Baylor interim president selected new president at Mercer

<p>Bill Underwood, a law professor and interim president of Baylor University, was selected on Friday as the new president of Mercer University.</p><p>He will replace R. Kirby Godsey, who announced a year ago that he would retire in 2006.</p><p>Four weeks ago, Baylor chose John M. Lilley, an alumnus who has led the University of Nevada, Reno since 2001, to become president of the Waco, Texas, school.</p><p>Underwood had become interim president in June, five months after embattled leader Robert B. Sloan Jr. left the Baylor post.</p><p>Underwood, a successful trial lawyer, joined Baylor's faculty in 1990 and became a full professor in 1997. In 2000, he assumed the Leon Jaworski Chair in Practice and Procedure. He also directed Baylor Law School's Practice Court Program.</p><p>Godsey is perhaps best known off Mercer's Macon campus for writing "When We Talk About God, Let's Be Honest," a scholarly text on faith and Bible interpretation.</p><p>The Georgia Baptist Convention, which has supported the school since its founding in 1833, voted last month to sever ties with Mercer, a school of 7,300 students and more than 1,000 faculty. The group's reasons included a perceived lack of commitment by the university to the convention's affiliate, the Southern Baptist Convention.</p><p>But under the convention's rules, the split will not become final unless the convention votes a second time to sever ties during its annual meeting in November 2006 in Duluth, Ga.</p><p>Underwood's family attends Waco's Seventh & James Baptist Church, which has broken away from the national convention.</p><p>The Georgia Baptist Convention had no comment on Underwood's appointment other than that it would not affect the pending split, spokeswoman Diane Reasoner said.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cd9c1c)</p>

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