On April 15, 2025, we celebrated our graduating seniors of 2025! What a joy for us to get to celebrate and honor them as they prepare for their lives beyond Baylor. We are so proud of our students! We also had the privilege of honoring the retirement of our very own Dr. Lynn Tatum. We are grateful to Dr. Tatum’s 30 years of service with the BIC! Wishing Dr. Tatum, and our seniors, well in the seasons to come!
On Wednesday, April 3, we had the opportunity to celebrate our wonderful BIC students who are graduating this year at our annual Senior Recognition Banquet. Congratulations to all our graduating seniors and BIC’em!
Our BIC Spirit Award Winners this year were Mari Sanchez and Matthew Schreiner:
Mari is graduating with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance, with Minors in Legal Reasoning and Analysis & Rhetoric and Public Discourse, Pre- Law. She has served as the BIC Leadership Council President for two years and has helped with recruitment events for new BIC students. Mari will be working at the business law firm Beard Kultgen in Waco upon graduation and will begin law school in the fall of 2025. BIC’em Mari!
Matthew is graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, with a Minor in Rhetoric and Public Discourse, Honors Program, and Pre-Law. Matthew has been involved in several recruitment events for Baylor’s Honors College. Matthew will be attending law school in Washington D.C. and hopes to become a Constitutional lawyer. BIC’em Matthew!
The faculty, staff, current students, and alumni of the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core grieve the loss of one of our own, Elizabeth M. Walker, who influenced so many lives on campus and beyond. She was Baylor Woman of the Year in 2001, devoted wife and mother, and an ardent advocate for those in need. We send our sincere condolences to Elizabeth’s family and friends, trusting in the Love that will not let us go.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on BIC Loss of Elizabeth M. Walker
I am writing to share that my friend, colleague, and fellow BIC member was recently recognized with the Kinder Excellence in Teaching Award for his amazing work as a teacher. He would never share this with you of his own volition, but I felt that it was important to share with this community. Patrick and I embarked on our BIC journey together in 2003 and reconnected when he was hired to teach 7th grade English at YES Prep Southeast, a charter school in Southeast Houston. The world of BIC is truly very small.
When you walk into Patrick’s classroom there is a palpable buzz of anticipation. Students are hanging on his every single word and light up as they encounter new places and themes through literature. Our students, most of which will be first generation college students, get to experience a little bit of the BIC every day. Patrick weaves interdisciplinary knowledge as students understand the cultural climate of House on Mango Street and they understand the science of viruses and pandemics as they read Fever. Not only are the anecdotes about Patrick’s class exciting, but his student achievement data is as well. 74% of his students met rigorous STAAR growth goals in 2023, after three years of disrupted learning due to COVID-19. Patrick achieves these results through strong relationships and integrated social-emotional learning with students. Students in his class learn to love each other, learning, and of course, the Baylor Bears.
BIC 2023 Spirit Award Winners – Chase Robinson and Rachel Lathrop
The following students plan to pursue a career in the medical field:
Anuoluwapo Agbi – Baylor College of Medicine
Amanda Bernardi – an optometrist
Brody Elliot – Baylor MBA Heathcare Administration
Isabella Feinauer – a medical assistant then medical school
Sudili Fernando – PhD Cancer biology at Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Josefine Green – nursing school
Julia Landivar Donato – master’s in public health at Vanderbilt University
Soowon Lee – master’s in public health at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
Susan Lee – grad school for bioethics
Chase Robinson – Baylor College of Medicine
Manaal Salman – Med school in Texas
Anna Shepard – Healthcare administration and healthcare policy
Arshjeet Singh – Working as an EMT for a year before med school
Julia Stephen – med school
Kristin Valerio – Lab researching psychologist in the mental health field
Jaime Atadero – Master’s in epidemiology
Noel Kaleo Acfalle – Work in ER before med school
Miranda Martinez – Texas med school
Stephanie Nguyen – work as an EMT in ER before applying to med school
The following students plan to further their education in law school:
Samuel Beatty
Victoria Beede – Public interest law
The following students plan to pursue a postgraduate degree:
Caroline Barnett – M.A., Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Queen’s University Belfast (in progress), The Hillary Rodham Clinton Award for Peace and Reconciliation Fulbright Study/Research Award
Heaven Baylor – Social work at University of Houston
Elizabeth Herndon – Master’s at Georgetown
Josianne Pooler – Master’s of Social Work
Rachel Rice – Master’s in Higher Education Administration at Texas A&M University
Makayla Reese – University of Edinburgh
Carl Schubert – Either attend seminary or pursue a medieval studies degree
Elizabeth Blanchard – Master’s degree in Archaeology and Business Administration
The following students plan to join the United States ArmedMilitary:
Camille Casillas – Second Lieutenant U.S. Army Active-Duty Air Defense Artillery Officer
Reynaldo De Avila – Communications Officer in U.S. Marine Corps
John McCreery – an Infantry officer
The following students plan pursue a career in/ aspire to be a(n):
Charles Featherston – the film industry
Katherine Henric – Entrepreneur and Business owner
Meridith Hooten – Travel writer
Rachel Lathrop – Working for a non-profit organization
Kent Mattern – Project manager at Epic Systems
Posted inAlumni|Comments Off on Fall 2023 Graduates – Future Plans
Lisa C. Sawyer is a graduate of Baylor University with a B.A. in international studies and a BIC alumna, and holds an M.A. in international affairs from George Washington University.
Lisa C. Sawyer is the Special Coordinator for Afghanistan, reporting directly to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The Office of the Special Coordinator for Afghanistan (OSCA) was established in April 2023 to manage all defense policy matters involving Afghanistan and to serve as the official DoD liaison to the Congressionally-mandated Afghanistan War Commission.
Ms. Sawyer joins DoD after two years at the White House, where she served as Special Advisor to the Vice President. In this position, she directly supported Vice President Harris on all matters related to Europe, Russia, and defense; including policy deliberations associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, foreign leader calls and engagements, multiple trips to Europe, and other efforts aimed at strengthening Transatlantic relations.
Prior to joining the Biden-Harris administration, Ms. Sawyer was the Vice President for International Policy at JPMorgan Chase, where she managed a global portfolio with an emphasis on China and the Middle East. From 2015-2017, Ms. Sawyer was a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with a focus on defense strategy and European security.
Ms. Sawyer began her career as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and has held a number of positions over many years of government service. Ms. Sawyer served on the National Security Council staff as director for NATO and European strategic affairs, where she led the U.S. government’s preparations for the NATO Summit in Wales and managed the development of plans and force posture adjustments to enhance readiness and reassure allies following Russia’s 2014 aggression in Ukraine. Within OSD-Policy, she previously served as Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (ISA), NATO Policy Adviser, and Director for North Africa throughout the Arab Spring. She has also served at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul and at NATO headquarters in Brussels, among other assignments.
Ms. Sawyer has testified on security policy before committees in the House and Senate and her analysis has been featured in major news outlets such as the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, MSNBC, and others.
Whether it’s resolving an ongoing campus parking issue or developing solutions for e-commerce retailers, Cheyenne Atchison often approaches challenges from an unconventional angle.
by Kevin Tankersley
When Cheyenne Atchison and her classmates were assigned a group project in a Management Information Systems (MIS) class, they decided to address what seems to be a never-ending problem on a college campus: a lack of parking. But instead of adding more parking space, the group instead looked at “a higher-level issue, and that’s how students are getting to campus,” Atchison said.
“What’s the transportation issue? How can we eliminate this problem by simply eliminating the amount of people who need their cars to get to campus? Essentially, we created a reward system to incentivize students to get to campus through walking or biking or taking the Baylor-provided buses instead of using their cars,” she said.
The rewards would be based on the number of steps a student walked to get from home to campus, or how far the student rode a bike or how often the student took a bus. And, based on those numbers, students would accumulate points and earn rewards from local businesses.
“You could get a free pizza pillow from Shorty’s Pizza Shack, something like that,” Atchison said.
The assignment was part of the Accenture Innovation Challenge in Hope Koch’s MIS 3305 class in the fall of 2018.
“The project is actually a good way for them to put into practice all the technology topics that I teach them,” Koch, the Godfrey Sullivan Associate Professor of Information Systems, said. “And those topics are also very similar to the technologies that Accenture uses.”
Accenture is “one of the best and biggest consulting firms in the world,” Koch said, and students present the results of their project to Accenture managers, who choose the best project in the class.
While Atchison and her teammates didn’t win the Accenture challenge—they finished third, but still earned an A—it did bring her to the attention of the company’s representatives, and she was offered an internship with Accenture for the summer after her junior year. During her internship, Atchison, who studied marketing, was paired with an MIS major from Texas A&M.
“As far as understanding the project that we were assigned from Accenture, we were very much on par,” she said. “The foundational understanding that I gained from 3305 was immensely helpful in my internship.”
On the last day of her internship, Atchison signed a contract for a job after graduation, which she started in November 2020.
“I came into my senior year with a full-time offer,” Atchison said. “That allowed me to not only focus on my studies during my senior year, but also just to relax and enjoy my senior year instead of focusing on the job market.”
Atchison is now a senior consulting analyst in Accenture’s Dallas office.
“Right now, a lot of my work focuses on customer experience and innovation and how we’re able to provide our clients and their customers the best online experience, especially with our retail clients,” she said. “In my current project, I strategize a lot of the issues that customers are seeing in our retail client e-commerce sites, and then I’m helping to pitch and prototype solutions and test them out and validate our hypotheses.”
Fortune may have been smiling on Atchison as she landed what was the perfect internship for her. But even a less-than-ideal internship has its benefits, she said.
“Any experience is better than none,” Atchison said. “Not every internship or first job will be ideal, but even learning what you don’t like is helpful in the long run. I truly believe you can learn and grow from any experience. Whether you enjoyed it or not, that experience can eventually lead you to better opportunities.”
Baylor Business Review, Spring 2023
Posted inAlumni, Alumni Articles, Alumni Updates|Comments Off on Check Out Cheyenne Atchison’s Alumni Profile featured in Baylor Business Review, Spring 2023 Edition
With each year that passes there are more and more BIC graduates doing great work all over the world. Each year we publish brief Alumni Updates where our alumni can tell us some about their post-BIC lives. In addition to these annual updates, we post interviews with our alumni. Today we are excited to post an interview with Noah Ward (’19). We hope you enjoy, and if you are interested in being interviewed for a future blog post, email us at BIC@baylor.edu.
What year did you graduate from Baylor? What did you study?
I graduated in 2019 majoring in Political Science with a minor in philosophy
Tell us some about your career and journey since graduating from Baylor.
After graduating from Baylor I went on to earn my Masters of Divinity (MDiv) degree from Emory University as a Robert W. Woodruff Fellow. During my time in the program I studied pastoral care and practical theology using these fields to gain a deeper understanding of the history and care of nonreligious communities. Through this program I served as an interfaith chaplain in a hospital ICU, retirement living community, and cancer center. The program and these experiences gave me great insight into the nature of community building, interpersonal care, and crisis management.
Since finishing my master degree I have stayed in higher education now serving as the assistant director of admissions at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business wherein I oversee the Booth Scholars Deferred MBA program. Through this program I engage with undergraduate students as they begin to plan their postgraduate career journey. I also work to foster a sense of community among the hundreds of students in deferment as they work through the first few years of their career.
How has your BIC education influenced your life and/or work since leaving Baylor?
One of the biggest influences the BIC has had over my life and work is the importance of collaboration.
We live in thought worlds that naturally bend toward our own experiences, which never shows the whole reality. Whether we are working, learning, or simply living, we do so in community. This means our default position is to understand other people’s actions according to our personal experiences. This can present a number of pitfalls ranging from simple miscommunication, to the danger of treating others as objects rather than full persons (Think Martin Buber’s I/Thou, or David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water”). Above all else it can trap us in our own traumas and struggles, making it difficult to imagine a world where we are free of those experiences.
Through the collaborative nature of the BIC program we learn how to look beyond our own worlds. Whether it is in the curriculum where we jump into different cultures and times, or in the pedagogical method of the classroom wherein we listen to one another’s interpretations of these texts, we are constantly challenged to hear a perspective other than our own.
I have taken this perspective into my work as a care giver in medical and higher education spaces. In such work I inherently cannot know everything my careseekers have experienced. Yet, this does not mean that I cannot be there to provide support for them. Rather, thanks to the BIC, I am able to challenge myself to see my interactions with patients and students not as a one way relationship wherein I come and solve their troubles, but rather as a as a collaborative work in which we determine together what, if anything, is needed. This is not an easy thing to do. I have fallen short of this goal more times than I can count. Yet those moments where we have been able to bridge our differences and see one another are some of the most beautiful and impactful of my career. I am told by careseekers in those moments that it really made a difference for them, and I certainly know those moments made a difference for me. I have the BIC to thank for that.
Do you have any favorite memories from your time in BIC?
I have tons. As my last answer highlighted they often have to do with the community I fostered in the BIC. From big events like the first BIC at Cameron Park and the BIC bowl, to the more personal moments sitting with professors like Dr. Nogalski and Whitenton in office hours, it is the human connections which I remember most. I think some of the strongest memories are the ones I made with the BIC Leadership council, as we began to carve out more intentional time to get to know one another and become friends. This led to the creation of a D&D group with some of them my senior year which still gets together to this day!
Do you have any advice for current BIC students?
Ask professors for book recommendations during the summers.
During the two summers I worked for the BIC as a student recruiter, I was seeking some sense of meaning to life (I know it’s very dramatic, but it is true). I took the risk of asking Professor Moore for some recommendations of books to read to help me with some of the questions I had. He went over to his shelf of books and pulled out Christ on Trial by Rowan Williams and handed it over. I would come in to his office at least once a week and we would talk about the book. To this day it is one of my favorites. When I finished reading it he went and pulled another from his collection, and then another. Through each book I felt myself not finding answers so much as becoming more comfortable with the questions that troubled me.
Professors often have had similar questions and more time to collect different people’s answers. Don’t be afraid to hear what they have to offer.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
I look forward to meeting with the BIC students and if they have any questions about divinity or business school, I am always happy to chat.
Since its inception, the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core has helped many Baylor students prepare for the rigors of law school. One of our many pre-law graduates, Casey Cook (’10), recently contacted us with the following update:
My name is Casey Cook and I graduated from Baylor University and BIC in the winter of 2010. My experience in BIC was nothing short of life changing. From discussions of Plato’s book: The Republic to sifting through countless New York Times’ columns searching for the perfect article to write about, the BIC continuously challenged my personal beliefs and helped strengthen my philosophy and perception of life. I took these experiences and decided to attend law school. Shortly after attending my first few classes in law school, I quickly realized just how much BIC had prepared me for this academic environment. I feel that having to learn such vasts subjects and subject matter in BIC greatly contributed to my abilities to understand different areas of law and how they were to interact with each other. If I had to do college over again, I would not change a thing. The BIC opened my eyes to a whole new realm of understanding, I am so thankful for my professors, counselors, and instructors that contributed to my growth.
After law school I decided to start my own firm which focuses on estate and business planning. After a few years of practice my firm has serviced over 1,000+ clients and has quickly grown into multiple firms throughout Texas. My firm has helped all types of clients, from those with few assets who need help qualifying for governmental assistance, to multi-million dollar clients wishing to establish a trust and structuring the ancillary succession planning. I have no doubt that my experiences from BIC have helped shaped my logic and reasoning skills, in addition to my ability to effectively communicate complex or perplexing information to my clients. I can not imagine where my life would be without the education and experiences that BIC provided me. Sic’ em!
With each year that passes there are more and more BIC graduates doing great work all over the world. Each year we publish brief Alumni Updates where our alumni can tell us some about their post-BIC lives. In addition to these annual updates, we post interviews with our alumni. Today we are excited to post an interview with Shanna Van Wagner (’07). We hope you enjoy, and if you are interested in being interviewed for a future blog post, email us at BIC@baylor.edu.
What year did you graduate from Baylor? What did you study?
I graduated from Baylor in 2007 with a B.S. in Forensic Science and minors in Biology and Chemistry.
Tell us some about your career and journey since graduating from Baylor.
After graduation, I moved back to California and tried to get a job in the field of forensics. The field was incredibly competitive. I remember testing for one job as a criminalist with Orange County and there were over 100 people testing for one position. At that point, I knew I needed a back-up plan.
I had enjoyed some of the texts we had read in BIC and I thought law might be an interesting area to explore. I signed up for a condensed paralegal certification course through University of San Diego, which I completed in three months. Shortly after completing the program, I was hired by a small firm where I ended up working for nearly ten years. While I enjoyed working as a paralegal, I quickly grew bored and wanted more of a challenge. I had capped out in my current position as a senior paralegal and realized I was doing everything an attorney was doing in terms of preparing the cases, I was just unable to officially appear for the clients.
I ended up going through the part-time program at University of San Diego, School of Law. Because I had to work to support myself financially, I was working a full day while attending school at night and commuting. For four years, my days began at 5:00 a.m., I drove an hour to the office to start work at 6:30 a.m., worked until 3:00 p.m., and then attended classes until 9:00 p.m. and then drove another hour back home. To this day, I do not know how I did it.
After graduating law school and passing the bar, I got a job with an international law firm where I stayed for about a year. The managing partner I was working for asked me to join him and open up the San Diego office of another firm and I gladly accepted. I have been working there since 2019 and was promoted to senior associate last year. I am also now on the partnership track.
How has your BIC education influenced your life and/or work since leaving Baylor?
My BIC education actually led me into my current field of law, an area I was not previously considering. The texts and discussions we had in social world stuck with me more than I thought! Additionally, the emphasis on going to the source documents themselves as opposed to any secondary authorities has been particularly appropriate in my law practice. Why read about something when you can go directly to the source? Similarly, if you are looking for legal support for an argument, go to the cases themselves versus a secondary publication that contains only snippets of information. Having a thorough understanding of the background of a case as well as context for the holding of that case is so much more beneficial.
Do you have any favorite memories from your time in BIC?
I enjoyed the field trips. Sure, you can read about other cultures, but actually immersing yourself into the culture provides a firsthand experience that is unparalleled. I met many lifelong friends in the program and continue to keep in touch today – 15 years after graduating. I loved being able to meet so many different people in different majors that I ordinarily would not have met, simply because we were on different career paths. I believe that further enhanced my education because it exposed me to different perspectives and different ways of thinking that I would not have received had I stayed only in chosen major of science.
Is there something you learned in BIC that still sticks with you today?
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” It sounds very cliché, but it is true. I am in a high conflict field and often deal with incredibly difficult opposing counsel on tough cases and the BIC experience has helped me. I have a greater appreciation for differing opinions, which has been helpful in getting along with other attorneys, finding common ground, and working cooperatively. Being able to understand and respect someone’s position goes a long way, even if you do not agree with it.
Do you have any advice for current BIC students?
Do not limit yourself and be open to the experience. I was very nervous and hesitant coming to Baylor from Southern California, simply because I did not know what to expect. It ended up being such a rewarding experience and in hindsight, I should have embraced wholeheartedly.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
Give new things a chance. Take risks. You never know what could end up happening or where something may lead you. Ask questions and enjoy this time. You will meet lifelong friends in the program who will continue to impact your life long after graduation.
Posted inAlumni, Alumni Interviews|Comments Off on Alumni Interviews — Shanna Van Wagner (’07)
This is a place to read about what's happening with BIC alumni, current students, and faculty. Please email us, if you wish to be added to our alumni email list, or if you have ideas for the blog.