Wayland Baptist University

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Wayland Baptist University


Motto:	Go Ye into All the World / Let There Be Light
Established:	1908
Type:	private, coeducational
President:	Dr. Paul Woodson Armes
Location:	Plainview, Texas, USA
Campus:	suburban:
Nickname:	Pioneers
Affiliations:	Southern Baptist
Website:	www.wbu.edu

Wayland Baptist University is private, coeducational Baptist university based in Plainview, Texas, U.S.A. Wayland Baptist has a total of fourteen campuses in four additional Texas cities, five other states, and the country of Kenya. On August 31, 1908, the university was chartered by the state of Texas, under the name Wayland Literary and Technical Institute. The university would have another name change in 1910 as Wayland Baptist College. In 1981, it attained university status and settled with the current name, Wayland Baptist University. With an enrollment hovering at 6,000 students, Wayland is one of the largest Southern Baptist universities in the nation.

In 1906, the Staked Plains Baptist Association purposed the creation of a school. Dr. and Mrs. James Henry Wayland offered $10,000 and 25 acres of land in Plainview if the Staked Plains Baptist Association and the citizens of the city would raise an additional $40,000. In 1910, the school offered its first classes despite the administration building not yet being fully built. A total of 225 students were taking classes in primary education through junior college levels during the school's first term. After a public school system was well established in Plainview, the elementary grades were discontinued. Wayland Baptist gained membership to the American Association of Junior Colleges in 1926 and would later be approved as a senior college by the Texas Department of Education and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Texas Education Agency for teacher education training.

The school is the oldest institution of higher education in continuous existence on the High Plains of Texas due to the leadership of Dr. George W. McDonald, the fifth president of the school. When a run on the banks during the Great Depression threatened to close the school, the administration and faculty agreed to forego pay in order to continue the task of educating students, trusting God to supply their needs.

In 1951, a black teacher approached the college asking if she could fulfill continuing education requirements at the college. Dr. James W. "Bill" Marshall, the school's sixth president, led the college to take the historic step to admit black students to the college, making Wayland the first four-year liberal arts college in the former Confederate states to voluntarily integrate. This action came three years before the Supreme Court's decision to ban school segregation, Brown v. Board of Education.

Wayland's women's basketball program has the distinction of being the only women's team to win 1,300 games. The mascot for the women's team is the Flying Queens. The name's origin is from a sponsorship in the 1940's by Harvest Queen Mill which led to the team being called the Harvest Queens. In 1950, Hutcherson Air Service became a full sponsor of the team, which came to be known as the Hutcherson Flying Queens. To this day, Hutcherson Air Service continues to provide travel for the women's road games.

The Malouf Abraham Family Arts Center on the Wayland campus was endowed by the family of the late State Representative Malouf Abraham, Sr., and his son, Malouf Abraham, Jr., a retired allergist and active art collector from Canadian, the seat of Hemphill County in the northeastern Texas Panhandle.

A musical scholarship has been established at Wayland in honor of Sybil Leonard Armes, a Christian writer and alternate poet laureate of Texas in 1969, who was the mother of Wayland President Paul Woodson Armes.

In May 2008, entertainer Jimmy Dean, a Plainview native, announced that he is making the largest ever gift to Wayland.

[edit] References

"History of Wayland Baptist University", Wayland Baptist University, January 25, 2007.
"Past Presidents", Wayland Baptist University, January 25, 2007.
"Pioneer with Women and Minorities", Wayland Baptist University, January 25, 2007.
"Pioneer in Distance Learning", Wayland Baptist University, January 25, 2007.
"Pioneer in Military Education", Wayland Baptist University, January 25, 2007.
Wayland Baptist University from the Handbook of Texas Online. Accessed January 21, 2006