BYU: A Unique Kind of Education

It is a pleasure to welcome all of you to our annual university conference and a pleasure to see you here. The past year has gone by very quickly—at least for me. That is a good sign. We often hear that time flies when you are having fun. As it turns out, studies confirm that that is true. One study noted that people experience time differently depending on what they are doing and how they feel about that particular activity. “Time consistently sped up when subjects were busy, happy, concentrating, or socializing . . . and slowed down . . . when subjects were bored, tired, or sad.”¹ By that measure, this past year has been a very good one.

In that same vein, I feel compelled as I begin my remarks to note that another time-­perception study “found that a speech seems to go by more quickly to the person who gives it than to a person who listens to it.”² Consider yourself forewarned. If I am still happy at the end, it doesn’t mean that you need to be.

By other more objective measures, this past year has been a success on many fronts. We have seen that in the presentation before. We have also seen the completion of several construction projects, including the Marriott Center Annex, another residence hall, a new central building at the Heritage Halls complex, and the multiyear Campus Drive redesign project. We saw more than 12,000 of our students participate in Y-Serve projects during the year. The men’s volleyball team played in the national championship game for the second year in a row, the women’s volleyball team made it to the sweet sixteen for the fifth year in a row, and, reflecting the overall strength of all the athletic teams, the BYU Athletics program finished just outside the top 10 percent in the Learfield Directors’ Cup, which measures the overall performance of the nearly three hundred Division I NCAA schools.

We also made important strides on key academic initiatives. The BYU Online program is on pace. Its goal is to expand the number of online offerings available to our matriculated students so that by 2020, each BYU student will be able to take at least fifteen hours of credit online before graduation. This fall semester BYU Online will be offering 109 sections of fifty-four courses, with a current enrollment of more than 5,500 students.

We made similar progress on our Inspiring Learning Initiative. We announced this initiative last fall. Its purpose is to help our students have experiences that motivate them to learn in ways that lead to revelation, thus promoting learning that is inspiring, in both senses of that word. Additional funds from two different sources were provided this year to allow more students to have that kind of experience. More than $1 million were made available to the colleges and departments for inspiring learning projects as a result of a reallocation of funds from the university’s operating budget. In addition, generous donors have contributed $6 million for this initiative so far this year, with $1.2 million being made available for immediate student use and the rest going toward our goal of creating a $120 million endowment by the end of 2021.

Let me share with you a small slice of the impact that these inspiring learning experiences have had on some of our students. [A video was shown.]

This video represents just a fraction of the thousands of students who have had the opportunity to participate in the kinds of experiences that are part of our Inspiring Learning Initiative. Most departments have equally powerful stories of their own.

“In the Lord’s Way”

It has been a great year. But there is work still to be done. As our university conference theme for 2017 suggests, we gather together with our outstanding students at this university so that we “may be taught more perfectly, and have experience.”³ Today I hope to provide some insights—at a general level—on how we might accomplish that goal.

This past April, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, who is not only a former president of the university but currently the chair of the Executive Committee of the BYU Board of Trustees, addressed the leadership of the university. He began his remarks by repeating what he had said to a similar group of leaders in August 2014, shortly after I became president. I have learned to pay particular attention when prophets, seers, and revelators repeat a message. I have thought much about the following statement that Elder Oaks made on both occasions:

[I] firmly believe that it is the destiny of Brigham Young University to become what those prophetic statements predicted it would become. But inherent in being the University of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the reality that this great goal will not be attained in exactly the same way that other universities have achieved their greatness. With your help, it will become the great university of the Lord—not in the world’s way but in the Lord’s way.⁴

Three things are apparent in this statement:

1. BYU has a prophetically proclaimed ­destiny to become a great university.

2. We have a critical part to play in realizing that destiny.

3. We will achieve that goal in a way that is different from that by which other universities have achieved their greatness.

Elder Oaks’s statement is remarkably similar to two statements made by President Spencer W. Kimball—one during his landmark second-century address, given while Elder Oaks was president, and the other during the inauguration of BYU president Jeffrey R. Holland. Speaking at the centennial celebration of the founding of this institution in October 1975, President Kimball stated:

As previous First Presidencies have said, and we say again to you, we expect (we do not simply hope) that Brigham Young University will “become a leader among the great universities of the world.” To that expectation I would add, “Become a unique university in all of the world!”⁵

At President Holland’s inauguration five years later, President Kimball repeated the same quote almost verbatim, with nearly the only difference being that instead of saying we should “become” a unique university, President Kimball stated that we should “remain” a unique university.⁶

Note again the three critical elements:

1. BYU has a prophetically declared destiny to become a great university.

2. Those prophets expect—not merely hope—that we will do our part to fulfill that destiny.

3. Achieving that destiny requires that we do things differently from other universities—that we be unique.

Ways in Which We Are Unique

Unique is an interesting word. It means literally “one of its kind”⁷—“unico,” we say in Spanish. Something that is unique is not just distinctive from some others; it is truly different from them all.

President Kimball used the terms unique or uniqueness eight times in his second-century address. Given that repetition, as well as the renewed emphasis given the concept by Elder Oaks, I have spent considerable time thinking about how we are and how we should be unique. The latter is more important than the former. There is little point in being different for difference’s sake; that will not help us achieve our prophetically declared destiny. We must be unique in the way the Lord wants us to be unique, in ways that are consistent with our board-approved—which means prophetically approved—mission.

There are at least two key ways in which we are already distinctive from most other universities. And when you put these two features together, I believe they make us truly unique in ways that are consistent with our prophetically approved mission.

First, unlike most major private universities that started off as faith-based institutions, BYU has remained closely aligned with and is closely directed by its sponsoring church. As Elder Oaks observed last April:

For many years, religiously affiliated colleges and universities have been steadily disappearing, some by formal disaffiliation and some by institutional drift. Today, they are a tiny minority without clear definitions to distinguish them from private secular and even public institutions.⁸

Many of you will be familiar with this phenomenon, which has been well chronicled.⁹ The trend toward secularization is so strong that one scholar has opined that any religious university “‘will find it extremely difficult’ to maintain this [religious] affiliation if it also seeks to attain or preserve a national reputation.”¹⁰ In other words, many observers today believe that religious universities like ours have a choice: we can either become secular or second-rate. There is no middle ground.

We resolutely believe that this is a false dichotomy. Though now clearly a minority position, that firm belief that there is a positive connection between faith and learning is shared by a number of institutions, including our sister institutions of higher education in the Church Educational System: BYU–Idaho, BYU–Hawaii, and LDS Business College. Like BYU, each of these schools is fully committed to the proposition that faith enhances rather than detracts from the acquisition and development of truth and knowledge. That commitment is built into every fiber of the institutional structure of all the CES schools, including BYU. And that commitment increasingly distinguishes us all from other universities, even some that maintain a formal religious affiliation.

The second way in which we are distinct from some other universities, however, also differentiates us to a degree from the other CES institutions. While all the CES institutions of higher education share the deep common commitment to the reality of the connection between faith and education, we are the only one of the CES schools that requires, as a fundamental part of our mission, that faculty members excel not only in the classroom but also in the research arena. Thus, while we are first and foremost committed to our students—and to teaching them in the Lord’s way—we also ask faculty members to reinforce and enhance that primary teaching mission with world-class research.

Just as there are skeptics about the ability of a university to be both first-class and faithful, there are also some who question whether a university can maintain both a primary teaching focus and a significant research focus. A recent Deseret News editorial noted the difference between world-class research institutions like Harvard and Stanford on the one hand and excellent universities like BYU–Idaho—whose sole focus is on teaching—on the other. The editorial recognized the need for both types of universities in modern society. However, it also noted that schools that focus primarily on research run the risk of losing sight of the well-being and education of their students. The authors then opined:

The solution may be for research institutions to take on more research and teaching schools to become better at teaching. For institutions in the messy middle—schools that fall between top-tier research schools and strictly vocational colleges—leaders would do well to pause . . . and simply ask if increased scholarly production is really worth the price to students.¹¹

That observation contains echoes of the earlier noted skepticism about the compatibility of faith and greatness as a university. Just as some would assert that universities will have to choose to be either secular or second-rate, some will assert that schools will have to choose to be excellent at either research or teaching but not both. They will contend that schools in “the messy middle,” in these two regards, are doomed to fail.

I believe that on these two issues—the compatibility of faith and learning and the compatibility of teaching and research—we at BYU are in the messy middle. We are clearly in the thinly populated middle position on these two matters because we reject both the dichotomy between faith and education as well as that between teaching and research. And our position is certainly messy in some ways as we find ourselves straddling two divides that most believe are slipping further and further apart. But being in this precarious position should be reason for hope and not despair, for being in the messy middle on these two issues makes us unique in ways that may allow us to achieve our prophetically declared destiny. As Brené Brown observed in a different context, “The middle is messy, but it’s also where the magic happens.”¹²

I believe that when viewed in the light of gospel truths, these two seemingly irreconcilable dichotomies become mutually reinforcing convergences that produce a truly unique kind of education that is part of our prophetically declared destiny.

A Link Between Research and Student Learning

Properly understood, belief in gospel truths and adherence to gospel principles can enhance the kind of learning that marks a great university. In a speech entitled “Education for Eternity,” given in September 1967, President Kimball noted that one of the things that makes universities great is the ability to produce great artists, writers, and scientists who, in turn, have a profound impact on the world. He then observed how the learning process that produces such luminaries can be enhanced at a university that understands, teaches, and practices the precepts of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Take a da Vinci or a Michelangelo or a Shakespeare and give him a total knowledge of the plan of salvation of God and personal revelation and . . . then take a look at the statues he will carve and the murals he will paint and the masterpieces he will produce.¹³

Because of our close connection and clear alignment with the Church, we are uniquely positioned to help budding authors, artists, and scientists understand how the plan of salvation can shed illuminating light on every subject they study. And because of our collective commitment to live in accordance with gospel principles, our students and faculty are uniquely positioned to experience the kind of revelatory learning that only the Holy Ghost can provide.

Thus faith-based teaching can produce a kind of learning that makes universities great in the truest sense, thereby providing evidence that, contrary to the assertions of some, faith enhances rather than detracts from true learning.

Similarly, I believe that first-class research can enhance rather than detract from student learning and development. Elder Oaks identified the key to this belief in his remarks at the April 2017 leadership retreat. He first noted President Kimball’s assertion that BYU could produce “brilliant stars in drama, literature, music, sculpture, painting, science, and in all the scholarly graces.”¹⁴

In the 2017 leadership conference, Elder Oaks then quoted John S. Tanner’s insightful observation about President Kimball’s remarkable statement:

As I reread [this] now-familiar charge to become a “refining host” for “brilliant stars,” it struck me that President Kimball was thinking primarily about the accomplishments of BYU students, not faculty. . . .

This fact can serve as a salutary reminder for us about the fundamental purpose of scholarship at BYU. It is not, and must never be, to satisfy our own vainglory nor to advance our own careers. Nor even is it solely to advance truth and knowledge, though this is a worthy purpose and one specifically endorsed by BYU’s institutional objectives. The primary purpose for the Church’s large investment in faculty scholarship and creative work at BYU is to enable us to be a refining host for our students.¹⁵

This inspired linkage between research and student learning does away with the seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy between the two. Research is to be an endeavor “among both faculty and students,”¹⁶ as our mission statement plainly declares. The primary aim for research is student development—a distinctive, if not unique, primary aim for universities that value faculty research so highly.

This type of refining learning and development can best occur when the research is cutting-edge, at the frontiers of knowledge. There is a difference between being in a lab conducting routine experiments with predictable results designed to help students see in action principles they have learned in the ­classroom—something which many of us experienced in high school—and being part of a team that is seeking a hitherto unknown solution to a pressing problem with real-life implications, such as the discovery of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease or the development of a lightweight but impenetrable bulletproof shield. Both of these are inspiring learning experiences in which our students have been involved, as the video showed. As enlightening and instructive as it is to be in a chemistry lab recreating experiments that have already been done, it pales in comparison to the intellectually stimulating, sweat-inducing, spiritually stretching experience of being involved in making a truly new discovery—a discovery that may require and produce revelation about both the matter being studied and the individuals performing the study.

Thus, as our mission statement makes clear, this is a place “where a commitment to excellence is expected”¹⁷—including with respect to faculty research. And it is also a place where “the full realization of human potential [of our students] is pursued.”¹⁸ First-class research whose focus is on student development achieves both of these aims.

The Challenges

This uniquely student-focused approach to world-class research is at the heart of our current emphasis on inspiring learning. Faculty-mentored student research on cutting-edge topics is one of the primary focuses of that initiative—an initiative whose aim is clearly and exclusively on student learning. It produces a unique kind of student learning that in some instances can happen only at a place like BYU, where the most important end result is not the discovery of new knowledge or faculty development but student revelation through research.

I believe this unique combination of faith-based teaching and student-centered research is a key ingredient to the kind of holistic learning and character development that President Kimball called “education for eternity”—the kind of student learning and character development that is at the heart of our prophetically declared destiny.

However, this lofty view of our potential should not obscure the reality that such an endeavor is not easy. We are in the messy middle on these two key issues. And that position is sometimes precarious and almost always difficult and soul stretching. Elder Oaks identified some ever-present challenges that this unique combination of faith-based teaching and student-centered research brings with it. Let me discuss three of them, and let me commend to you a reading of Elder Oaks’s entire talk for an understanding of others he identified.

First Challenge

Combining faithfulness with learning—and research with teaching—requires a lot of extra effort. Our commitment to faith-based teaching requires, as President Kimball observed, “that every professor and teacher in this institution . . . keep his [or her] subject matter bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel and have all his [or her] subject matter perfumed lightly with the spirit of the gospel.”¹⁹

That is not an easy task. It requires a ­thorough understanding of not only our disciplines but also the scriptures. It requires that we be worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost, because revelation to our students in the classroom often requires revelation to a faculty member in class preparation. And revelation does not come cheap. As President Kimball observed, “Perspiration must precede inspiration.”²⁰

Similarly, it is not always easy to keep the focus of research on student learning. Faculty members must be passionate enough about both discovery and their discipline to produce the energy needed to sustain their research through its inevitably difficult stages when no answers seem to be available. But at the same time, they must not become so overzealous to make a new discovery that students become mere instruments in the process rather than the desired end. Again, maintaining this balance requires extra effort.

Furthermore, as Elder Oaks noted, there is in these matters a challenge for the administration. We need to properly recognize and incentivize both faith-based teaching and student-centered research—something that is quite difficult. It is easy to count the number of publications that research produces; it is much more difficult but more important to evaluate how much impact the research endeavor has on the students. Thus, achieving our goal in the unique way we desire will require ongoing and constant extra effort on every level.

Second Challenge

A second ever-present challenge to maintaining both our faithfulness in teaching and our student-oriented focus in research is the reality that neither of these things is likely to bring us much of the praise of the world. And for most of us, including me, the allure of that praise is ever present and ever powerful. Moreover, when we mark ourselves as unique, we can easily become arrogant. We must constantly guard against the pitfall of pride.

In his classic April 1989 general conference address, President Ezra Taft Benson reminded us that “pride is a damning sin in the true sense of that word. It limits or stops progression.”²¹ That is true of individuals and it is true of institutions, including this university. Pride can become a—in fact, the—great stumbling block.

Pride is not always easy to discern, as it is an internal attitude that does not always manifest itself externally. As President Benson observed, “Our motives for the things we do are where the sin [of pride] is manifest.”²²

Therefore, one key to our success will be having the right motivation. If we are motivated solely by pride, we will fail. So then what should motivate us? President Benson noted that the essence “of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen.”²³ If the essence of pride is enmity—or hatred toward our fellowmen—the antidote to pride would seem to be the opposite of enmity, which is charity, or perfect love for our fellow beings.

Thus we will fully achieve our goal only if we are motivated more by charity than by pride and more by a desire to help our students than by a desire to compare favorably with our peers. The difficulty is that, as noted, motivation cannot easily be measured—at least not by other human beings. Only we—and God—know what truly motivates us. Moreover, the temptation to gratify our vain ambition is so constant that we will likely never reach the point at which we can say that we are sufficiently humble and charitable and that we need not worry about those issues anymore. Self-inspection that is sincere enough to produce personal revelation from God is required. And it is required daily.

It is not unlike the observation of Thomas L. Shaffer, who, in an excellent book-length analysis of whether it is possible to be a Christian and a lawyer, concluded that the complexities of law and life are so great and the temptation to deviate from Christian values while practicing law are so constant that the answer to that question must always remain contingent. Said he:

I often think that the only way to be both a Christian and lawyer is to ask, every day, “Is it possible to be both a Christian and a lawyer?” and to be open, every day, to the thought that it is not possible.²⁴

Similarly, perhaps the only way we can remain sufficiently humble and charitable is to ask ourselves, every day, the question “Am I sufficiently humble and charitable?” And we need to be open, every day, to the thought that we may not be.

Third Challenge

Elder Oaks noted, “To accomplish its mission, BYU must have all parts of its community united in pursuing it.”²⁵ Prophets have set forth an ambitious agenda for this university and for those involved in it. It is not an easy agenda, and it will require all of us to change and to work together—not just in one department or in one college and not just among the faculty. We will need everyone on this campus to be committed to the task, because we are in the messy middle, and all of us from time to time will need reminders that it is in the messy middle that magic—no, miracles—happen.

As noted, none of this will be easy, but it will be enlivening, exhilarating, and, yes, ethereal. At times we will need to forge new paths. That is what uniqueness is all about. But the impact will be larger than we may think. Let me illustrate with one final example.

Six years ago a group of engineering students engaged in a capstone project involving the creation of a water-well drill to help people in Tanzania obtain an ongoing source of clean water. The lack of clean water is a major cause of disease and poverty in many countries, including several in Africa.

The project began when John Renouard, a BYU alum who had majored in finance, traveled to Africa with his family. John was profoundly moved by the plight of those who did not have access to clean water. He formed an organization called WHOlives—with the word WHO standing for water, health, and ­opportunity. Through a series of events I will describe after showing another video, John connected with the BYU College of Engineering and Technology. Then a group of students, working with their faculty mentor, set out to address the problem. All they knew was that they needed to have a drill that was human powered, could be easily transported from village to village without large trucks, and could drill down hundreds of feet through different kinds of material. They were undergraduates doing research with profound real-life consequences under the tutelage of a faculty mentor. Let me share their story. [A video was shown.]

The last sentence of our mission statement says:

We believe the earnest pursuit of this institutional mission . . . will greatly enlarge Brigham Young University’s influence in a world we wish to improve.²⁶

What we have just seen is exhibit A. Hundreds of thousands of people in twenty-three countries have access to clean water because of the efforts of these undergraduate students. But, of equal importance—maybe of more importance—the lives of the students, and others, were also profoundly changed.

One of the students, Kenneth Langley, went on to receive his master’s degree in fluid dynamics and is currently working on his PhD at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. He indicated that when he began studying engineering, he just wanted to work on airplanes, but being involved in this humanitarian project changed his career focus. It also changed his outlook:

Had I not gone to Tanzania as part of my capstone project, I would never have had the courage to make the step to go to Saudi Arabia, where I am now. Going on that trip also gave me a desire to learn more about the world and to get to know more people in different parts of the world.

Another student, Nathan Toone, who is now working as an engineer for Boeing in St. Louis, explained another profound way in which students were affected:

It was a spiritual experience. There was a lot of inspiration and there were prayers answered that allowed us to even get the drill to Tanzania. And once there, there were other little miracles in that we would meet the right person or we would just have happened to find this drilling expert who showed us where we could find water and happened to make this connection over here with a farmer who had a field that we could drill in. All these little things appeared to be coincidences, but we knew that they weren’t. We knew that there was something bigger going on that was helping our success.

That this was a work of inspiration had been clear at the outset to John Renouard, the BYU alum whose desire to bless the people of Africa was the genesis of the program. As I have mentioned, John started his organization WHOlives shortly after traveling to Africa with his family and seeing the need for clear water. But he didn’t know exactly what he needed to do at that point. He went online and saw a brick-making machine that, it turned out, had been developed in an engineering capstone project at BYU. With that in mind, John called the capstone office, was informed that the responsible person was out of town, and then left his number. John described what happened a few weeks later:

In the middle of the night, I had a dream. It was strong enough that it got me out of bed to my kitchen table to write down what I had seen. Intuitively, I knew that it was a drill, but I am not a well driller. I was a finance major, and I lived in Southern California. My water came from a tap. But I knew that this was something that I needed to jot down. That was the first miracle. The next one happened the next day when I got a call from the BYU capstone program asking me if I had a program or a project that they could work on.

John then met with faculty from the engineering program to explain the need that he had observed in Africa. But he did not give them his specific drill ideas. As he put it:

One of the great concepts of capstone projects is that you don’t go to the students and tell them, “Go build this,” and then give them the schematics and everything. You tell them, “This is what we want to do. Now go and do it.”

After several months of work by the students, John received a text. As John explained:

The text said, “We sent you a CAD drawing. Can you open it?” And I did. When I opened it, I saw that drill, and I recognized it from my dream. It was like, “There it is! How did they do that?” It was amazing.

Inspiring learning—this is the kind of learning that can “assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life”²⁷ by helping them see the hand of the Lord operating in their lives. It is a unique kind of education that faith-based teaching and student-centered research can produce.

I bear my witness that this university has a prophetically declared destiny. It is part of the rolling forth of the kingdom of God on earth. May each of us have the courage, vision, and faith needed to do those things that the Lord expects of us in moving this work along is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.