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Howard Payne University is a four-to-five-year (depending on degree plan), private university located in Brownwood, Texas. The university is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Currently the university has almost 1,200 full-time students. Howard Payne is known for its Christian Studies program, the Guy D. Newman Honors Academy, and its Music department. HPU founders named the college after Edward Howard Payne, a Missouri resident. Payne, brother-in-law to John David Robnett, the college's founder, gave the lead monetary gift to start the university. HPU offers more than 50 majors, minors and pre-professional programs within six schools: Science and Math, Business, Christian Studies, Education, Music and Fine Arts, and Humanities. With a student to professor ratio of 11:1 and peer tutoring through the collegium on campus, student success is a priority at HPU. Athletic programs include NCAA Division III football, baseball, softball, women's volleyball, men and women's soccer, basketball and tennis. The HPU mascot is a yellow jacket named "Buzzsaw." The university also has extension centers located in New Braunfels, Texas and in El Paso, Texas. ==Founding and history== Baptist leaders in Brown County saw a need for a Baptist institution of higher education. In 1889, Howard Payne College opened for its first semester. Two years later, HPU became sister schools with Baptist school Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. Late nineteenth-century travelers found travel methods unreliable at best and placed themselves at risk of attack from American Indians of the Comanche tribe native to the area. Texas recorded its last Indian attack in the early twentieth century near Santa Anna, Texas. Daniel Baker College, a Presbyterian institution, began operation near the time local Baptists founded Howard Payne. Ironically, DBC backers began construction on a piece of land directly behind where Howard Payne's Old Main Hall would stand and eventually moved the foundation to the NE corner of Austin and Coggin Avenues. DBC and Howard Payne merged in 1953 after DBC fell into financial difficulties, and after extensive renovation, DBC's main building became the Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom building in 1969. After initial financial difficulties related to the 1890s financial panic, Howard Payne joined the system of colleges and universities funded by the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The BGCT operated Howard Payne as a junior college from 1900 until 1914, when it regained four-year status. Dr. Thomas Taylor took office as university president in 1929 shortly before the stock market crash began the Great Depression. Taylor kept Howard Payne open when other rural, private colleges failed by challenging faculty members to work without pay and house students in their homes without compensation. At the end of the faculty prayer meeting in which Taylor issued the challenge, most faculty members tore up their contracts and agreed to work without pay until the college began operating in the black. Taylor's successor, Guy D. Newman, took office in 1955 and before retiring from the post in 1973, created the Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom and built most of the campus buildings still in use today. In 1974, the BGCT recognized Howard Payne's broad academic scope and approved a name change in the school's charter, from "Howard Payne College" to "Howard Payne University." In 1984, Old Main Hall, the building symbolic of HPU, burned to the ground during finals week. Although the Brownwood Fire Department headquarters sit across the street from the HPU campus, a prank caller phoned in a false alarm in Bangs, a small town 8 miles from the Brownwood city limits, to which the department responded. Before the crews could return to Brownwood, fire completely consumed the 95-year-old building. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Howard Payne University」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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