On September 19, 2023, C. Shane Reese was inaugurated as the 14th president of Brigham Young University. During his inaugural response, he shared seven initiatives that will help BYU become the university that prophets have foretold — to become the world’s “greatest institution of learning” and “the fully anointed university of the Lord about which so much has been spoken in the past.” Or, in other words, “becoming BYU.”
In this Q&A series with President Reese, he shares more about those initiatives and how they apply to BYU employees.
This article focuses on the first of the initiatives, “strengthening the student experience.”
Q: How did you land on these specific seven initiatives? And why are they important for us now?
A: I always knew there were seven items or initiatives. The very first time I read “The Second Century of Brigham Young University” address from President Spencer W. Kimball, I noticed he talked about assessing, and I remember thinking, “We need a report card. How are we going to construct a report card for ourselves?”
A few years ago, I talked with President Worthen about this, and we decided that as a President’s Council we would study that address together. It took us six months, and it was very formative.
There are four other addresses that, together, form the basis for the prophetic direction of the university. Reading and studying all those addresses led me to these seven initiatives. They include President Kimball’s “Education for Eternity”; President Dallin H. Oaks’ address in the leadership session to the university in 2017; Elder David A. Bednar’s address to the leadership of the university in 2021; and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s “Second Half of the Second Century” talk from University Conference in 2021.
Q: What does "the student experience" entail?
A: Everything I could imagine wanting to do as the president has to do with strengthening the student experience. Starting this list of seven initiatives with the student experience was deliberate and meant to send a message. Strengthening the student experience reinforces our primary mission of undergraduate teaching.
In strengthening the student experience, inspiring learning is first and foremost. These are high-impact practices that we think of in a richer way — they’re high-impact experiences that are also inspiring.
Strengthening the student experience also means that ultimately, our students will be competitive in the marketplace. So many of our students leave BYU and become leaders, either in their communities or at work or in their families or in the Church. They've got to leave here with not only skills, but confidence to use those skills in any one of those environments.
Q: How do you envision faculty members working in their respective jobs to "strengthen the student experience”?
A: Faculty should make sure that their teaching is Christ-centered, that they lean into their religious identity. That is absolutely a part of what it means to strengthen the student experience.
There was a recent BYU Studies article about how gospel methodology can be incorporated in all of the responsibilities of a faculty member, including in the classroom. I strongly encourage all faculty members to read that article. The article concludes, “Gospel methodology requires a consecrated faculty. This requires more than faculty who are willing to teach the gospel. It requires faculty who engage in quality teaching practices and teach in consecrated ways—who teach morally good content with morally good methods. These methods draw on both our character as faculty — the Christlike attributes we cultivate — and on our employment of a pedagogy of the Spirit that places demand on the agency, intelligence and faith of our students. Such a methodology results in inspiring learning and gives both students and faculty access to the moral rewards that are internal to the practice of teaching.”
Q: How do you envision staff and admin employees assisting in strengthening the student experience?
A: We've found that our administrative and staff employees can be a source of inspiring learning through campus employment. We don't think of it just as supervising a student job, but we think of it as mentoring and providing the spiritual component of inspiring learning. Strengthening the student experience is going to involve all employees; it's going to require us to think more broadly about how we define inspiring learning. It won't scale if we only think about it as a student working one-on-one with a faculty member on a research project. That's a great example, but it's not the only example.
Q: Can you share success stories or case studies of a current or former employee who has successfully implemented this into their work?
A: Brent Webb, a faculty member, happened to be working at the temple in the sealing office recently. He said a group of eight or so young people came into the temple. He assumed that a local YSA ward had arranged for a ward or elders quorum activity to go do sealings. But as he talked with them, he discovered that they all work as student employees at BYU Moving, and their supervisor, who was there with them, had invited all his student employees to join him in the temple.
A moving office is not a place about which you would ordinarily say, “That's an inspiring learning opportunity.” And the truth is, without something like that supervisor’s initiative, it probably isn’t. That is a great example of a supervisor who understands what it means to be at BYU and to have their interaction with students have an inspiring learning component.
It's not always going to be employees taking their students to the temple. Sometimes that's not feasible. But I think employees can ask themselves, “What is the way I can lean into the religious identity of Brigham Young University in my own sphere?” They've realized what Elder Uchtdorf said, which is to “lift where you stand.”
Q: How will we know when BYU is doing better at this?
A: We have a responsibility to our students, when we admit them, to provide them with a high-impact experience. My ultimate long-term goal for strengthening the student experience is for every student at BYU to have at least two inspiring learning experiences during their time at the university. The literature suggests that if a student has two high-impact experiences, the impact is fully realized. It’s like you learn how to do it on the first try, but you really need that second one to reinforce the high-impact practice. About two-thirds of our students experience that now, and I want that to be 100% of our students.
Q: Are there specific departments or teams that will play a key role in driving this initiative, and how can other teams support them?
A: The early returns we’re hearing from the students in the new University 101 class are remarkable. The class is broken up into small sections, so we're able to identify students who are struggling earlier in their educational journey. We're also able to equip students with a sense of BYU and its mission earlier in their education. They don't get to the end and finally realize, “Oh, that’s what BYU is about.” And we're able to give them a cohort of students to whom they can turn when they're struggling or when they want to just go do something. Faculty are going to better understand the mission and the resources and the sense of belonging with this class.
