Wayland Baptist University is private,
coeducationMixed-sex education , is the integrated education of males and females in the same institution. The opposite situation is described as single-sex education...
al
BaptistA Baptist is a Christian who subscribes to a theology and may belong to a church that, among other things, is committed to believer's baptism and, with respect to church polity, favors the congregational model...
university based in
PlainviewPlainview is a city in and the county seat of Hale County, Texas, United States. The population was 22,336 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Plainview is located at ....
,
TexasTexas is the second-largest U.S. state in both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States.The name had wide usage among native Americans, meaning "friends" or "allies"...
,
U.S.A.The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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.
Wayland Baptist University is private,
coeducationMixed-sex education , is the integrated education of males and females in the same institution. The opposite situation is described as single-sex education...
al
BaptistA Baptist is a Christian who subscribes to a theology and may belong to a church that, among other things, is committed to believer's baptism and, with respect to church polity, favors the congregational model...
university based in
PlainviewPlainview is a city in and the county seat of Hale County, Texas, United States. The population was 22,336 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Plainview is located at ....
,
TexasTexas is the second-largest U.S. state in both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States.The name had wide usage among native Americans, meaning "friends" or "allies"...
,
U.S.A.The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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.
History
In 1906, the Staked Plains Baptist Association purposed the creation of a school. Dr. and Mrs. James Henry Wayland offered
$The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents .The U.S...
10,000 and 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 educationA primary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
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 SchoolsThe Southern Association of Colleges and Schools is a regional educational accreditation agency for over 13,000 public and private educational institutions ranging from preschool to college level in the southern United States...
. 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 statesThe Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, Down South, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive region in the southeastern and south-central United States...
to voluntarily integrate. This action came three years before the Supreme Court's decision to ban school segregation,
Brown v. Board of EducationBrown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, which overturned earlier rulings going back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, by declaring that state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students denied...
.
Athletics
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 1940s 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 RepresentativeThe Texas House of Representatives is the lower house of the Texas Legislature. The House is composed of 150 members elected from sinlge-member districts across the state. The average district has about 150,000 people. Representatives are elected to two-year terms with no term limits...
Malouf Abraham, Sr.Malouf Abraham, Sr. was a self-made Texas multi-millionaire in the oil and natural gas business and a political and civic leader from Canadian, the seat of Hemphill County in the northeastern Texas Panhandle. He made his fortune in part by leasing mineral rights throughout the eastern Panhandle...
, and his son,
Malouf Abraham, Jr.Malouf Abraham, Jr. , a retired physician, is a major art collector from Canadian, a community in the Texas Panhandle and the seat of Hemphill County. He is expanding his combination residence/art museum in Canadian called "The Citadelle". The Citadelle has been featured numerous times on Home and...
, a retired allergist and active art collector from
CanadianCanadian is a city in and the county seat of Hemphill County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,233 at the 2000 census. It is named for the Canadian River, a tributary of the Arkansas River, which flows through the Texas Panhandle and much of Oklahoma...
, the seat of Hemphill County in the northeastern
Texas PanhandleThe Texas Panhandle is a region of the U.S. state of Texas consisting of the northernmost 26 counties in the state. The panhandle is a rectangular area bordered by the state of New Mexico to the west and the state of Oklahoma to the north and east...
.
A musical scholarship has been established at Wayland in honor of
Sybil Leonard ArmesSybil Leonard Armes was a prominent Baptist author and musician, who served as alternate poet laureate for the U.S. state of Texas in 1969...
, a Christian writer and alternate
poet laureateA Poet Laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events....
of Texas in 1969, who was the mother of Wayland President Paul Woodson Armes.
In May 2008, entertainer
Jimmy DeanJimmy Ray "The Hurst" Dean , better known as Jimmy Dean, is an American country music singer, television host, actor, and businessman...
, a Plainview native, announced that he is making the largest ever gift to Wayland.
Notable alumni
Matt BrownMatthew S. Brown, known as Matt Brown , is a football and track and field coach at Idalou High School in Idalou in Lubbock County, Texas, who is a gold and bronze winner in the Parapan American Games...
, a Wayland alumnus, is a
footballAmerican football, known in the United States and Canada simply as football, and often as Gridiron or Tackle football outside North America, is a competitive team sport known for combining strategy with physical play. The objective of the game is to score points by advancing the ball into the...
and track and field
coachIn sports, a coach or manager is an individual involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a sports team or of individual sportspeople.- Staff :...
at Idalou High School, who is a
goldGold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. It has been a highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is...
and
bronzeBronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive, but sometimes with other elements such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminium, or silicon. It was particularly significant in antiquity, giving its name to the Bronze Age...
winner in the
Parapan American GamesThe Parapan American Games is a multi-sport event held every four years after every Pan American Games for athletes with physical disabilities. The first Games was held in 1999 in Mexico City, Mexico...
. He lost his left leg, amputated above the knee, as a result of an industrial accident in December 2005.
Marsha SharpMarsha Sharp is the former head coach of Texas Tech University's women's basketball team, the Lady Raiders. She retired after twenty-three years at the conclusion of the 2005–2006 season....
, former coach of the
Texas Tech Red RaidersThe Texas Tech Red Raiders are the athletic teams that represent Texas Tech University . The women's basketball team uses the name Lady Raiders; however, the school's other women's teams use the "Red Raiders" name. The university's athletic program fields teams in 17 varsity sports and 30 club sports...
women's basketball team, graduated in 1974 from Wayland.
External links