FACULTY ACCOMPLISHMENTS

All of our faculty have accomplishments worth mentioning.  The profiles on this page will rotate on a monthly basis. 

Dr. Arch Mayfield, longtime professor of English at Wayland Baptist University, was honored by his peers statewide recently with the Frances Hernandez Teacher-Scholar Award, given March 7 by the Conference of College Teachers of English
during their annual meeting at he University of Texas.

Mayfield has been an active member of CCTE for about five years and has been a member of the WBU faculty since 1973. He holds twod egrees from Hardin-Simmons University and the doctorate from Texas Tech.

The award was named for Hernandez, a longtime English professor at University of Texas at El Paso and an active member of CCTE. Her husband, John, established the award with a donation in her honor upon her death. The award is accompanied by a cash prize and a plaque for "exemplary service to students and his profession."It was very humbling and very gratifying, especially coming from this organization," Mayfield said. "They have been very welcoming to me." A special twist of the awards luncheon for Mayfield was getting to meet former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, also a former pro basketball player and Rhodes Scholar. Bradley attended as a friend of the keynote speaker Dr. Betty Flowers, director of the Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

 

 

Wayland Baptist University administrators, faculty and students are planning to go a step beyond the normal, textbook education by putting a classroom research project into practical application.

              For the past several years, Dr. Joyl Boyd, associate professor of chemistry, has led a research group that was intent upon developing a simple, cost-effective means to purify water. Over the last four years, different students have continued to build upon previous research, bringing the project to its current state in which the school already has one patent in place and another pending. The research is based on using titania and light to remove impurities, including metals, lead, arsenic, pesticides, herbicides, petroleum by-products and more from drinking water. The process also converts algae, bacteria and protozoa to non-toxic, inert substances.

              Now, with the research in place, the School of Math and Sciences is joining forces with the School of Business and Wayland’s Missions Center to put the lab work into practical use.

              “This is our chance to do things together and that we cannot do ourselves,” Boyd said. “We need to function together as a team, analogous to the Body of Christ.”

              Simply put, the School of Math and Sciences will provide the means to create the water purification systems then turn the process over to the School of Business which will determine the best way to market the products to consumers. Once the purification systems are in production, they will be sold with the proceeds funding mission projects around the world. The plan is to use the proceeds to produce more purification systems that can be distributed through the work of the Missions Center to developing countries where pure water is unavailable.

              “Through this process, you can take the rankest water you can find and turn it into drinkable water,” said Wayland Executive Vice President and Provost Dr. Bobby Hall. “This project has the potential to change lives around the world.”

              The relatively simple production process can create purification systems that can be used in something as small as a personal water bottle for outdoor enthusiasts, or larger systems that can clean coy ponds. In essence, they could also be produced on a massive scale to purify water for a village.

              Dr. Hall, Dr. Boyd and Dr. Rick Shaw, director of the Missions Center, held a preliminary meeting with students who are interested in working on the project. Dr. Hall ensured them that Wayland is committed to this project, having funneled additional funding to the research aspects of the project over the last few years and making a commitment to do so as the project progresses.

              “There is no interest in profitability, and there are no strings attached,” Hall said. “We are using the resources at this institution to make a difference in this world.”

              There is no specific timeline for completion of the project as groups from the School of Business and Missions Center will need to research their specific areas. While the business and marketing students are trying to determine the best way to market the device for consumers, the mission students will be looking at developing countries to determine where the technology will be appropriate and accepted. Once in place, the technology to produce the purification systems can be passed on to these cultures that can then produce their own systems as needed. The process uses basic materials that are easily accessed.

              Anyone interested in helping with the project may contact Dr. Boyd at 291-1125.

 

Dr. Suzanne Nesmith got a special treat this summer when she represented Wayland Baptist University at the Oxford Round Table in England.

              An assistant professor of education and the assistant dean in the School of Education, Nesmith spent a week on the sprawling, historic campus participating in a discussion with other university professors on the topic of dual cultures.

              “The idea is based on lecture that C.P. Snow did in 1959 where he spoke of the emergence of two cultures, one of those in the sciences and one of those in the humanities,” Nesmith explained. “He felt that those were becoming further apart and that they needed to come together somehow or there would be difficulties. He proposed that their needed to be a third culture that was a blending of the two, and he noted that many of the great thinkers throughout history were part of that third culture.”

              Nesmith said the round table brought together professors from universities around the world who had an interest or work in the topic area. Since she did her doctoral dissertation on a teaching approach that blends mathematics and literature, she qualified for the group and found quite an interest in the discussions.

              “I was the only one in our group in the teacher preparatory area, and I likened our role to creating that third culture since many of our elementary education students are generalists and don’t have a teaching field. They have to know a little about everything,” she said.

              Nesmith’s Round Table group consisted of 25 individuals, and an Oxford representative who served as a facilitator for the discussion sessions, all of which was held at Exeter College. The day typically consisted of full morning sessions beginning with a presentation by one of the Round Table members, followed by a question-and-answer time and discussion by the group. After several of these, the group would break for lunch, held in the stately dining hall at Exeter, then have some afternoon free time for scheduled tours or sightseeing on their own.

              Nesmith took advantage of a few of the tours, including one around Christchurch – another college at Oxford and the setting for much of the filming of the Harry Potter movie series. She also became familiar with the train system, taking a trip out to Stonehenge one afternoon.

              In the evenings, the group would reconvene for a formal meal with another short presentation and discussion following. The final night at Oxford, the evening was even more formal and the group got to enjoy entertainment by a world renowned pianist and an operatic singer who were part of the Round Table gathering.

 

              Nesmith drew the first presentation of the week, which she felt was fitting since she represented the move toward that third culture mentioned by Snow and was a neutral party. She benefited from the ideas and thoughts of others, though, and came back with new ideas and understanding.

              “I really came away with a sense of recognizing so many varied perspectives about education but also the similarities,” she said. “We all had the same concerns and issues, and we all want what’s best for our students.

              “Being from the United States, we often think that our way is the best way or the only way. But this was a way for me to expand my vision about the world and realize there are more options.”