Every Tuesday at 11:05 a.m., students, faculty, staff and the greater BYU community gathers for the weekly Devotional or Forum address. During the Spring and Summer terms, most Devotionals and Forums are held in the de Jong Concert Hall of the Harris Fine Arts Center. The May 7th Devotional will be in the JSB Auditorium. The August 20th Education Week Devotional will be held in the Marriott Center.
Devotional and Forums are open to the public and most are broadcast live on BYUtv, Classical 89 FM, BYU Radio and will be archived on speeches.byu.edu.
Spring/Summer 2019 Devotional and Forum Schedule
May
- May 7: J.B. Haws, Religious Education (Devotional)
- May 14: Gary Burlingame, Distinguished Faculty Lecturer (Forum)
- May 21: Julianne Grose, Life Sciences (Devotional)
June
- June 4: Phillip Rash, Undergraduate Education and First-Year Mentoring (Devotional)
- June 11: Ellie Young, Education (Devotional)
- June 25: Michalyn Steele, Law School (Devotional)
July
- July 2: Chris Crowe, Humanities (Devotional)
- July 9: Amy Tanner, Physical and Mathematical Sciences (Devotional)
- July 16: Christine Hurt, Law School (Forum)
- July 30: Spencer Fluhman, Family, Home and Social Sciences (Devotional)
August
- August 6: Pam Musil, Fine Arts and Communications (Devotional)
- August 20: Elder Gary E. Stevenson (Education Week Devotional)
About the Spring/Summer 2019 Devotional Speakers:
J.B. Haws
Religious Education
May 7, 2019 Devotional
J.B. Haws is an associate professor of Church History and Doctrine at BYU. He is the author of The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Fifty Years of Public Perception (Oxford, 2013). His PhD from the University of Utah is in American History. He is also the coordinator of BYU's Office of Religious Outreach. Before coming to BYU, Haws taught seminary in northern Utah, in Salt Lake and Weber Counties. His research interests center on the place of Mormonism in twentieth- and twenty-first century America. As for his interest in history generally, he asks how could you not be interested in history when you come from a place that in pioneer-times Utah was known as “Muskrat Springs” (now Hooper)?
He is married to the beautiful Laura Favero, which he submits as yet another evidence that miracles have not ceased! They are the parents of three boys and a daughter, and they love living in Provo and cheering (sometimes too fanatically) for the Cougars.
He served a Spanish-speaking mission in Raleigh, North Carolina, so he speaks Spanish with a slight Southern accent (and English with a heavy Hooper, Utah accent).
Gary Burlingame
Distinguished Faculty Lecturer
May 14, 2019 Forum
Dr. Gary M. Burlingame completed his doctoral work in Counseling Psychology at the University of Utah in 1983 and joined BYU’s faculty the same year. He is a professor of Psychology and has been affiliated with clinical psychology doctoral program since 1983. Burlingame’s scholarly work is focused in two areas: factors that lead to effective small group treatments in the treatment of mental and medical illness and measurement. He has contributed over 40 books and book chapters along with over 130 peer reviewed articles to the group literature and nearly 50 publications focusing on the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ 45) and Youth Outcome Questionnaire. Burlingame’s undergraduate and graduate teaching interests include measurement, research methodology, statistics and training in individual and group psychotherapy.
Burlingame has served as a consultant to over 20 federal, state and private entities including the White House, Department of Labor, Food & Drug Administration. He has served as a consultant to private and state agencies in implementing changes in practice patterns to increase the use of group and outcomes-informed treatment. His direct training has been received by thousands of consumers, clinicians, line administrators and executive staff. He has received a number career awards including national (American Psychological Association; American Group Psychotherapy Association) and international (German College of Psychosomatic Medicine) recognition. He is a fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and the American Psychological Association (APA) where he served as President of APA’s Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy (2009-2011). Notable university awards for excellence in scholarship, teaching and citizenship include a University Professorship (2011-2016), the Wells & Myrle Cloward Teaching and Learning Fellowship (207-2010) and the Abraham O. Smoot Citizenship Award (2005), respectively.
Burlingame and his colleague Michael Lambert co-developed OQ Measures which disseminates outcome instruments (e.g., OQ 45, YOQ, etc.) on five continents and nearly 40 languages. His most recent efforts have focused on training and implementation protocols that integrate outcome instruments into daily clinical practice supporting treatment planning and progress notes using evidence-based outcome instruments. Clinical settings that he’s worked with include private practice, statewide community mental health systems, state psychiatric hospitals, child/youth treatments (out/inpatient, day-treatment, residential, in-home, wilderness, etc.), military (e.g., VA and active duty), faith-based and neighborhood partnerships, consumer advocacy and federal agencies.
Julianne Grose
College of Life Sciences
May 21, 2019 Devotional
Julianne Grose is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology at BYU. Grose teaches a variety of courses focused on microbiology and synthetic biology. Her long-term goal is to mentor students in the classroom and lab through high quality research experiences as well as to contribute novel scientific findings to her fields of study. Research in her laboratory is dedicated to two main projects: the study of glucose allocation and the study of bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria).
Phillip Rash
Director of First-Year Mentoring
June 4, 2019 Devotional
Phillip D. Rash is a psychologist and associate clinical professor. He currently serves as director of First-Year Mentoring and assistant dean of Undergraduate Education at BYU. He received a PhD in counseling psychology, a master's degree in counseling and guidance and a bachelor's degree in history teaching from BYU. Rash has worked as a high school guidance counselor, a therapist, an academic and career counselor and as manager of BYU's Career and Academic Success Center. He has taught courses mainly in the area of learning skills and career decision-making. He has presented at several professional conferences both nationally and internationally.
Ellie Young
David O. McKay School of Education
June 11, 2019 Devotional
After working as a school psychologist in Kansas and Missouri for about 9 years, Ellie Young attended the University of South Florida to earn her PhD in School Psychology. Upon completion of her doctoral training, she was appointed as an assistant professor at Brigham Young University and in 2007 moved to the associate professor rank.
Young's teaching interests include school psychology, social-emotional assessment and interventions in the schools, academic assessment and interventions in the schools.
Her research interests include school-wide screening for social, emotional, behavioral issues in secondary settings; implementing social-emotional supports for all students in schools and meeting the emotional needs of students in schools.
Michalyn Steele
J. Reuben Clark Law School
June 25, 2019 Devotional
Professor Michalyn Steele (Georgetown University Law Center ’01) joined the faculty of BYU Law School as an Associate Professor in 2014, following two years as a Fellow and a semester as a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Law School. She has taught Federal Indian Law, Evidence and Civil Rights.
After beginning her legal career with Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry, a highly regarded D.C. firm specializing in the representation of Indian tribes, Steele worked for six years as a Trial Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. Steele worked in the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section, where her primary responsibilities included litigation and investigations to enforce the Fair Housing Act, Title II of the Civil Rights Act and RLUIPA. While at the Department of Justice, her work was honored with the Division’s Special Act Award in 2006 and the Division’s Special Achievement Award in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Beginning in late 2009, Steele worked for several years as a Counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Larry Echo Hawk, at the U.S. Department of Interior. She is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians of New York.
Professor Steele holds a B.A. ('92) and an M.A. ('94) in Humanities from BYU, with an emphasis in English literature and Native American studies.
Chris Crowe
College of Humanities
July 2, 2019 Devotional
Chris Crowe completed his graduate study at Arizona State University and, after teaching high school English for ten years, he taught at Himeji (Japan) Dokkyo University and BYU-Hawaii before coming to BYU in 1993. His areas of research and teaching include young adult literature, English education and creative writing. He is past president of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) and spent 5 years as editor of the YA Literature Column for the English Journal.
Dr. Crowe’s books include Presenting Mildred D. Taylor (Twayne 1999); Mississippi Trial, 1955 (Penguin Putnam 2002); Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case (Penguin 2003); More than a Game: Sports Literature for Young Adults (Scarecrow, 2004); Two Roads (Deseret Book, 2007); Teaching the Selected Works of Mildred D. Taylor (Heinneman, 2007); “How I Came to Write”: LDS Authors for Young Adults (Center for Christian Values in Literature, 2007); Thurgood Marshall: Up Close (Viking, 2008) and Just as Good: How Larry Doby Changed America’s Game (Candlewick, 2012).
He attended BYU on a football scholarship from 1972 through 1975. He married his high school sweetheart, Elizabeth, in 1973, and they have four children, two beautiful granddaughters and three handsome grandsons.
Amy Tanner
College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
July 9, 2019 Devotional
Amy Tanner is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Mathematics Education and the undergraduate advisor for the Mathematics Education major. She received a PhD in Educational Studies with an emphasis in mathematics education from the University of Michigan and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics Education from BYU. Tanner teaches mathematics courses for both future elementary and secondary teachers and has a passion for putting research into practice in changing teachers’ and students’ perceptions of mathematics. Her academic interests include mathematical content preparation for elementary teachers and curriculum development and implementation. She believes that all children are capable of doing and enjoying mathematics, and she particularly enjoys bringing mathematical conversations into her own home where she and her husband, Brian Tanner, are parents to a 6-year-old son and 4-year old daughter.
Christine Hurt
J. Reuben Clark Law School
July 16, 2019 Forum
Professor Christine Hurt joined the BYU faculty as the Rex J. and Maureen E. Rawlinson Professor in the Fall of 2014. Prior to that, she was a Professor of Law and Director of the Program in Business Law and Policy at the University of Illinois College of Law.
Hurt's teaching and research focuses on securities regulation, corporate tax, microfinance, torts and business associations. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Corporate Law, Iowa Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Boston University Law Review, American Bankruptcy Law Journal, UC-Davis Law Review and Cardozo Law Review, and she is a founder and regular contributor to The Conglomerate. Recently, she and colleague Gordon Smith have published a new edition of the popular treatise "Bromberg & Ribstein on Partnership" with Wolters Kluwer. Her most recent article, "Partnership Lost," is forthcoming in the University of Richmond Law Review in early 2019.
Prior to teaching at Illinois, Hurt taught at Marquette University Law School and the University of Houston. As a teaching fellow at Texas Tech University School of Law, Professor Hurt and colleague Tracy McGaugh Norton pioneered a system online legal citation exercises, now the Interactive Citation Workbook and its related web-based program on the Lexis website.
Hurt recently concluded a three-year term as a member of the National Adjudicatory Council of FINRA, which hears appeals regarding broker-dealer and registered representative violations of FINRA and SEC rules.
Before entering law teaching, Hurt practiced corporate law for a number of years in Houston at Baker Botts, LLP, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. As a first-year student at the University of Texas School of Law, she co-founded the Texas Journal of Women and the Law.
Spencer Fluhman
College of Family, Home and Social Sciences
July 30, 2019 Devotional
Spencer Fluhman is executive director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and associate professor of history at Brigham Young University. He graduated summa cum laude from BYU and received masters and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research takes up the question of religious identity and the intersection of religion and politics in the United States.
His work has appeared in the New York Times, Journal of Religion and Society, Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies Quarterly and Mormon Historical Studies. His article, "An 'American Mahomet': Joseph Smith, Muhammad, and the Problem of Prophets in Antebellum America," (Journal of Mormon History, 2008) won the T. Edgar Lyon Award for Best Article of the Year from the Mormon History Association in 2009.
His first book, “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) won the Mormon History Association’s Best First Book Award in 2013. In 2014, he won the Mollie & Karl Butler Young Scholar Award in Western Studies from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. He is currently at work on a biography of LDS apostle James E. Talmage (under contract, Oxford University Press). He has held office in the American Academy of Religion, American Society of Church History and Mormon History Association. He served as editor-in-chief of Mormon Studies Review from 2013 to 2018.
Pam Musil
College of Fine Arts and Communications
August 6, 2019 Devotional
Pamela S. Musil, MA, teaches Kinesiology for Dancers and courses within the Dance Education major program. Her scholarly work addresses pedagogy within 7-12 and higher education settings, and gender-related issues of dancers in adolescence, young adulthood and higher education. Her work has been published in the Journal of Dance Education, Research in Dance Education and Arts Education Policy Review. She has also published chapters in several recent textbooks. Musil has presented at professional conferences throughout the US and in Italy and China and has taught dance pedagogy workshops in Mumbai and Bangalore, India. She has served on the Board of Directors for the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO); currently serves on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Dance Education and Arts Education Policy Review and is a past President of the Utah Dance Education Organization. She is a certified Franklin Method Educator (FME).
Elder Gary E. Stevenson
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
August 20, 2019 Education Week Devotional
Elder Gary E. Stevenson was called to serve as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on October 3, 2015. At the time of his call to the Twelve, he had been serving as the Presiding Bishop of the Church since April 2012.
In April 2008, he was called to the First Quorum of the Seventy and served as a counselor and later as president in the Asia North Area Presidency. His previous Church service includes full-time missionary in the Japan Fukuoka Mission, ward Sunday School teacher, high councilor, bishop, stake presidency counselor, and president of the Japan Nagoya Mission (2004-2007).
He received a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Utah State University. He cofounded an exercise equipment manufacturing company, ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., where he served as president and chief operating officer until 2008. He was also involved in numerous civic activities and has served on various boards and advisory councils.
Elder Stevenson was born on August 6, 1955 to Evan N. and Vera Jean Hall Stevenson and was raised in Cache Valley, Utah.
In April 1979, he married Lesa Jean Higley. They are the parents of four sons.
