan. “They said, ‘You’ve moved about as far as you can go here with a bachelor’s degree,’” he recalled. “‘If you want, we’ll send you off to the University of Michigan for a master’s degree. Pick a master’s degree that’s quick and get back here.’”

In order to speed up his coursework, Lind said he chose to take classes at UM’s biological field station in upper Michigan on the Straits of Mackinac. After a few classes in the woods and fields surrounding Lake Michigan, Lind said

he realized, “Damn, this is fun. This is a whole lot better than being chased around cages by monkeys and getting nipped on your ankles. So why should I go back there?”

After two years teaching biology at his alma mater William Jewell, his mentors at Michigan recommended that Lind pursue a doctorate at the University of Missouri, where he studied lakes acidified by the toxic drainage from mines. When he received his Ph.D. in 1966, Lind received several offers to teach, ultimately accepting the position of assistant professor of biology at Baylor.

Lind’s advocate at Baylor was another legendary professor, Dr. Fred Gehlbach, a specialist in wildlife ecology and conservation. Lake Waco had begun to be refilled in 1965-66 and Gehlbach argued that Baylor needed a limnologist. “Nobody was studying the ecology and functioning of reservoirs — man-made systems,” Lind recalled. “So, this was a pretty good opportunity to start something new and build a program around an area nobody else was studying.”

Lind’s salary offer from Baylor in 1966 was a whopping $6,500, which was what he had Dr. Lind and Dr. Dan McGee on the original committee that created the Environmental Studies major.

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from McCall: “I know you’ve been talking with Herb Reynolds. We’re thinking about bringing him down as executive vice president. What do you think of that?”

“So, that’s how Herb and I got off to a good start together,” Lind said.

Reynolds’ arrival as executive vice president in 1969 had an immediate impact on the two departments offering a Ph.D. at the time: biology and chemistry. Lind said he then “buried” himself in his research. So much so, he said he wasn’t even aware of the new committee that had been formed to investigate — then create — Baylor’s new multidisciplinary program focused on environmental sciences.

“The next thing I know, I get a call from Herb Reynolds saying, ‘I’d like you to consider taking on the directorship of this new program.’ I said, ‘What program is that?’”

That’s how in fall 1970 Owen Lind became the director of the degree-granting Institute of Environmental Studies, believed to be only the second such program in the United States (after the University of California, Santa Barbara).

Lind said the new program soon proved popular, with students double-majoring in environmental Left: Joe Yelderman examines water collected from Waco Creek on campus, circa 1971. Right: President Abner McCall, Gus and Bonnie Glasscock, and Owen Lind at the future Environmental Studies Center.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOE YELDERMAN (L), OWEN LIND (R)

been making at Parke-Davis before he left for graduate school several years earlier. But just before he arrived in Waco, Lind received a letter from George M. Smith, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences: “The letter said, ‘Owen, we’ve got better enrollment than usual, so we’re going to raise your salary to $7,000. We feel it’s fair to do this for you.’

“So that shows you how my feeling was to these people,” Lind said. “There was no push, no drive on my part at all. And it was a good place to work, a good place to be.”

At the time, research was appreciated but not required at Baylor. Lind said he remembered an early statement by McCall to the faculty: “If a student ever comes to my office and says that they can’t find you to talk with about their course, and you’re in your research lab, I’ll fire you.”

Lind’s initial teaching load included classes in introductory biology, plant physiology, biological energetics, and a new course in limnology — with any research taking a back seat.

The arrival of President Herbert Reynolds, who offered his services to Baylor gratis as a research facilitator, changed things. Reynolds invited any professor who might be interested in research to visit him at his home in Fort Worth.

Lind, who had been conducting research on nights and weekends, drove to Fort Worth to meet Herbert and his wife Joy and the two men immediately hit it off. (“I may have been the only professor who took advantage of Herb’s offer,” Lind said with a smile.)

Shortly thereafter, Lind said he received a note

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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE TEXAS COLLECTION (L), OWEN LIND (R)

Left: Gus Glasscock shovels at the groundbreaking of the environmental studies building.

Right: A Rocky Mountain biology classroom.

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studies and any one of several other majors, including biology, chemistry, economics, geology, physics, political science, English, and journalism.

He was also able to re-double his research in Lake Waco and other bodies of water. Lake Waco, originally created in the 1930s, had become stagnant and nearly toxic from fertilizer runoff, wastewater, sewage, and other pollutants.

“You had a documented case of a very bad situation from the over-enrichment of nutrients that killed the old Lake Waco,” Lind said, “all of which is recorded in the lake sediments. When the Corps of Engineers came and built a new lake right on top of the old one, that gave us the opportunity to study the old lake by studying the history of its sediments. What nutrients are in there? What kind of pollutants were there? You get to study the evolution of lakes in rapid scale and in a human lifespan.”

In the early 1970s The Lariat frequently featured articles about Lind and his work — he was everywhere, promoting the new major; encouraging, addressing, and even hosting student groups interested in the environment; and taking students on field trips.

Students noticed, including Joe Yelderman.

Yelderman, the son of a country doctor in tiny Needville, Texas, had originally enrolled at Southern Methodist University in geology, but was uncertain of his direction. After his father visited his daughter Cynthia at Baylor in spring 1970, he brought Yelderman a copy of an article in The Lariat reporting on Baylor’s new Institute for Environmental Studies.

“I was struggling to find exactly what I wanted

to do,” Yelderman said. “I knew it wasn’t the traditional dinosaurs or oil in geology. I set up an appointment with O.T. Hayward from the new major’s advisory board and that conversation was all it took.”

Yelderman said he was initially drawn to geology, the study of the earth in all of its aspects, because it was already the most interdisciplinary of majors. Environmental science was clearly highly interdisciplinary as well. “So, it fit well,” he said. “I was happy in my place.”

Yelderman, one of the new degree’s earliest majors, said the environmental studies office was a small room in the Moody Library basement, but the major was already having an outsized impact.

“Owen, of course, was the driving force,” Yelderman recalled. “Owen was also pushing and going toward his focal goal of reservoirs and lakes — limnology was his deal. He was very, very dynamic, very committed to his field, and wanted badly to grow the area of limnology and the environment. He was instrumental in recruiting donors to help support the program.

“Owen was also pushing a lot more for research and research grants, unlike the more traditional Baylor teaching faculty model.”

According to Yelderman, Lind’s passion extended to the classroom.

“He was good,” Yelderman said. “He was a rigorous professor. He was very serious and enthusiastic about his field and things he was teaching. He was a good professor, but you had to put some effort into it. I didn’t cruise through anything he taught!”

Inspired, Yelderman said he threw himself into the field and became one of the first two 38

The Glasscock Environmental Studies Building under construction.

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Ph.D. in hydrogeology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and accepted a position at Baylor in fall 1983, returning with the opportunity to work with Lind once again.

“I knew I wanted to teach. I wanted to be a professor,” Yelderman said, “and I liked Baylor.

I liked the philosophy of it.”

By 1983, Lind, who had stepped down as chair of the environmental studies department several years earlier, was studying bodies of water from Michigan to Mexico, including the endangered Lake Chapala in Mexico, funded by a National Science Foundation grant. Accompanied by his wife, Laura Davalos-Lind — also a scientist — Lind traveled to Lake Chapala and took thousands of water samples in an attempt to unravel the “biological Gordian knot” of what was killing the lake.

Lind retired in 2016 to a host of awards and nationwide recognition, including Emeritus Professor. One of the honors he said he’s proudest of is being recognized as a Distinguished Mentor by the Association of Graduate Schools.

The second was recognition by the National University of Mexico (UNAM), in Mexico City, for his contributions to the development of limnological science in that country. The relationship has meant that there has been a steady pipeline of students in environmental science from Mexico at Baylor. Other awards include becoming the Texas Academy of Science’s Distinguished Texas Scientist in 2009, and Outstanding Professor (Scholar) at Baylor in 2002, to go along with nearly 50 publications

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE TEXAS COLLECTION

students on the institute’s faculty board.

By 1974, demand was such that when Baylor offered a master’s degree in environmental studies, the school quickly received more than 350 requests for information from across the United States. Baylor’s undergraduate program had also grown to such a degree that it moved to the Glasscock Environmental Studies Building — named after its donor, the Gus Glasscock family of Houston — near the Baylor Marina in 1975. The building, which cost $313,000, housed offices, classrooms, and research centers, including one for microbiological analysis. Lind told The Lariat at the time that students would be able to study the effects of pollutants, such as mercury, on fish in large water troughs, as well as using outside research facilities where he hoped to create model ecosystems.

Also making its first appearance in 1974 was the environmental studies van, a 1974 Pace Arrow bus, which soon became a familiar fixture around the Baylor campus. The van, paid for with a gift from the Cooper Foundation, took Lind’s students on field trips to the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere to study biological factors on lakes and streams.

While still at Baylor, Yelderman pitched longtime City of Waco planning official Bill Falco to hire him and create the first environmental atlas of McLennan County. Falco agreed and Yelderman did the work — and the atlas became Yelderman’s thesis. “They paid for it,” he said with a smile, “and they paid for me to do it.”

After graduation, Yelderman had a couple of jobs, including one working for a uranium mining company in South Texas, which sparked an interest in hydrogeology. He completed his

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and 31 dissertations directed.

How influential has Baylor’s legacy been nationally? Since 1973, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement has been akin to the Nobel Prize in environmental studies, a $250,000 gift awarded annually by Farmers Insurance Group founders John and Alice Tyler.

Lind was on the award’s original executive committee and served for nearly 50 years.

Today the Department of Environmental Science is another legacy of Lind and the original institute. The department, with Dr. George Cobb as chair, is one of Baylor’s largest and includes research in environmental and human health, biomedical sciences, and environmental quality, and offers both master’s and doctoral degrees.

Another legacy from the earliest limnology classes and research is the multi-disciplinary Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research (CRASR), with biology professor Dr. Thad Scott serving as the director. Scott said he nurtured his love for the environment by “swimming and boating” on the rivers and lakes around Brownwood. “But as a first-generation college student,” Scott said, “I had no idea that these waterbodies of my youth were filled with tiny green microorganisms that would inspire my passion for biology.”

It was at Baylor, Scott said, that he discovered the endlessly fascinating intersection between ecology and water chemistry, with Lind as one of his mentors. After receiving his Ph.D. in biology and joining the faculty at the University of Arkansas, Scott returned to Baylor — ironically — when Lind’s retirement left an opening in the department. The Baylor position was a better fit professionally, but Scott said it was an easy call to make anyway because of the “strength of the program that Owen had left behind in water and limnology” that has become “so wellknown nationally.”

CRASR is internationally recognized for its research facilities on the 174-acre Lake Waco Wetlands environmental mitigation project on the North Bosque River that came about as the result of negotiations in 2001 by the biology department’s Dr. Robert Doyle, who was then the director of CRASR. The 6,000-square-foot facility’s Research and Education Center had its grand opening on August 27, 2004.

According to Dr. Bryan Brooks, the longest2025

serving professor in the department, the Institute of Environmental Studies formally changed its name to the Department of Environmental Science in fall 2007.

Today, Owen and Laura have fully retired and continue their lifelong passion of travel — particularly “trying to whittle down the bucket list,” Owen said, “and cruising around the world as much as we can.”

Looking back on Lind’s ongoing impact, two of his former students — Yelderman and Scott — agreed that his life’s work is an indelible part of Baylor past and present.

Yelderman, who has also had a long and distinguished career, became chair of Baylor’s influential Department of Geosciences on June 1, 2021. Yelderman called Lind “a great early leader” of the department.

“As the first director, Owen was very instrumental,” Yelderman said, “because he had to convince people and get things started.

His personality was that way and he was very good at that. As a limnologist, he stayed true to his area and really did everything he possibly could to grow these programs.

“And in the field of limnology, Owen’s impact has been phenomenal [in part] because he has mentored Ph.D. students that have gone on to make great contributions and his ability to direct Baylor’s emphasis in the CRASR program — more so than anybody else.”

Scott said that Lind, as one of the longestserving professors in Baylor history, has had an extraordinary impact on the University.

“He has had a huge, huge legacy in terms of the footprint he left behind at Baylor of just pursuing all sorts of different subdisciplines within ecology and limnology and environmental science,” Scott said.

“Internationally, his work on reservoirs is still extremely well-cited. He was a pioneer in studying man-made lakes — that’s a huge legacy in our field.

“Finally, every time his book, Handbook of Common Methods in Limnolog y, first published in 1974, comes up, people ask me about it. To this day, people will still ask me, ‘Do you have any copies of that book?’ and they want Owen to sign them.”

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FEATURE

A

L OOK

I NSI DE

DR. FRANCESCA PENNER’S LAB AT

B AY L OR

How early parenting and child outcomes connect, and the woman behind the work.

By Natalie Grigson

A

s any good clinical psychologist knows, the seeds of who a person will become are planted early on in life.

Dr. Francesca Penner, an assistant professor in Baylor’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, is well known for her work with parents and children — mostly researching the connection between parental mental health and children’s socioemotional development. But as big of a name as she’s made for herself in academia, she’s relatively new to the University.

Early Life

Dr. Penner grew up in Northern California, her family moving to Middle Tennessee during her high school years. Of course, then she was just known as Francesca, and she

was very much a younger version of who she is today. Already as a youth she was deeply focused on academics, dabbled in sports — “though I would not call myself athletic,” she laughs — and had already taken on the role of “therapist” among her friends.

She first wanted to follow in the footsteps of both her parents and become a teacher and even majored in English at the University of Chicago. But life had other plans for Penner. In 2009, just after she graduated, the workforce was in a huge slump and the country in a recession. In a backup plan that ended up lasting four years, Penner landed a job teaching not English, but math curriculum online.

“I actually learned from that job that I didn’t really want to be a teacher,” she said.

“It just wasn’t the right path for me.”

“I knew I wanted to work with kids, though,” she added. “So that sort of pushed me in the direction of child psychology.”

Long story short, Penner ended up at Vanderbilt to get her master’s degree in child studies with a focus on child development and child psychology. She then went to the University of Houston for her Ph.D. in clinical psychology, then Yale’s Child Study Center for a postdoctoral fellowship before landing at Baylor.

Dr. Francesca Penner

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The Baylor Line

Of course, as those in Penner’s field of psychology know there is no “long story short;” not really. There is always an underlying why.

It’s Personal

PHOTOS COURTESY OF DR. FRANCESCA PENNER

When Penner was growing up in the ‘90s and early-2000s, the world was different. We didn’t have shows talking about mental health, we didn’t have TikTok “experts” giving us tips on anxiety, and there certainly weren’t many adults modeling vulnerability.

Fortunately for Penner, she said her parents were “very open about mental health,” and were a huge support for Penner in college when she felt emotionally under water and overwhelmed with her studies.

But in high school, Penner noticed a trend among her friend group and she seamlessly — almost instinctively — stepped into a part that she still plays today.

“A lot of the friends I had in high school in particular struggled with mental health,” she said. “And I sort of played the role of counselor to them sometimes.”

Several years later when Penner was getting her master’s degree it was in her clinical psychology research lab that her decision to work in clinical psychology, particularly with children and their parents, was truly solidified.

“I think clinical psych is exciting because of the possibilities for early intervention. If we intervene in childhood and adolescence, we can make things better for someone’s whole life,” Penner said enthusiastically, adding, “And I just really enjoy working with kids and teenagers.”

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The PAIR Lab

Though Penner realized after college that teaching high school English wasn’t her dream job, she did ultimately end up teaching a little. These days Penner teaches one class per semester — specifically Psychopathology, a class for undergraduate neuroscience majors — but much of her time is spent in the lab.

When many of us imagine a laboratory setting, we picture some combination of a doctor’s office and Hollywood’s rendition of a mad scientist’s laboratory. And while some

Top: Dr. Penner’s studies often involve interviewing subjects in her downtown lab space.

Bottom: The PAIR Lab space is made up of assessment rooms with desks and chairs where Dr. Penner can interview people or have them fill out surveys comfortably.

labs certainly are filled with microscopes, vials, and white, sterile surfaces, Dr. Penner’s Parenting and Intergenerational Resilience (PAIR) Lab looks quite different.

“Psychology labs, I think, are a funny term,” she said. “It looks more like a clinic than a ‘lab,’ I’d say.”

Penner’s lab is located in downtown Waco,

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so it’s more accessible to the public, and sounds a lot like a comfortable office space where you wouldn’t mind spending the day. The space is made up of assessment rooms with desks and chairs where Penner can interview people or have them fill out surveys comfortably. A big work room filled with students’ computers is usually bustling with three graduate students and six or seven undergrads.

And there’s a little open space dedicated to a future addition of EEG machines, almost like a parent clearing out a room for a future nursery and baby.

The EEG machines will eventually provide the team with a better understanding of what’s happening with parents and children on a cerebral level. But EEGs are expensive, and it will take a grant to add them to the lab.

“That’s another big part of what I do as a junior researcher,” Penner said. “I write grants.”

A Day in the Life

Penner starts out her day, like many people do, at home with her family. She has two daughters. Once breakfasts are done and things are in order, Penner heads off to campus to teach her class before spending the rest of her day in the lab downtown.

On a normal day during the school year, she’ll meet with her graduate and undergraduate students, advising them on anything from the data they’re analyzing to what courses to take. And then she’ll spend time working on her own manuscripts — and of course, the grants.

Currently, though, Penner is prepping for her first in-person study at Baylor, so days look like training her students, canvassing Waco with flyers to recruit participants, and a lot of “figuring it out” as they go along.

The Research

Penner, ever the academic, is juggling multiple research projects across two universities, all beneath the general umbrella of children and parental mental health. Her work with Yale, which is just wrapping up, is funded by a grant, and her current research at Baylor is funded by the University.

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Maternal Opioid Use Disorder and Early Caregiving This smaller study is a part of a much larger one at Yale and should wrap up sometime this year or next as Penner continues to work on this research from afar.

“This is looking at mothers who are in treatment specifically for opioid use disorder. So, medication-assisted treatment,” she said. “And we’re looking at their caregiving behavior early on — postpartum and the first year of life — and comparing that to a control group.”

Ultimately, she hopes to learn more about how parental addiction can impact children’s early development with this research.

Posts to Parenting Though this study isn’t about opioids, it certainly has to do with another addiction: social media.

Penner describes a new age of mothers, many of whom rely heavily on social media for parenting advice.

“Social media is pretty unregulated, right?” she said. “So, there could be things that are from a pediatrician that are super evidence-based. And then there are just parents [on social media] who could be saying anything and it’s not evidence-based at all.”

This study will investigate how much new moms are relying on social media to parent, and how that’s impacting their young kids. As this will be her first inperson study in Waco, this will involve recruiting local moms and having them come into the lab to answer questions and interact with their babies.

Social Media Usage Across the Country Related to the previous study, Penner and her team are zooming out beyond Waco and looking at how social media is being used by parents nationally. This one will rely heavily on surveys and online

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Dr. Penner and students analyze data in the PAIR Lab.

communication — so there won’t be an in-person aspect to it — but the hope is to learn how social media is impacting parenting across the U.S. Social Media Hashtags Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Penner has a third smaller study going on right now about social media. After all, it is the water we swim in these days. Penner and her team are looking to understand how that’s impacting us — and particularly our children. In this study, her small team at Baylor is combing through social media hashtags related to parenting and coding them.

Baylor Students Mental Health Check In “We just finished data collection for this small study,” she said, describing a very simple survey that just went out to Baylor students. In the survey, Penner and her team asked students to answer some retrospective questions about their own childhoods and their current mental health.

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What Does This All Mean for Parents and Kids?

What does this all mean? What does this research show us about parents and their kids? And moreover, what can we do about it?

Penner’s message is both straightforward and reassuring: “Parenting behavior is really important, and it has an effect from early on. In infancy, for example, is when the attachment relationship is being developed and where so much brain development is happening. Parents have a huge opportunity during this time.

“But I’ll also say,” she added, “that it’s not the end. Parents don’t have to be 100 percent perfect all the time, because that’s impossible. And that’s the other thing the research shows us.”

We asked her how her research has impacted her own parenting.

“Mostly my research has influenced me to think of my [girls] as independent little people and recognize they’re different from me.

They’re different from each other. And that helps in understanding why they behave the way they do.”

She laughed, noting that even with all the data, of course, she doesn’t get it right 100 percent right all the time either.

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FEATURE

ROD AYDELOT TE on the Art of Moments After 44 years at the Waco TribuneHerald and 16 years teaching at Baylor, photographer Rod Aydelotte pictures possibilities for students and life.

By Leslie George

I

f you live in Waco, you’ve likely seen Rod Aydelotte (’77) and his camera: maybe at the dedication of tiny homes for the homeless; or the reading of the Declaration of Independence at the courthouse; or any protest, parade, art festival, high school clothing drive, or amid the frenzy of a breaking news story or a soaring, lastsecond score at a playoff game. Camera in hand, capturing images for the Waco Tribune-Herald for 44 years, photographer Aydelotte’s images have also appeared on the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

He’s covered the 51-day standoff between Branch Davidians and federal law enforcement agencies in 1993; George W. Bush at his Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, when Bush was governor and president; the West Fertilizer Plant explosion in 2013, and the trials following the 2015 Twin Peaks biker shootout — along with hundreds of other stories between and since. It’s possible there hasn’t been an event in the Waco-

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The Baylor Line

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE WACO TRIBUNE-HERALD

Right: State investigators pose with a collection of hometown signs near a checkpoint leading to the Branch Davidian compound during the siege.

Middle: Members of the ATF line up behind cars and trailers during the opening moments of the raid on the Branch Davidian compound.

Bottom: Federal Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents help wounded fellow agents away from the Branch Davidan cult compound February 28, 1993, after gunfire erupted as the agents attempted to execute an arrest warrant. Four agents and five Davidians were killed during the two-hour shootout that turned into a 51-day siege.

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Baylor ecosystem in the past four decades that Aydelotte hasn’t photographed.

For the past 16 years, Aydelotte has taught Photo II to 15 students per semester in his Baylor photojournalism class. They meet twice a week on campus and then get out into the field as much as possible. The point, he said, is that to take good pictures, you have to experience the world. “You’re going to be so much better at the end of my class than the beginning because you’ll be out shooting more than you ever have in your life,” he said.

When on assignment, he tells his students to be bold, instilling a list of guidelines, including: “First, get close to your subjects. Cherish who you meet. Understand your mistakes. Be wellrounded. Ask questions. Don’t limit yourself.

Look for something different. Often you will also find great photos unrelated to the event.”

Years ago, Aydelotte notes, he and a group of students covered five events in one day, including an air show, a Wild West reenactment, and an art festival. “It was grueling,” he said, “but if you keep up with me, you’re learning something.”

That day, over a late lunch eaten outside, he recalled: “Here comes a man pushing a shopping cart, and there’s a pit bull sitting in the cart.

Everyone looked at me and I said, ‘Well?’” They all got up and took the shot.

“That’s called finding a moment.”

That’s hard to teach in a classroom, he continued. “I want my students to learn that photojournalism is more than the photograph — it’s about capturing the moments that define a community. It’s about being part of a community and loving that community.”

Born in Spokane, Washington, Aydelotte was

in grade school when he moved to Waco with his family, and has spent most of his life here.

He enrolled in law school at Baylor in 1973, but someone told him there were few jobs for lawyers then, so he switched to journalism. At Baylor, he found jobs working on the school newspaper and yearbook. “Being on The Lariat staff helped pay my rent so I didn’t have to live at home,” he said.

Later, he met his wife, Becky, a Houston native, covering the 1989 Waco Creek flood. She was 46

Left: Then Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott speaks during a press conference about the West Fertilizer Co. explosion.

Right: A home burns in West after an explosion Wednesday evening at a fertilizer plant. working at the Tribune-Herald at the time. He helped her get her car out of a flooded parking lot.

Becky now works for the city’s tourist board.

Photography techniques may have changed drastically since Aydelotte was developing film and color transparencies for The Lariat and The Round Up yearbooks back in the ‘70s, but the elements of a great photo remain the same today, he said.

Reporting on the Branch Davidian Siege From the Waco Tribune-Herald’s article “Branch Davidian tragedy at 25: How the story overtook the storytellers.”

The five stood by the car and stared at the scene 250 yards away: a militarystyle raid like none they had ever witnessed, with agents scaling ladders and breaking windows. Then, a fusillade of gunfire. An agent on the roof fell on his side. A bullet hit the silver Honda.

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Today, both he and his students shoot with digital cameras. Aydelotte will accept images taken with a student’s phone if the subject matter is unique. (“Sometimes you just don’t have your camera on you,” he acknowledged.) But for the most part, he advocates using a camera.

From an aesthetic perspective, composition, exposure, light, and angle are the elements that

Moments later, the five newspaper reporters were lying in a ditch, face down in the wet grass, where they would remain until a cease-fire more than two hours later. Bullets and tracers whistled overhead. From the house where [reporter Tommy] Witherspoon had knocked, an ATF sniper, perhaps the agent who had opened the door moments before, returned fire.

Witherspoon scrambled for a bricklike cellphone and asked photographer Rod Aydelotte how to work it. Another reporter turned on his cassette recorder. On the tape you can hear him hyperventilating as the gunfire escalates.

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” he repeats.

“Get your Hail Marys going, man,” Witherspoon says to him.

“Should we, uh, try to get in the g----n car and get out?” wondered [Mark] England, the soft-spoken “Sinful Messiah” writer. [“Sinful Messiah” was a seven-part investigative series on

the Branch Davidians, published in the Waco Tribune-Herald in 1993.]

“No, stay where you are,” Aydelotte barked, still shooting photos as bullets flew by. “We’re protected from the line of fire. We’re down below.”

After cussing the cellphone repeatedly, Witherspoon finally got through to another car down the road, carrying Tribune-Herald employees, including “Sinful Messiah” co-author Darlene McCormick.

“Darlene,” he says, “you gotta stay where you are. We got some serious s--t happening. Yeah, it’s coming right over us. … We’ll just keep our heads down.

All right. We’re all right, just a little shaken up, but all right.”

Before the tape cuts off, the sound of helicopters and bullets continues, and England mutters something.

“What’d you say?” Witherspoon asks him.

“We’re going to get blamed for this,” England says.

The Baylor Line

make a good image, he said. “There are certain aspect ratios we go for but, for the most part, it’s just really important to shoot at an angle,” he explained. “We don’t want to shoot straight onto someone’s face. We want the subject to be shot at an angle, to show some background. I’ve stood on chairs and desks to shoot down and gotten low to shoot up for the right angle.

“When you create an angle,” he continued, “you’re telling more of a story because the viewer can see more.”

Just as important is feeling. “A good photograph will reach out and jump at you,” he said. “It’s that idea of capturing a moment. It happens in a split second, so you have to keep looking. We call it the hunt, and it can only come from experience.

The student has to bring everything he or she has experienced and learned and is, or will be, to the forefront of themselves. It’s emotional.”

Aydelotte recounts an example of the hunt that ended up being profound for him and one former student. They were out shooting on a practice session some years ago. “We noticed a man lying down by the Brazos River. As we walked closer to the river we saw he was lying on his back and a goose was sitting on his stomach,” he said, adding that they took the shot. “Then, closer we got, the goose came at us, trying to run us off. The man couldn’t talk. We asked around later and found out he had befriended the goose to protect the goose from being teased and bothered by some teenagers. And now the goose was protecting the man.”

In his class, each student is required to produce at least one 10-image photo story — about either one theme, one idea, or one event — per semester, Aydelotte said. “Creating photo stories is how you get to be a better photographer.” The story is as important as the aesthetics of the image, he said.

It took him 20 years to learn, but that’s where the meaning comes in. “It’s not about the photographer; it’s about all these great people we are shooting. It’s about their stories,” Aydelotte said. “And after so many years, now I know a lot of these great people. I go places and I know I have to get the shot but I’m talking and shaking hands with folks more than taking photos.”

Aydelotte said he still loves his job at the Trib and, at 71, has no plans to retire. “I’m going to do it as long as I can,” he said. “It’s a great job; there is always something to shoot and every day is different. You have the seasonality of many events, 2025

Top: The shootout at Twin Peaks restaurant on May 17, 2015, killed nine people and wounded 18 others.

Bottom: Bikers wait outside Twin Peaks as law enforcement investigates the deadly shootout between the Bandidos and the Cossacks. year after year, that I enjoy, and then when there’s spot news you drop everything else.”

Aydelotte is so used to this unflinching schedule that he can be at a loss when not on assignment.

When asked about the images he has taken that he’s most proud of, he chuckles. “That’s history,” he said, bringing up his students again. “I’ve had some great students — students who go off on their own, shooting all day, telling stories with their pictures.” More than anything, Aydelotte hopes his students take away something they learn about their own humanity from his classes.

“You want to be a better photographer? Be a better person,” Aydelotte said. “Cherish the experience. Don’t be a fly on the wall. Talk to strangers — that’s how it all works.”

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FEATURE

THE ARTS CELEBRATE OUR

COMMON HUMANITY

By Marianne Dougherty

Amjad Dabi’s journey from war-torn Syria to the Lone Star State was bittersweet, but a community of kind and caring people helped ease the transition for this Baylor alum.

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The Baylor Line

With a Ph.D. in bioinformatics and computational biology, Amjad will continue his studies at the University of Oregon.| Photo courtesy of Amjad Dabi

Amjad Dabi was studying civil engineering in Damascus, Syria, when he met Dr. Bradley Bolen, who teaches piano at Baylor University, in the summer of 2010. As part of American Voices, a nonprofit cultural and diplomacy organization founded in 1993, Dr. Bolen spent six weeks in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon teaching piano to people who were hungry for music education.

“You know how they say music is the universal language? Well, I saw that firsthand during my time there. Students came to our workshops from all over the country, often at great personal risk,” said Dr. Bolen, who remembers Dabi as a serious student who hoped to use a music degree to get into medical school, which is not as counterintuitive as it sounds. Studies have shown that music majors are the most likely group of college graduates to be admitted to medical school, possibly because mastering an instrument requires a certain amount of focus and discipline.

In 1990, Syria established the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus as a conservatory for both 2025

Western and Arabic music. Aside from studying music there, Dabi also attended the University of Damascus. When he met Dr. Bolen, he had a plan: to finish his civil engineering degree before pursuing a graduate degree in Western Europe or the United States.

“I was always fascinated by the idea of living in America,” said Dabi, who had been an exchange student in Charlotte, North Carolina, when he was 15 years old. Still, when Dr. Bolen suggested that he come to Baylor to continue his studies, he initially declined his offer. “I was so close to finishing my degree, and all of my friends and family were in Syria.”

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Then in December, a wave of anti-government protests that became known as the Arab Spring took place in the Middle East and North Africa.

When a car bomb exploded near his house and Dabi was injured, he decided that it was unsafe for him to remain in Syria.

Dr. Bolen sprang into action, securing living arrangements in an apartment in Thailand owned

by Jim Ferguson, executive director of American Voices. For the next nine months, Amjad studied for the SAT, ultimately earning a full scholarship to Baylor where Seventh and James Baptist Church in Waco provided free housing.

“I was struck by how beautiful the campus was,” said Dabi, who was 23 when he enrolled as a freshman. What he loved about Baylor was that it not only had a great music department but that it also offered a rigorous curriculum in science.

“Since I was on a full scholarship,” he said, “I was able to take some of those classes at no extra cost.”

Those classes paid off because after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in piano pedagogy in 2017, Dabi went on to earn a master’s degree in environmental science in 2020.

With civil war raging back home, Dabi found Baylor to be a safe place where he could focus on his education. “It was a difficult time for me because I’d left everyone I loved and everything I knew, but people here were so welcoming, which made the transition much easier.”

When retelling Dabi’s story during her remarks at commencement ceremonies in May 2025, Baylor University President Linda Livingstone said, “Amjad had to work through a very painful transition, probably more difficult than most of us will have to face, but he persevered even through his grief.”

Dabi is convinced that having a social network of caring people he could talk to and spend time with helped him become more resilient.

“I recognize that mine is a hopeful story, and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved,” he said. “But I never imagined that this is how my life would turn out. I loved Syria, but there was so much uncertainty about what was going to happen that I had to leave.”

Sadly, he lost his father in 2022, but it was too risky for him to go home for his funeral. If there is a downside to Dabi’s happily-ever-after, it’s that he has not seen his family since he started his new life in the United States. “If I’ve learned anything from [my father’s] experience, it’s that it’s folly to plan too far ahead,” Dabi said.

In a 2016 interview sponsored by Baylor 51

Top: Dr. Bolen and his wife, conservation biologist Lynne Baker, with Amjad, right. | Photo courtesy of Bradley Bolen Bottom: Dr. Bolen spent six weeks in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon teaching piano to people who were hungry for music education. | Photo courtesy of Bradley Bolen University’s Institute for Oral History, Dabi shared his story with Zachary Wingerd, senior lecturer in Baylor’s history department, and journalist Brad Hoff. Their book, Syria Crucified: Stories of Modern Martyrdom in an Ancient Christian Land, was published in 2021. Raised Roman Catholic in a country where Christians are vastly outnumbered, Dabi admitted that as a child attending a private Christian school, he lived in a kind of bubble. In high school, most of his classmates were Druze, The Baylor Line

an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion influenced his aunts, uncles, and cousins fled elsewhere. by a range of traditions from Christianity to Reflecting on the complex and protracted Gnosticism and a belief in reincarnation and the conflict in his homeland, Dabi understands how transmigration of the soul. easy it is to lose faith in humanity when you see It was only during his last year in high school how badly human beings can behave toward one where a lot of his classmates were Muslim that another. But art, he said, offers an escape from he felt a keen sense of being a minority for the our distressing circumstances and a way to enter a first time. While he didn’t experience any overt world that’s bigger than we are. discrimination, he allowed that there were times “Art is like a light they tried to put out, but there’s when he felt a rift. Christians in Syria, especially something about the human spirit that longs for those in cities like Damascus where they tend to beauty,” Dabi said. “The arts are also a reminder be well educated, he said, lean a bit to the left of our humanity, a way for us to connect. Think politically, while Muslims tend to be a bit more about me sitting in Damascus playing a piece by conservative.

Beethoven, a German man who lived centuries When asked if he’d sensed a rift between before I was born and who had a completely Orthodox Christians and Catholics like himself, different life experience from me. Still, he had his Dabi pointed out that because Christians in Syria own struggles, and there’s something universal were a minority, they about our situation tended to coalesce that comes across in around that identity, the music.” which became part Recently, Dabi of the culture. “I feel earned a Ph.D. from like in varying ways the University of North Art is like a light they it’s very similar to the Carolina at Chapel tried to put out, but Jewish identity and Hill in bioinformatics how it’s related to and computational there’s something about ethnic identity,” he told biology, an the human spirit that Wingerd. “You know, a interdisciplinary field longs for beauty.” lot of Jews are secular that blends biology, Jews, but they’re still computer science, Jews, and that’s part of mathematics, and their identity.” statistics to solve Overall, Dabi said he believes that Christians biological problems. He’ll continue his studies had a good relationship with the state after in a post-doctoral program at the University of Bashar al-Assad came to power. “We always Oregon where he’ll study genomics, a branch of had ambassadors coming from overseas from the molecular biology concerned with the structure, Vatican,” he said. “I remember playing the organ function, evolution, and mapping of genomes. at a Franciscan church in Damascus, the only With enormous potential to predict disease, church that had an organ.” genomics is literally transforming healthcare as The impact of the civil war on the Christian we know it. community in Syria cannot be understated. In “Amjad is one of the smartest people I’ve ever pre-war Syria, 1.5 million Christians accounted known,” said Dr. Bolen, “but he’s also extremely for 10 percent of the population, but that number compassionate. He feels things very deeply as began to fall precipitously after 2011. Estimates musicians often do.” suggest that by 2022, only 300,000 Christians, Now that’s a winning combination in a world roughly 2 percent of the population, were left. that seems to be sorely lacking in empathy these While Dabi’s parents remained in Syria, most of days.

“

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IVIL RIGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC SKYE PERRYMAN ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL – Rose from Baylor to Become a – IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC DEFENDER OF DEMOCRACY ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC a litigator for two global law firms and now leading the ERVICE AsFOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL nonpartisan legal organization, Democracy Forward, Baylor alumna Skye Perryman demonstrates what it means to stand IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC up for our democracy.

ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC ERVICE FOUNDATIONAL VALUES CIVIL IGHTS DEMOCRACY JUSTICE PUBLIC FEATURE

By Roger Munford

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The Baylor Line

C

S

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SKYE PERRYMAN

kye Perryman was a sophomore at Baylor University, working toward a bachelor’s degree in economics and philosophy, when, early on the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower. Her experiences on that day have stayed with her, shaping her work today.

“For many of us, the events on 9/11 inspired the pursuit of careers in public service or international relations or public policy, and drove home the fragility of the period of peace and prosperity that the United States had experienced during our childhoods leading up to that day,” Perryman said. “For me, September 11 and its aftermath instilled a greater urgency to the work for justice. It reminded us all that the work to oppose extremism of any kind and the work for civil rights, civil liberties, and the ability of people to live peacefully together is urgent work that must be done.”

Twenty-four years later, Perryman is the president and CEO of Democracy Forward.

This national nonpartisan organization defends democracy and progress in the United States of America through litigation, regulatory engagement, community education, and research.

Democracy Forward has filed more than 85 legal actions – and counting – and launched more than 100 investigations into the current Trump administration, and it’s just getting started.

And most recent in her string of accomplishments — though the list grows daily — on April 16, 2025, Perryman earned a spot on TIME’s 2025 TIME100 list of the world’s most influential people. An innovator, she sits among the list beside Simone Biles, Mark Zuckerberg, Ed Sheeran, and so many other greats.

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Early Days at Baylor

Born and raised in Waco, Perryman followed in the educational footsteps of her parents: her father, Dr. Ray Perryman, a Texas economist and nominee for the Nobel Prize in Economics; and her mother, Nancy Perryman, a former Baylor faculty member. Both her mother and father were students of Dr. Vivienne Malone-Mayes, Baylor’s first Black faculty member, and Perryman noted that growing up she’d hear stories of Dr. MaloneMayes’ persistence in the face of racial injustice, which inspired her.

Skye Perryman earned herself a spot on this year’s TIME100 list.

“I was in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, which is a phenomenal program for students to receive their general support and general studies requirements through an interdisciplinary lens,” she said. “I was also on the Model United Nations team, and we won a range of competitions at Harvard and elsewhere.”

During her time at Baylor, Perryman also worked on Project Democracy, funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s GEAR UP Waco grant. The GEAR UP initiative committed to promoting post-secondary education for high school students in underserved areas and those who were at risk of dropping out of school.

“I coordinated that program in middle schools across Waco public school systems, which really led me to enhance what had already been an interest in a commitment to public service,” she said.

Perryman was named one of 64 Truman Scholars by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, a national award for between 55 and 65 students in the nation who have distinguished themselves in the areas of public service, leadership, and academic excellence.

“The late Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan is a hero of mine, as is former Congressman Chet Edwards, who represented Waco when I was growing up and in college,” Perryman said.

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“At Baylor, I was inspired by so many faculty members — Dr. Robert Baird, who chaired the philosophy department when I was at Baylor, has had an incredible influence on my life and career, as has former Associate Dean Elizabeth Vardaman, and so many others.”

Stepping Up the Legal Ladder

At first, Perryman thought she would go into a type of policy work. “But as I reflected on what I was doing with youth in Central Texas through the GEAR UP program, I realized the power that the law had had on creating opportunities for people across the country and education across the country,” she said.

After graduating from Baylor, she worked at a policy think tank in Washington, D.C., then Top: Perryman advocates for federal workers outside the U.S. House of Representatives.

Bottom: Perryman speaks at Democracy Forward’s Together for Democracy conference.

pursued a law degree. Perryman received her Juris Doctor degree with honors from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she served on the moot court team, and served as an editor for the American Criminal Law Review and as editor-in-chief for the ACLR’s Annual Survey of White Collar Crime.

“I began my career at Covington & Burling, a global law firm in Washington, D.C.,” she said.

“Lawyers carried out important private sector work representing large companies on complex problems, which is something that I really enjoy doing as a litigator. But the firm also had an enduring commitment to public interest and public service and encouraged — and even expected — all of their lawyers to do some pro bono work.”

Working at Covington & Burling allowed Perryman to work alongside some of the best lawyers in the country while still being able to prioritize her commitment to public interest and public service.

“One of my earliest cases at Covington on the public interest side was supporting the team representing detainees that were being held by the George W. Bush administration in Guantanamo Bay without due process,” she said. “Which, of course, has some parallels to the work that I’m doing today at Democracy Forward with those that the current administration has removed from the country without due process.”

In the wake of the 2016 election, Perryman was a litigator at another global law firm, WilmerHale, which she describes as being very committed to the law as an enterprise, both for its private paying clients and also its public interest clients.

“I don’t consider my work political — it’s really about people and it’s about serving people,” she said. “And in a democracy, of course, the way our democracy is supposed to function, we want our government to work for all people. And when it doesn’t, people must demand that it does better and that people defend their rights in court, which is what I’ve done throughout my career.”

As a matter of record, both Covington & Burling and WilmerHale have been accused by the current Trump administration of weaponizing the judicial system. Neither legal firm has capitulated to the accusations.

Starting Up with Democracy Forward

“I really loved the work I was doing, but in the early months of 2017, we started seeing the earlier

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The Baylor Line

version of ‘shock and awe,’ the Muslim ban, and the abrupt cancellation of essential federal services,” Perryman said. “I became a mom in 2015, and I was concerned about the world my son would be growing up in.”

A senior lawyer she admired was leading a startup organization, Democracy Forward, and asked if Perryman would consider coming onboard to use her litigation skills to carry out public interest work full time. Perryman left a job she loved— with all the associated benefits and prestige — and became a founding member of the litigation team at Democracy Forward, where she developed and filed cases challenging unlawful activities pursued by the 45th presidential administration.

A year into her work at Democracy Forward, one of her long-term public interest clients, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) — the nation’s leading association of physicians dedicated to the care of women — asked her to join its leadership team.

While at ACOG, she served as the organization’s chief legal officer and general counsel.

“They could see the writing on the wall about the challenges that medical professionals were going to face concerning women’s health care,” she said. “The maternal mortality rate was rising, and there was a rash of anti-abortion and antireproductive rights laws that were percolating at the state level. And so I said yes. While I was at ACOG, the COVID-19 epidemic began, and people were still having babies and needing to be treated for cancer and other health care needs, and the organization had a critical role in supporting the health care profession during that crisis. This was a significant part of my career development being there.”

Perryman not only developed extensive executive leadership skills but also led a large team that included not just lawyers but also communications specialists, policy advocates, and others. She was able to see how all the pieces fit together.

Taking the Lead at Democracy Forward Following the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Perryman was asked to return to Democracy Forward as president and CEO. She took that role before the age of 40.

“My task was to expand and deepen the work to

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state and local communities, to hire more lawyers, and work on our strategy,” she said. “What we’re seeing in this country is not the result of a single election or a single individual. It’s a movement that has been building for some period of years that profoundly threatens so many of our foundational values.”

Under Perryman’s leadership, Democracy Forward has taken hundreds of legal actions and works with more than 600 clients and partners to file cases and engage in strategies to protect individual rights, advance reproductive health care, protect the freedom of speech and religious liberty, defend civil rights, and preserve the crucial checks and balances in our system of government.

“It was an incredible honor to be named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People 2025 list and join others on the list that I admire, but it’s really a testament to the commitment of the incredible people I get to work with every day at Democracy Forward,” Perryman said. “Our work is making a significant difference to the world. The team at Democracy Forward inspires me every day.

Throughout my career, I have been most inspired by the people who took on hard fights, who tried things that seemed impossible or improbable, and went for it anyway. And that’s what our team does.”

Over the years, Perryman has received many compliments for her work, “But my favorite was that I was tougher than a $2 chicken fried steak,” she said. “I liked that distinction.”

Fighting for the Future

Perryman noted that the fear of standing up for democracy is real, and that feeling like a spectator and not being able to make a difference might discourage anyone from trying.

“Just do it. This is the day you’ve been waiting for. If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done in earlier times in our history — during the abolition movement, during the civil rights movement, as fascism ravaged Europe before and during World War II — you don’t have to wonder anymore. Because what you are doing today will tell you what you would have done then,” Perryman said.

“This moment is every bit as significant as those prior ones, and the world is waiting and watching — as is history — for what you will do.

So use your voice and all the tools you have in this moment.”

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CLASSIC

A TALE TOO TRAGIC A FINAL CHAP TER IS WRITTEN TO THE INTER NATIONAL FRIENDSHIP OF GOR DON WILKERSON AND REZA EMAM

By Paula Price Tanner Editor’s note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid

storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This November 1985 Classic article closes out this issue with a series of moments between two friends bound by fate.

I

t’s often hard for us to map out the interrelation of events in our lives; we’re usually too close to the action to perceive how one event fits with another.

Yet occasionally we experience an episode which seems as clearly defined as a chapter in a book, with a definite beginning, middle, and ending.

Such was the case recently for Gordon Wilkerson, an ‘82 graduate of Baylor. For Gordon an episode in August completed a series of experiences over the last five years. Together these events form a story which challenges assumptions about college education and the importance of family ties — Gordon’s assumptions and our own as well.

Many of us learned the beginning of Gordon’s story in the November 1980 issue of The Baylor Line. There, in his article titled “Early Thanksgiving,” Gordon related an incident that made a great impact on his view of world politics and, on a more intimate scale, on his view of life as a college student.

The story began in mid-November of 1979, during the crush of preholiday exams that can make even the most enthusiastic student feel jaded. Rubbery dorm food, four major tests in one week, and homesickness had taken their toll on Gordon; the one week left before

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Thanksgiving break seemed to stretch out interminably for him.

Then one evening at a meeting of Gordon’s weekly Bible study group, a foreign student whom Gordon had never met rose and asked the group to remember in prayer his home country of Iran. The quiet young man caught Gordon’s interest, and after the meeting Gordon paused to ask him a few questions about the political turmoil in his native country. Television broadcasts had been filled in recent months with news of Americans held hostage

by Iranian extremists in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran; yet in ten minutes of talking with Reza Emam, Gordon said, he “learned more about Iran than I had learned from listening to hours upon hours of news broadcasts.”

The tyranny of the Shah, the overthrow by religious extremists led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the current state of anarchy in Iran — all became clear as Gordon and Reza talked on into the evening. What really hit Gordon hard was Reza’s telling him how much he, too, was missing his family. “I can’t even call them,” he said, explaining that the operators were not letting any Iranian students call Iran.

Gordon asked if he might try to ring a call through for Reza. “Sure,” Reza said, laughing hopelessly and handing

The Baylor Line

him the phone number. Using his most “official” voice, Gordon gave the information to the Iranian operator. “Is it an emergency?” she queried suspiciously.

“Yes, more or less,” he replied. “As far as I was concerned,” Gordon recalls, “the call was an emergency call. It was an emergency for Reza anyway.”

After several minutes of silence, Gordon heard a phone ringing at the far end of the line. “Aaah-lo?” a voice answered.

“Hang-on!”

Gordon yelled, jamming the phone on Reza’s car.

As Reza began speaking excitedly to his family, Gordon and other students who had wandered into the room went wild — they had beat the system! Up and down the hallways they spread the news: “Reza got through! Reza got through!” And though he couldn’t understand a word being said in Reza’s native language, Gordon needed no translation. The tone of the young man’s voice as he spoke with family members he had feared dead and the tears trailing down his cheeks said it all.

When the call was over, Reza thanked Gordon over and over for helping him contact his family.

Gordon returned to his own room feeling good, he recalls, “but almost criminally lucky. … I had not been home all semester, but Reza probably had not seen his family in several years.

“I had been complaining about studying, reading, going to class, and taking tests. After talking to Reza I realized that I was lucky to be in such a position. I realized that I should have been grateful for the freedom to read books, for the chance to go to class, and for the opportunity to study whatever I wanted to study. … I went to bed that night looking forward to the next day.”

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Gordon and Reza on campus in 1980

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It was at that point that Gordon’s article, “Early Thanksgiving,” ended. But that was not the end of the story.

After their graduation from college, Gordon and Reza kept in touch. Reza went on to the Baylor Dental School in Dallas; Gordon, to SMU graduate school to work on an MBA degree. Though they talked every few months by phone, their hectic schedules rarely permitted them to spend time together.

An exception came last July, when Gordon married Lori Reid in a ceremony at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas. Reza came to the wedding. For a few brief moments the friends were able to chat and catch up on each other’s news. “He had just completed his second year of dental school,” remembers Gordon, “and he seemed to be enjoying a break from studies for a while.”

A month later Gordon’s family gathered again, this time in Amarillo for his brother David’s wedding on August tenth. Two weddings during one summer can make family life pretty hectic in the interim; so while Gordon and Lori returned home to Lubbock the next day, his parents, his brother Ray, and his sister Sarah headed west to Colorado for a well-deserved rest.

About an hour after leaving Amarillo, the Wilkersons noticed that the car traveling in front of them bore a Baylor decal on the rear windshield.

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That was about all they had time to notice, for the ‘83 model Honda suddenly veered left into the center median. The car bounced off the median and shot back across the lanes of traffic, then flipped two and a half times before coming to rest by the side of the highway.

“My brother Ray, who was driving, slammed on his brakes to avoid becoming involved in the accident,” Gordon explains. “The dust cleared and other vehicles stopped at the sight. My dad went immediately to the Honda. He cut the driver’s seat belt and pulled her out of the car. Two other men attended the male passenger, who had been thrown from the vehicle.”

The young man appeared to have been killed on impact.

When a volunteer ambulance arrived fourteen minutes later — an exceptionally quick response, given the wreck’s location — the medics immediately loaded the injured man into the vehicle and rushed him to the hospital.

The young driver, who was the man’s sister, had luckily sustained only bruises and cuts, so she waited for a second ambulance to arrive and take her back to Amarillo.

After her departure, the winds began to pick up, stirring a whirl of papers from the silent wreckage. Mrs. Wilkerson began gathering up the scattered papers, reasoning that they might be important to the accident victims. As she reached down to pick up a sheet skittering along the shoulder of the road, she saw a name: Reza Emam.

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It was only then that Mrs. Wilkerson put it all together: the young man traveling with his sister, the Baylor sticker on the rear window, the name of her son’s friend from Iran. Shaken, the family realized they had just witnessed the death of their son’s friend Reza.

Gordon recounts their reaction: “After discovering that Reza was involved in the accident, my dad knew he needed to do more, but he was not sure how to do so.

He called several people he knew in the Amarillo area but got no answer. Finally he called Winfred Moore, pastor of First Baptist Church, Amarillo. Dr. Moore went immediately to the hospital to see Reza’s sister, Roshal. I think Dr. Moore helped Roshal more than anyone else could have at that time.”

Later that evening Gordon answered the phone and was surprised to hear his dad on the other end of the line. He could tell from his father’s tone that whatever the news might be, it was not good.

“Your friend from Baylor — Reza — the one who is from Iran — how do you spell his last name?” his father asked.

“My immediate response,” says Gordon, “was, ‘Why in the world is he calling to ask me that?’ Not knowing what to expect next, I answered his question.”

Gordon’s father relayed the tragic news and asked his son to call anyone he knew that would need to be notified about the accident. Once again an important, unexpected phone call brought tears to the eyes of the family members on each end of the line. But this time they were not tears of joy.

“I don’t remember much about what happened after that,” says Gordon, “except that I hung up the phone and cried. I cried because of what my family had just

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been through. I cried because I wished I had taken more time to talk to Reza and do things with him when it seemed that we were both ‘too busy.’ I cried because I had lost a good friend.”

On August fourteenth Reza was buried in Redwood City, California, the city where his sister Roshal now lives and attends school. A few friends and relatives attended the funeral. His parents could not obtain clearance to leave Iran in time to attend their son’s funeral.

Thus this episode drew to a close. Yet many unanswered questions remain.

“Why,” Gordon asks, “is a life with such great potential suddenly taken away in an instant?

Someday, perhaps, we shall all understand why.

“Somehow I have always felt that God planned the events which led to the story I wrote several years ago about Reza. For similar reasons, I am convinced that He had a purpose for my family and Dr. Moore to be in positions to help Reza and Roshal after the accident.

Sometimes, even when it is hard to understand the why of a situation, it is possible to see God’s hand in it.”

When we read a chapter in a book, we cannot know in detail what is to come in following chapters — only what we have read so far. Certainly, in the case of Gordon Wilkerson, his family, and the family of Reza Emam, the book is not finished. But this chapter of friendship between Gordon and Reza has developed the plot in a way which cannot help but color the rest of the story.

Reza’s mother, grandmother, and little brother were finally able to join Roshal in California in late August.

They hope to be joined soon by Reza’s father, who has been working to obtain permission for a brief visit to America. Ironically, it has been through Reza’s death that his family has finally reached the freedom he prayed they would obtain.

For Gordon the effects are more subtle, yet just as real. “Reza was a unique individual,” he says.

“Many students in America go through our country’s educational system expecting to go to college. In fact, many people consider a degree from a university ‘about average’ today.

“Reza, more than any person I have ever met, truly appreciated the opportunity for education Baylor presented him. He had a deeper appreciation for America than many of us who all of our lives have enjoyed the privileges this country affords its citizens.

His feelings and attitudes made me more keenly aware of how truly fortunate I am.”

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