To kick off our new series, its only fitting to interview the person who captains the Graduate School, Dean Larry Lyon. Dr. Lyon earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas in Sociology and joined the Baylor Sociology Department in 1975. He began serving as Dean of Baylor’s Graduate School in 1998. He is a Vice Provost, a Professor of Sociology, and the Director of the Baylor Center for Community Research and Development. His research interests include community sociology and the sociology of religion.
BearTracks
Dean Lyon, tell me a little bit about yourself before we jump in. Anything you want the readers to know?
Dean Larry Lyon
I’ve been at Baylor forever!
BT
Forever – is there a number that goes with forever?
DLL
I have announced my intent to retire in two more years. At that point. I will have spent 50 years at Baylor. I came here in 1975.
And on top of that, I was an undergraduate at Baylor. So lots and lots of years.
BT
So are the four years of undergrad included in the total fifty?
DLL
No, it’s 50 as faculty and administration.
BT
That’s incredible. What was your degree?
DLL
I was a sociology major, I did a PhD in Sociology at UT Austin, and then came directly back to Baylor.
BT
Tell me about your role in the graduate school and how you ended up in this position, because when you ask most kindergarteners what they want to be when they grow up, most of them don’t say “graduate school dean.” Unless you just knew from the start!
DLL
Well for me, I was going to be a cowboy, an astronaut, or grad school dean.
BT
Okay, wow, well, another staff member here already has the corner on the cowboy dream!
DLL
Haha! Well, it became a serious question to me, you know, when I moved past the astronaut stage as an undergraduate. And for me, Intro to Sociology was akin to a religious experience. It was a different way of looking at the world. It was a vantage point that allowed me to make sense of things that I hadn’t thought about before, much less made sense of. And then I realized the person up at the front of the classroom got to do that every day for the rest of his life. That’s a good gig, I thought. I wonder if I can do that.
I decided I wanted to be a college professor, so that I could continue to read and think and do research in sociology. And then you have to figure out where you want to be a college professor, and I knew I liked Baylor, so I was unbelievably lucky that an opening appeared at Baylor in the sociology department at the same time I graduated from University of Texas.
BT
As far as your role as Graduate School Dean goes, give me the the bird’s eye view – because I imagine that most graduate students know that you’re a very important figure, but what your job actually entails day-to-day is probably beyond what many of them can conceive of. So tell me what a day in your life might look like.
DLL
Well, let’s take today as an example. Today, I met virtually with the other Big Twelve Graduate Deans, and we talked about the mental health of graduate students, the relationship between politics and higher education, which is in a very contentious position right now. We talked about the increasing demands to raise stipends. We talked about the post-matriculation outcomes for PhD students and what we do for that.
I met with financial people too. As you know, we’ve committed to raise PhD stipends for the next three years, but we haven’t exactly nailed down how to pay for that. So we’re still working on that. I didn’t become a sociologist to work on financial spreadsheets, and most faculty didn’t either, but I end up spending lots of time doing that.
Then finally, I talked with the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences about a presentation to his board of advisors. The College of Arts and Sciences has the charge of basically all undergraduates for their first two years, and it has been thought of as primarily an undergraduate-focused entity. But Dean Nordt is a very strong advocate of graduate education, and he wants his board to understand the role of graduate programs in his College. For example, Arts and Sciences comprises a large majority of our PhD programs and students. So, we talked about what we wanted to cover with the board of advisors. That was a lot of my day today.
BT
And that was just today. Wow. Well, if looking at financial spreadsheets is perhaps lower on your list of favorite things, what is your favorite thing about the job?
DLL
You know, I’ve been here so long. And my love for Baylor has grown stronger than my love for Sociology. And while I didn’t come here initially as a professional in this, but I’ve stayed here long enough to recognize what was needed to become a great university was larger, stronger graduate programs. We are really good at undergraduate education. We always have been, but you can’t say the same for graduate education – but we’re getting there! And so what brings me the greatest pleasure is getting there.
I’m still a numbers person, and when I look at the numbers for graduate enrollment, when I look at the number of applicants for our graduate programs, and I look at the number of graduates from our programs, it shows me we’re getting there. I just send out the annual report in an update. We sent it to all the people who got a graduate degree from Baylor. And I always send it from my email address, hoping that they’ll respond a little bit. And a lot of them do, and in every case, they’re saying it’s so much different and frankly so much better than it was. By improving graduate education, we’re improving Baylor; and I really care about Baylor. I can’t think of any way to make Baylor better and stronger than by graduate education. I’m biased, I get that.
BT
I’d agree with you! Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but is reaching R1 status at the top of your proudest accomplishments during your tenure in administration, or is there something else top that? Recognizing that you’ve still got two power-packed years left in the job!
DLL
It’s empirical validation of where we’ve been going; it’s major. And frankly, there are mathematical models that measure all of the things that contribute to an R1 status, and we plotted them out. And we got it three years early. My planning was to retire at the end of the same year that we made R1. But we made it last year.
BT
Yes, it kind of snuck up on everybody!
DLL
Yeah, we got there three years earlier than I thought, which is wonderful. I couldn’t be happier. But it’s more than just the cherry on top. It’s more important than a cherry. But it is a validation. I had the internal metrics, and I knew were were making progress. I could see it! I could see it in graduate students like yourself, but to have this external, national comparison to say “Yep, we’ve reached grown-up status!” That was huge.
BT
So when I accepted this position I was excited, but until I was in it for a few months I had no idea how much goes on behind the scenes to make graduate programs possible. What do you wish more graduate students knew about what goes on here in the Graduate School that makes their life at Baylor possible?
DLL
That up and down this hall, we exist to support their departments, whatever department they’re in. Their faculty, for example, the best thing they can do for a graduate student is to be really good in their discipline. The better they are in English, Religion, Sociology, Math, the better the graduate experience. And so anything we can do so they don’t have to, like wading through the applications, categorizing them in ways to help them make better decisions, reaching out to the students when they’re offered admission and letting them know all the details, making sure that they’re they’re always helped out, finding out competitive stipend levels that we need, the insurance level we need to be competitive. Going through all the details of creating a new degree or a new concentration. The faculty are the experts. Let us help you develop all the paperwork that gets you there.
If you’re a graduate student ready to write a thesis or dissertation, what does it have to look like and how long does it have to be? What’s the format and who’s on the committee? You focused on writing a good dissertation. Let us help you with the other parts. So most of the things I just mentioned, by the way, are kind of boring. But that’s okay, because we want the exciting parts in the departments where the faculty and graduate students can fulfill the reason they’re there in the first place.
BT
You and your team are like the framing of the house. It’s a lot of unseen stuff.
DLL
We’re the plumbing!
BT
Which is very important! Okay, a fun question. What is your favorite Baylor event or sport?
DLL
That’s easy. That’s football.
BT
Do you have a favorite game to watch? Who do you like to see Baylor just demolish?
DLL
That’s easy too. That’s Texas.
You know, I got my PhD there. In 1974, I was living in Austin. It had been 50 years since Baylor beat Texas in football. And the game was in Waco, so I couldn’t go to the game. As you know, graduate students have other things to do.
BT
Just a couple.
DLL
So I was listening on the radio, and we won! And I made life miserable for all my friends in my apartment complex. Then my wife Carol and I got the babies, and we drove to the middle of campus that evening and took a picture of the tower, their big, iconic tower on campus, because it was lit up white. The last 50 years it had been lit up orange to celebrate a victory. So, somewhere back home in a shoebox, I’ve got a picture of the tower at night, the night after the after the Baylor game because finally we beat Texas.
BT
That’s great; my goodness. Okay, next question is sort of a choose-your-own adventure? I’ve got two options here. A) What’s the resource you wish graduate students took better advantage of? Or B) is there a recurring pitfall you see amongst graduate students that you wish you could help more people avoid?
DLL
The first one is the Graduate Writing Center.
BT
Thank you. I know I’m biased as the coordinator, but thank you.
DLL
Beyond you, but including you, we have some really good people working there, and it’s a really good resource. And the ability to communicate in written communication serves you in every field. Your faculty, their job is to help you write a little bit, but it’s mostly your job to teach yourself to write better.
BT
Which is a tall order!
DLL
Which is a tall order because it’s something you really need to learn! So I wish our students would take more advantage of that resource.
As far as common pitfalls, this is perhaps more for doctoral students. Be more flexible and be broader in your research. In other words, many students come in thinking, “I’ve got to do this particular research in this way and this time at this place.” No you don’t! You have to do some research that gets you a degree. Then, you have 40 years to do the things that that are important to you.
The truth is that not that many people care about your dissertation; they care about those three letters after your name. So get that part done, and even if it’s different than what you planned, you might like this better than what you thought you were going to like. I think some of our doctoral students are a little rigid in wanting “only this research method under only this person, and only this time, that’s the only path forward for me.”
BT
That’s helpful. We have to remember that at the end of the day, we just need to check the boxes so that we have those next 40 years to do more exciting things.
Okay, tell me a fun fact about yourself.
DLL
I don’t look it, but I’m very old.
BT
Haha! I won’t make you reveal how old.
Okay, final question. And this not my question, it is a mischievous question submitted by Associate Dean Sara Dolan and Laura Sepanski, the Grad School Professional Development Program Coordinator: Who is your favorite staff member in the Graduate School?
DLL
Probably Sara Dolan and Laura Sepanski.
BT
I think that’s a great answer. Thank you so much for your time!