WACO, Texas (ABP) – A married couple who teach at Baylor University, David and Diana Garland, have had two academic chairs endowed in their honor.
The endowments are a double rarity: Baylor never has established individual chairs for both husband and wife faculty members. And only one current professor, Winfred Moore, has a chair named for him.
David Garland is associate dean and professor of Christian scriptures at Baylor's Truett Theological Seminary. Diana Garland will be the founding dean of the university's School of Social Work when it becomes a freestanding unit within the university June 1. She has been chair of social work and director of the Center for Family and Community Ministries.
Two anonymous donors acting independently established the Garland chairs at Baylor, reported Cindy Dougherty, assistant vice president for development at the Waco university.
“The David E. Garland Chair in Preaching acknowledges the leadership, vision and devotion to ministry that characterizes David's service in the pastorate and as a professor,” Dougherty said. “The Diana R. Garland Endowed Chair in Child and Family Services was established to recognize the Baylor School of Social Work's growth and excellence under Diana's leadership.”
Although David Garland is known as a New Testament scholar and has published 12 books, he promotes preaching as the ultimate aim of biblical study. In addition to his teaching duties, he has been interim pastor of 15 churches in Kentucky, Indiana and Texas.
Under Diana Garland's leadership, the Baylor graduate program in social work has grown 300 percent and has been ranked 87th in the top 100 social work graduate schools, according to U.S. News & World Report. That ranking is especially significant, both because Baylor's graduate program is young and because it uniquely emphasizes integrating religion and spirituality in social work practice, Dougherty noted.
Diana Garland's emphasis on graduate-level social work education filled a void left when Southern Seminary closed the Carver School of Church Social Work. Now Baylor is the only school with its own graduate social-work program for Baptist missions and ministries. Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond offers a graduate social-work degree in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University.
Diana Garland is the author of 15 books.
Prior to their coming to Baylor in 1997, the Garlands held endowed faculty chairs at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. He taught New Testament and she was dean of the seminary's Carver School.