I would like to begin my remarks today with a word about my predecessor, John Tanner. For the past six years I have admired John\u2019s love of learning, his loyalty to the university, his advocacy of faculty, and his principled approach to decision making. John mentioned early in his administration that his intent was to be an \u201cacademic\u201d academic vice president. From my vantage point I found this to be absolutely true. The conclusion of John\u2019s service marks the end of a wonderful period of university administration in the academic vice president\u2019s office. Going forward there will be far fewer, if any, allusions to Milton and fewer quotes from Shakespeare. And, I regret to inform you, the regular installments of John\u2019s \u201cNotes from an Amateur\u201d have come to an end. I confess that I would often save John\u2019s \u201cNotes from an Amateur\u201d in my email inbox until I had time to savor them\u2014finding them to be, sprinkled through the year, a bit of the same encouragement and inspiration he annually delivered to us in this setting. I thank John for his service and do so, I\u2019m sure, on your behalf as well as I wish the Tanners well in their new assignment.<\/p>\n
The theme for this annual university conference is the well-known verse from Proverbs: \u201cWhere there is no vision, the people perish\u201d (Proverbs 29:18). This seems to have renewed relevance at a time in the university\u2019s history when we are considering the hiring of a significant number of faculty and when the economic turmoil might easily rob us of aspiration and direction for the future. Vision is woven into so many dimensions of our theology. The cornerstone experience in the Restoration was the First Vision. In his account of that experience, the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote that after seeking heaven\u2019s direction in the Sacred Grove, and before the appearance of the Father and Son, he was surrounded by thick darkness\u2014the antithesis of vision. So many of the ancient prophets were granted as part of their ministry a sacred glimpse\u2014a vision\u2014of the world, its history from beginning to end. Repeatedly the scriptures refer to the adversary\u2019s influence as quenching the light or overpowering us \u201cunto blindness\u201d (1 Nephi 15:24). Finally, the strength of the leadership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the membership\u2019s sustaining vote of them as \u201cseers\u201d\u2014those with authority to see \u201cthings which are past, and . . . things which are to come\u201d (Mosiah 8:17). Indeed, Mosiah told us that \u201ca seer is greater than a prophet\u201d (Mosiah 8:15). Vision is more than just an important and desirable characteristic of service. It is at the heart of governance and progress in the Lord\u2019s kingdom. Without it, we shrivel\u2014or perish, in the words of our conference theme.<\/p>\n
An episode from Church history provides both an example of such vision and, I believe, an important parallel for us at BYU. The building of the city Nauvoo by the Saints in the 1840s presented all of the challenges one might expect of a land claimed from the swamps of the Mississippi River, of poor immigrants arriving regularly in the city with few belongings and often very little in the way of preparation to make a living. Over time the city took shape, a temple was conceived, and some in the city began to experience a modest level of stability, prosperity, and comfort. Despite hardship, eventually life in Nauvoo allowed for public lectures, concerts, debates, and even the beginnings of a university.<\/p>\n
During this eighteenth-century period, throughout established communities in America, women were organizing themselves in societies, often religious, with the aim of encouraging moral direction and sustaining those in need. Thousands of such circles were found in towns and cities in the more developed East of the young United States. Latter-day Saint women in Nauvoo were not unaffected by this movement, having either heard of such activities elsewhere or having themselves been involved before joining the Saints in Nauvoo. Wanting to provide charitable aid to the poor in the young city of Nauvoo and seeking to contribute in some way to the construction of the temple, a small group of sisters came together determined to organize themselves formally. They often met in the home of Sarah Granger Kimball. On March 4, 1842, the members of this group voted to draft a set of rules governing the group, and Eliza R. Snow was commissioned to write a constitution and bylaws. These documents were presented to the Prophet Joseph Smith for his approval. Sister Kimball reported that Joseph was impressed with their work, observing that the constitution and bylaws \u201cwere the best he had ever seen,\u201d1<\/sup>\u00a0but he said \u201cthey were not appropriate to the purposes of the Church as a whole.\u201d2<\/sup>\u00a0Inviting the group of sisters to meet with him, Joseph promised that he would provide \u201csomething better for them than a written Constitution.\u201d3<\/sup>\u00a0The group of twenty women gathered with the Prophet Joseph Smith, John Taylor, and Willard Richards in a second-story room of the prophet\u2019s red brick store on March 17, 1842. The result of that meeting was that the women would function beyond the other benevolent societies of the time\u2014organized according to heaven\u2019s plan for them and guided by priesthood and prophetic vision. Eliza R. Snow declared \u201cthat the popular Institutions of the day should not be our guide [that] we should set an example for all the world, rather than confine ourselves to the course which had been heretofore pursued.\u201d4<\/sup>\u00a0The initiative of those sisters and their seeking Joseph\u2019s prophetic charge was the genesis of what we recognize to be the Relief Society, which has become a powerful force in the Church and world with membership now exceeding six million.<\/p>\n The Lord\u2019s vision for the Relief Society was not\u00a0just<\/i>\u00a0providing aid to the poor and downtrodden. The new organization would embrace all that was worthy and appropriate from its contemporary peers and would aspire to much more in building the kingdom under the prophetic vision of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Similarly, Brigham Young University\u2019s purpose is more than the rigorous and demanding instruction and faculty scholarship of fine universities elsewhere. According to our Aims, \u201ca BYU education should be (1) spiritually strengthening, (2) intellectually enlarging, and (3) character building, leading to (4) lifelong learning and service.\u201d5<\/sup>\u00a0In October 1975, on BYU\u2019s 100th anniversary, President Spencer W. Kimball charted the course for BYU in its second century in a talk delivered to this campus. He declared:<\/p>\n Your light must have a special glow, for while you will do many things in the programs of this university that are done elsewhere, these same things can and must be done better here than others do them. You will also do some special things here that are left undone by other institutions.<\/i>6<\/sup><\/p>\n As was the case with the Relief Society, we at BYU are not to be, to borrow the words of Eliza R. Snow, \u201cconfine[d] to the course which [has] been heretofore pursued.\u201d<\/p>\n This unique vision and purpose of Brigham Young University was established from its conception. The architect of BYU, Karl G. Maeser, was prepared by the hand of heaven to give leadership to the beginnings of what we now see and enjoy here. Karl grew up in Germany and enjoyed the privileges of the best education Germany had to offer. With that preparation, at the young age of twenty, he began his professional life as a schoolteacher and was soon appointed to the prestigious position of headmaster of the Budig Institute in Dresden. His interest sparked by the reading of an anti-Mormon book, Maeser wrote to the Church\u2019s Scandinavian Mission for information. His letter was referred to leaders of the Swiss and German Mission, who thought it was a ruse to entice them to enter Germany, which was hostile to Mormonism at the time and where they would be jailed. Consequently, Brother Maeser\u2019s letter was ignored. Karl wrote again, and his second letter was forwarded to President Franklin D. Richards of the European Mission. A mission representative was sent to Dresden, and within two weeks the Maesers had embraced the gospel and sought baptism. Wary of the local police, the Maesers were baptized at midnight on October 14, 1855, in the Elbe River. Karl joined the Church knowing that because of the opposition to the Mormons in Germany at the time, he would have to sacrifice his standing and position in the community.<\/p>\n Soon he and his wife and two children fled Dresden for Zion under the dark of night. They arrived in London, where, before they could make arrangements for transatlantic passage, Maeser was called on a mission to Scotland. After completing this mission he sailed with his family to America. Just two days from their destination port of New York, one of their two children died aboard ship. Traveling to Philadelphia, Brother Maeser accepted a second mission call, this time to the Southern States, following which he was asked to lead a wagon company across the plains. Finally, five years after the Maeser family left Germany, they arrived in Zion. Once in Salt Lake City, Karl sought immediately to make a living as a teacher. He established the Deseret Lyceum in 1860, seeking to provide education to the children of the Latter-day Saints. Of the teaching environment Karl would later write that he \u201cbegan teaching in the 15th Ward under conditions so primitive that teachers of today [1890s] can have no conception of them.\u201d7<\/sup>\u00a0The Lyceum was not successful financially, and Maeser was forced to seek employment elsewhere. President Brigham Young appointed Karl head of the Union Academy in 1861. It was envisioned that the school would educate students beyond elementary grades from Salt Lake City and surrounding areas.<\/p>\n In 1867 Brother Maeser\u2019s name was called from the pulpit in the Tabernacle at general conference to serve in the Swiss and German Mission, and he left immediately thereafter. In 1869 he became president of the mission. After his return Maeser took up teaching again and was teaching in the Twentieth Ward schoolhouse when an explosion damaged the building. He went immediately to President Brigham Young\u2019s office to seek help in repairing the building. President Young responded:<\/p>\n \u201cI have another mission for you.\u201d . . .<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d said the President, \u201cwe have been considering the establishment of a Church school, and are looking around for a man\u2014the man to take charge of it. You are the man, Brother Maeser. We want you to go to Provo to organize and conduct an Academy to be established in the name of the Church.\u201d<\/i>8<\/sup><\/p>\n Returning the next day to President Young\u2019s office for direction in the establishment of the Academy, Brother Maeser was told, \u201cYou ought not to teach even the alphabet or the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\n Brigham Young\u2019s emphatic direction to Karl G. Maeser that the restored gospel was to be an integral part of the instruction at the new academy was not an idle one. The deed of trust drawn up by President Young in October 1875 conveyed to the Academy property comprising 1.2 acres and stipulated that in addition to the usual subjects, the \u201cOld and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon and the Book of Doctrine and Covenants shall be read and their doctrines inculcated in the Academy.\u201d10<\/sup><\/p>\n After receiving President Young\u2019s assignment, Maeser moved his family to Provo\u2014where the population at the time was 2,800\u2014and set to work. His annual salary the first year of his appointment was $1,200\u2014modest even in pioneer times for a man of his educational stature and position. The fledgling Academy grew and attracted students in increasing numbers but faced a continuous spate of problems that repeatedly left Brother Maeser wondering if the Academy could survive. By 1884, nine years after Maeser came to Provo, Brigham Young Academy hosted nearly 400 enrolled students and seemed on the verge of financial stability. However, on the night of January 27, 1884, the building occupied by the Academy was destroyed by fire. For the next eight years the Academy occupied several temporary buildings and teetered on the brink of financial collapse. Initially fiercely loyal, faculty grew discouraged as they went without pay and their families went hungry. The daunting challenges associated with the survival of the Academy took Karl to the brink of surrender. Brother Maeser wrote to the First Presidency:<\/p>\n I am\u00a0<\/i>worn out and sick in spirit,\u00a0. . . and with all my love for this Academy, I feel that I owe it to my very life, which is needlessly wearing itself out here in an apparently hopeless task, to accept any change that will promise me opportunities for permanent usefulness.<\/i>11<\/sup><\/p>\n Brother Maeser told his wife and daughter that because he couldn\u2019t earn enough to provide for his family, he was going to accept a position at the University of Deseret, where he could get a regular salary. His wife and daughter packed their belongings and waited for several days until his daughter finally asked her father when they were moving.<\/p>\n His response in substance was, \u201cI have changed my mind. I have had a dream\u2014I have seen Temple Hill filled with buildings\u2014great temples of learning, and I have decided to remain and do my part in contributing to the fulfillment of that dream.\u201d<\/i>12<\/sup><\/p>\n The Academy, nourished by this vision of its future granted to Karl G. Maeser, survived challenge after challenge to its existence and operation. Eventually construction of a new Academy building was undertaken, and on January 4, 1892, the new building was dedicated. That building, restored to its original splendor, is now the Provo City Library. But despite the new accommodations and steady progress in creating a fine educational program, a shortage of resources and mounting debt threatened the Academy. Construction on the Maeser Memorial Building\u2014the cornerstone of which was laid in 1907\u2014was idled for lack of funds. Finally it was concluded that the only option for financing the completion of the building was to divide the land on Temple Hill into housing lots and sell them. Alfred Kelly, a Brigham Young Academy student, was tasked with presenting the idea of the sale of housing lots on Temple Hill in his commencement address. Feeling uneasy about the assignment, he climbed Temple Hill early one morning to pray and was granted what appears to have been the same vision of the Brigham Young University of the future that had come years earlier to Karl Maeser. Rather than propose the sale of the property, Kelly, just a student, shared his visionary experience with those in attendance at the graduation exercises. Benefactors rose to the rescue, pledging support for the Academy and the completion of the Maeser Memorial Building.13<\/sup><\/p>\n The unrelenting problems faced by Brigham Young Academy make the recent hiring freeze seem like a walk in the park. Our challenges today are of a different nature, and we stand on the shoulders of those who struggled to build what we now enjoy. It was the vision of what Brigham Young University could and would be that guided our predecessors in challenges and moved the institution forward. It might interest you to know that the 1.2 acres deeded to launch Brigham Young Academy in 1875 have grown to the present-day 600-acre Brigham Young University campus with some 300 buildings comprising nearly 10 million square feet. These buildings are magnificently maintained on beautiful grounds adorned with landscaping that is the envy of universities elsewhere. Wouldn\u2019t Karl G. Maeser be stunned by the campus today\u2014he having served seventeen years of his life in Brigham Young Academy mostly in borrowed and dilapidated facilities?<\/p>\n One more anecdote adds perspective to the progress we have made on this campus. In the last page of the BYU Library annual report for the academic year 1919 to 1920, the librarian accounted for the use of the $1,000 budget for new book acquisitions, then reported generally on the efficiency of the library operation. In a postscript to the document, the university librarian recounted the laborious drafting of thirty-two unique letters and a number of handwritten notes, then pleaded with then President George H. Brimhall: \u201cDon\u2019t you think we need a typewriter?\u201d It is an incredible journey from that plea for a special appropriation for the purchase of a typewriter in the library just ninety years ago to the 9,300 computers today on faculty and staff desks and in student labs across campus that are replaced on a regular and reliable schedule. We have much to be grateful for.<\/p>\n A look at BYU\u2019s past has a powerful effect, providing context and guiding our vision of BYU\u2019s future. The life-threatening challenges with facilities and financing are largely behind us, and we can focus with little distraction on fulfilling the destiny of the university. From its birth in 1875 to the BYU of 136 years later, this institution has been guided by prophetic vision implemented by determined faculty of faith and consecration. We are organized with a board of trustees made up of prophet-leaders who, at this particular time in BYU\u2019s history, not only have the vision of seers but who have extensive experience in the academic arena as well. Our board extends to us significant trust in setting our own curricular and scholarly directions at the university. In a BYU devotional address delivered in 1992, President Gordon B. Hinckley reaffirmed the more mature academic institution BYU had become since the charge of Brigham Young to Karl G. Maeser:<\/p>\n This is a world-class university, a great temple of learning where a highly qualified faculty instruct a large and eager body of students. These teachers impart with skill and dedication the accumulated secular knowledge of the centuries while also building faith in the eternal verities that are the foundation of civilization.<\/i><\/p>\n