Maxey Parrish, Senior Lecturer, Retires After 21 years as a Professor
By Anna Prendi, marketing student
Maxey Parrish, senior lecturer of journalism, public relations and new media in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences, is retiring after 21 years as a professor.
Parrish has been in the Baylor family for 41 years in various departments. Parrish first worked in the athletics department for 20 years, where he founded the athletics website.
While in the athletics department, he worked eight events for the U.S.O.C. (United States Olympic Committee), including the Olympic Games in Barcelona and Atlanta.
Along with his impressive work in the athletics department, Parrish has won numerous awards throughout his career. Some are the Massey Award in 2013 for Outstanding Professor and multiple other Outstanding Professor awards, the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Best in
National writing award and more.
“I feel teaching is my calling, the thing God wanted me to do. I’ll never forget a student telling me one day that the classroom was my mission field. And I believe that was true,” Parrish said.
“Maxey Parrish was a great professor. I had him for my first PR class when I was trying to decide if I wanted to take the Journalism PR route or the Journalism New Media route. After that class, I knew PR was the path I wanted to go down and I owe it all to his class for showing me the principles of advertising and PR,” Southlake senior Matti Pennington said.
Parrish used his faith to guide his teaching, in and out of the classroom, enforcing the university's mission statement of “integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community.”
Connecting with his faith, Parrish led 10 mission trips through Baylor and Study Abroad programs in Florence, Budapest, Maastricht and St. Andrews.
“I believe students gain so much from study abroad. I see more growth and maturation in them in a six-week or semester-long program than I do in all their other years,” Parrish said.
The Baylor in Florence trip holds Parrish’s favorite memories.
“The coolest thing I used to do when we were in Florence was have the students wait outside the room where Michelangelo’s David is housed. It’s arguably the most impressive sculpture in the world. I used to go ahead in and turn around and
wait for them to come in so I could see the look on their faces. It’s so impressive, you’ll never forget seeing it,” Parrish said.
After leaving the athletics department, Parrish first started leading mission trips because of his newfound free time. He went from working 60-65 hours a
week to working an average workweek. Then, Parrish read a paper a student wrote his first-semester teaching, and it was about studying abroad. This paper inspired him to look into the program and figure out how he could get involved.
After years of seeing students evolve, Parrish concluded that he had impacted his students more in his office and overseas than in the classroom.
“I applied for the study abroad program two semesters in a row. First to the Allbritton program in London my freshman year and then Baylor in Budapest my sophomore year. Sadly, both of these programs got canceled due to Covid but it had always been a dream of mine to study abroad. I grew up traveling to different countries with my family each summer, think that really sparked my interest and love for traveling the world. What really compelled me to study abroad is the aspect that we get to immerse ourselves into the culture of
others. Baylor and Professor Parish do a good job at helping us achieve this by housing us in apartments rather than hotels. Staying in the city also allows us to explore the sites around us. Baylor does an amazing job with their study abroad programs and I highly recommend anyone to apply even if they are slightly considering it.” Austin senior Logan Foust said.
When asked to give advice to students and professors in the department, Parrish was straightforward. “Get to know your professors. They’re there for you,” and “Get to know your students. They’re the reason you’re there,”
Parrish said.