Baylor University

Baylor University, a private Christian research institution headquartered in Waco, Texas, acts as a prime recipient of federal research grants and educational contracts, with a secondary footprint as a subcontractor and sub-recipient on collaborative federal research initiatives. The university holds no formal SBA set-aside designations and competes in full-and-open procurements across education, training, and research domains. Baylor operates primarily as an educational institution providing university affiliation services, graduate medical education support, and federally funded research across science, engineering, and health disciplines.

Baylor's customer concentration centers on the Department of the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which accounts for 160 awards (18% of total awards) valued at $40.9 million in combined potential value. The National Science Foundation follows with 94 awards across research and education programs. The top five customer agencies by potential value—TRADOC, NASA Shared Services Center ($7.4 million across 24 awards), Air Force Air Education and Training Command ($2.6 million), Army Medical Command ($2.3 million), and Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery ($266 thousand)—represent 95% of the university's combined potential value. A pronounced split characterizes the customer base: TRADOC's medical education work involves dozens of modest delivery orders ($22,000–$496,000 each) under single-award IDIQs, while NASA and NSF provide higher-dollar research grants ($300,000–$4.3 million per award) on fewer awards.

Baylor's vehicle position rests on two primary Army contracts. A single-award IDIQ (W81K0420D0010) with a $1.17 million ceiling, extended through April 2028, supports consolidated university affiliation services for occupational therapy, physical therapy, and physician assistant programs. A newer single-award vehicle (awarded May 2026) carries a $9.4 million ceiling through May 2031 for the same mission. These vehicles fund curriculum coordination, faculty oversight, student enrollment management, accreditation support, and administrative services enabling military service members to earn advanced medical degrees. Fifty-three task orders flow through Air Force indefinite delivery contract F0160079D0331 ($2.6 million combined potential value), indicating Baylor's role in Air Education and Training Command medical education programs.

Recent activity shows moderate fluctuation: 87 awards in FY2024, declining to 76 in FY2025 and 49 in FY2026. The recompete cliff reveals 75 awards with completion in the next twenty-four months carrying $7.5 million in potential value, signaling near-term recompete exposure on TRADOC medical education orders and several research grants from NSF and NIH. Service Contract Inventory data are sparse—only two SCI records across FY2022–FY2024—reflecting Baylor's classification as a research and educational institution rather than a federal services vendor. FTE reporting shows minimal SCI-captured labor (0.3 FTEs in FY2024, all sub-recipient activity), confirming that the university's federal footprint is research and educational delivery, not labor-based services contracting.

Baylor operates as a prime on 794 awards (89%) and subcontracts on 95 awards (11%). As a sub-recipient, Baylor participates in collaborative research grants led by peer institutions including University of Illinois, University of Texas at Arlington, Baylor College of Medicine, Duke University, Washington University in St. Louis, and others, contributing research labor and analysis in areas such as microbiome research, flood-driven health risks, contaminant measurement, and advanced manufacturing. As a sub-contractor on federal construction and research projects, Baylor performs work under primes including Honeywell Federal Manufacturing (National Security Campus operations), Ierus Technologies (additive manufacturing repair), and the University of Alabama (structural repair of metal alloys).

Baylor's federal grant footprint spans the National Science Foundation (94 awards across engineering, materials research, geosciences, chemistry, education, and mathematical sciences), the National Institutes of Health and DHHS agencies (NIDA, NICHD, NCI, NIAID, NIGMS, NHLBI, NIDCD, NIAMS), the Department of Defense (Office of Naval Research, Defense Health Agency), the Department of Agriculture (APHIS cooperative agreements on plant disease control and sterile insect technique), the Department of Commerce (NIST measurement science), the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fogarty International Center. Representative research includes $4.27 million on advanced air mobility infrastructure planning (NASA), $1.996 million on STEM scholarships for low-income students (NSF), $3.874 million on additive friction surfacing for large-scale steel manufacturing (DOE ARPA-E), and numerous investigator-initiated research awards ($300,000–$600,000) in chemistry, materials science, biology, and environmental research. The university acts as prime recipient on all grants listed; no grant sub-award activity as a recipient is visible in the source, though Baylor distributes funding to sub-recipients on multi-institutional collaborative projects.

Baylor's TRADOC partnership dominates its federal contract revenue and defines operational scale. Over 160 awards to date, primarily delivery orders issued since 2023, support military graduate medical education across nursing anesthesia, physical therapy, occupational therapy, emergency medicine, and physician assistant studies at Fort Sam Houston and Robinson, Texas. These orders are exclusively full-and-open competitive procurements without set-aside designation, firm fixed-price, and structured as 12-month or multi-year task orders (typically $22,000–$496,000 per order) placed against the university's standing IDIQs. The work reflects sustained military-civilian academic partnerships anchored in educational affiliation rather than service delivery; Baylor provides curricular integration, faculty oversight, accreditation support, and enrollment management to enable service members to earn graduate degrees while meeting operational readiness requirements.

The recompete outlook presents near-term risk and opportunity. The May 2026 IDIQ award (W81K0426I0010, $9.4 million ceiling through May 2031) suggests TRADOC's confidence in Baylor's execution and the military's longer-term commitment to the university as an education partner. However, task order volume and dollar flow are concentrated in FY2023–FY2025, with activity declining through FY2026; 75 awards expire within twenty-four months, creating a recompete window that will test Baylor's ability to sustain Army medical education funding and leverage its established relationships into expanded research and training opportunities at NSF and NIH.