To read more from Daniel, visit his blog: Sic Et Non.
Last Thursday, I was among a group of people who had been invited to a meeting with Elder Clark G. Gilbert, a member of the Seventy, who currently serves as Commissioner of Education for the Church Educational System; Elder Alvin F. Meredith III, who is also a member of the Seventy and who was relatively recently appointed president of Brigham Young University-Idaho; and C. Shane Reese, the still relatively new president of the main Brigham Young University campus in Provo, Utah.
The announced topic of the meeting was “Innovations and Initiatives at BYU and BYU-Idaho.”
I was especially pleased to hear Elder Gilbert say, and repeat, and emphasize as one of the points that he really wanted attendees to register was — in these precise words — “BYU is serious about its religious mission.”
President Reese stressed the same point. As BYU’s academic vice president, he said, he had made it his practice to interview every serious new candidate for faculty hiring in order, among other things, to determine whether the individual really wanted to participate in the University’s religious mission. Now, as president of the University, he is only able to interview about fifty percent of such candidates. Most, he said, do indeed want to be involved in the spiritual aspects of the University. For those who do not, he says, he wishes them every career success at some other institution.
This was music to my ears, as was President Reese’s declaration of the fundamental importance of faculty hires. (See my entry “On the future of BYU” from late last year.)
President Reese also pointed, among many other things, to BYU’s first-ever required “student success class.” Having taken note of studies and their own observations of the generational “epidemic of loneliness” that many have noted across the United States, BYU has designed hundreds of sections of relatively small classes — maximally twenty-four students — in which the professors will be sure to know student names and, among other things, the classes will attend devotionals, athletic activities, theatrical performances, and art exhibits together
President Meredith, who goes by the unexplained nickname of “Trip,” said, if I understood him correctly, that his trip to Rexburg to be announced as the new president of BYU-Idaho, was only the second visit that he had paid to the town in his entire life. But he and his family are loving their assignment.
Another theme of the meeting was that BYU-Rexburg has come a very long way in the past twenty-five years, and that there is a gap between the outdated perception of the school held by many and its spectacularly altered current condition. After all, President Meredith noted, the leaders of the school during the past quarter of a century have been high-powered innovators: The president of BYU-Idaho twenty-five years ago was David A. Bednar, an academic expert in organizational behavior who is now a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was during his administration that the school became a four-year, baccalaureate-granting institution and changed its name from Ricks College to BYU-Idaho. Elder Bednar was replaced by Kim B. Clark, who left his position as dean of Harvard Business School to assume the presidency in Rexburg and who went on to become a member of the Seventy. Elder Clark was replaced, in turn, by Elder Clark Gilbert himself, who was then replaced by President Meredith’s immediate predecessor, Henry J. Eyring, the son of President Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was himself a distinguished academic, a former president of what is now BYU-Idaho, and the son of a famous theoretical chemist.
A recurrent topic was sharing the news that BYU-Idaho is worth a new look, that it has an enormous amount to offer. Elder Gilbert described it — and, in my view, not without solid grounds — as “probably the most student-centered university in the United States.”
I found the meeting quite inspiring. It reminds me of why I fervently wanted to join the BYU faculty in the first place. It was, and is, a cause in which I deeply believe. In recent years, I’ve had cause to worry a bit, but I think that the leaders of the Church and the University are taking steps to fix what I had seen as “drift.” One of the drawbacks about being a geezer, now retired and resting (fairly comfortably) on the trash heap of history, is that I won’t be able to participate actively in the next chapters. But I wish the very best to those who are involved in these new efforts.
