On September 19, 2023, C. Shane Reese was inaugurated as the fourteenth president of Brigham Young University. During his inaugural response, he shared seven initiatives that will help BYU become the university of which 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 and students.
This article focuses on the sixth of the initiatives, “investing in mission-inspired scholarship.”
Can you explain what “mission-inspired scholarship” means to you and how we’re going to focus on what it means for our campus community?
Answer: If you look at the research expenditures at BYU, especially if you take out faculty salary, we have a modest investment relative to more research-focused universities of a similar size.
Although classification categories continually shift, we have historically been an R2 institution for a reason — we have strong scholarly output but not a high scholarly output. Our focus is on student learning, and our research activities support student learning.
When it comes to the research, many take an approach that plants 1,000 flowers and sees where they bloom; that’s how academic research happens at most institutions. And certainly worthy research attracts external grant funding. But with our tranche of institutional investment in research, we intend to focus it on ways that further the mission of Brigham Young University and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Recently, we identified three core institutions of society that we want to focus on and that we’re going to invest in for mission-inspired scholarship. The first is family. We want to cement Brigham Young University as a leader in the area of research on the family, and that is grounded in the doctrinal foundation for the family.
Another pillar where we are going to invest our limited research budget at the university is religion, which includes religious freedom and religion’s impact on human flourishing. Sometimes when we talk about this area, it’s assumed we would only focus on members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or just on the Church as an institution. While that’s an important case study, it turns out that faith and religion in general are also a benefit to society worthy of ongoing scholarly inquiry. And this is also true of religious freedom.
To quote Brian Grim, a leading expert on the relationship between economic sustainability and freedom of religion, “wherever religious freedom is high there tends to be fewer incidents of armed conflict, better health outcomes, higher levels of earned income and better educational opportunities for women. Moreover, religious freedom and religious communities are associated with higher overall human development.”
The third area is constitutional government which we think protects those other two pillars. The constitution — the study of the Constitution and understanding of the Constitution, proper application of the Constitution —facilitates all that’s contained in the family and religious freedom. And candidly, for me, when I think of “becoming BYU,” we couldn’t be the university that we say we want to be—which is the Christ-centered, prophetically directed university of prophecy—if we didn’t have the freedoms of conscience and religion afforded us by the Constitution. So that becomes a pillar not only in support of the other two pillars, but it actually becomes a fundamental and critical part of us being able to “become BYU.”
Similarly, as we just heard from the First Presidency, the newly announced medical school at BYU will be focused on teaching with research in areas of strategic importance to the Church such as international health issues and global humanitarian efforts. This is exciting news for Brigham Young University.
Can you share an example of some recent research that lines up with these pillars?
We’ve started to learn more about families through scholarship done here at BYU. Recently, we participated in something called the Utah Project. That project looked at families in our state and how some of the outcomes on flourishing have been stronger in families that had two parents in the home as well as families who spent time together. I was raised by an incredible single mother, who I will forever honor and praise for how she raised me. But as a statistician and scholar, it’s critically important for society to have an accurate picture on family stability. One striking finding from that research is when there is the practice of worship in the home, it translates to successful outcomes for families and family members, especially children.
Another example that comes to mind is Paul Lambert, our religion initiative director at the Wheatley Institute. His research looks at the kinds of economic benefits that can be traced back to people in corporate America who have religious faith as an important part of their life. So by saying you’re going to compartmentalize your faith and not let it enter the workplace, you’re actually leaving some potential economic benefits on the table. The work in that area is a great illustration of religion and human flourishing.
One of the things I’ve been really grateful for is we have also found our researchers at BYU to be helpful on Church committees where they often make presentations to leaders and managers. I think it’s a remarkable illustration of becoming mission centric and the way research efforts can expand even to the Church more broadly and the world, not just within the walls of Brigham Young University.
What do you hope to see done differently on campus because this is one of your seven initiatives?
I think we might see it at the end of my time being president (and maybe it’ll take longer than that) but I think we’ll find a larger number of researchers and scholars all around campus who are willing to have the courage to be different. This is where some of these elements of “becoming BYU” overlap. They will ask different questions. They’ll pursue an important and consequential line of research that really might be considered verboten by their discipline, but that the research will bless lives and will be conducted in part because of our unique religious mission helps support it.
And I think we’ll find more and more faculty willing to break out of the standard lines of research. I think we will continue to have researchers who do research in the areas of interest in their discipline. But I think we’ll have more who pursue new questions and find new solutions overlooked by others.
And the reason I believe that is one of the great innovations of our mission-inspired scholarship is when we identify these areas, we have opportunities for faculty from departments all around campus to spend a season embedded in that area. But then we have every expectation that they will go back to their department. We hope they take with them research, research methods and data to collaborate with colleagues back in their home departments. We see this as more an infusion of effort where its influence will be felt more broadly at the university. I expect to see this become a leavening influence around campus.
"We are all united in 'becoming BYU,' and we are all playing a role and championing each other."
Are we going to get additional funding to help with this initiative?
Yes. These three core institutions are our starting point because we felt like they were important. We took forward a request for additional FTEs with the associated dollars.
We’re not taking away from the wonderful work that’s being done all across this campus. I think sometimes when I talk about this, people worry that we’re abandoning the rest of our research mission. No, what I’m talking about is an infusion of additional resources that are limited, but for those ones we’re going to target how we invest them.
What would you say to employees who are staff, admin or even faculty who are totally in an area that doesn’t seem to organically line up with one of these key areas? Should we start thinking about our work differently or do we just say, “You know what? That’s not important to me.”?
Of course, the most natural and obvious manifestation of this is faculty who work in one of those three main areas. However, there was not a single initiative that didn’t have all our students, our faculty and our staff in mind.
I meant that when I said it, I had the entire university community on my mind the entire time that I was writing that inaugural response. It was never at the exclusion of anybody.
If you’re contributing meaningfully, I hope it’s with the satisfaction of being a part of what we’re all trying to build with “becoming BYU.” When I think of the athletics program at the university, it isn’t just our student athletes who take pride in that athletic success. It’s part of what we love and associate with being a part of the BYU community. It’s not just the grounds crew that gets to enjoy the incredible beauty they help maintain and curate on this campus. We all enjoy the victories together. I see these as very much the same thing. We are all united in “becoming BYU,” and we are all playing a role and championing each other. When it comes to mission inspired scholarship, as a statistician I can say it doesn’t apply to me. Or I can say, “They’ve got a lot of statistical analysis or modeling to be done over in family life, maybe I can help.”
When one of our school of music performances reinforces families, that’s contributing. A member of our general counsel’s office recently presented at Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Summit; that work falls squarely in both the pillar of constitutional government and religious freedom. It all contributes.
