Sharing Student Scholarship: Students/Student Groups at Baylor, 1921-1930

For the next few weeks, we’re putting up teasers about the fascinating Baylor history, 1921-1930, that Higher Education and Student Affairs students analyzed and shared on the Foundations and History of Higher Education class blog. We’ve already looked at Curriculum and Finance. This week we’re looking at Students/Student Groups at Baylor, with papers examining the beginnings of new student orientation, the cultivation of the campus environment, and the Baylor community’s response to tragedy. Did you know that…

• President Samuel Palmer Brooks taught a year-long freshman orientation course, with topics ranging from Baylor history to selection of vocation to social law and order. (One class was subtitled, “Suppose the freshman class shipwrecked on an island. What would they do?”) Discover more…
• Student organizations begun in the 1920s include Yell Leaders, the Baptist Student Union, the Nose Brotherhood, and the Freshman Student Organization…all of which still exist in some form today! Learn more…
• The term “Immortal Ten” was coined within one day of the bus-train accident that took the lives of 10 Baylor students in 1927. Read more…

We hope you’ll explore these blog posts and enjoy the benefits of the HESA students’ research and scholarship. If you’re inspired to dig deeper, most of their sources can be found in the University Archives within The Texas Collection and in our digitized materials available online in the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections.

Background on this project: Students in the Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) masters program have taken on the challenge of creating original scholarship that adds to what is known about Baylor’s history. As part of Dr. Nathan Alleman’s Foundations and History of Higher Education course, students were grouped under the five class themes: curriculum, finance, students/student groups, access, and religion. In collaboration with Texas Collection archivists and librarians, students mined bulletins, newspapers, correspondence, and other primary resources as they researched their topics. Final papers have been posted on blogs.baylor.edu/hesabaylorhistoryproject and grouped by their particular sub-topic so that patrons, researchers, and other interested persons could benefit from these students’ work. This is the second installment of an annual accumulating project–see last year’s teasers here. Please visit again for future installments!