Chapter Five: Ears to Hear—Listening to
Transcrição
Chapter Five: Ears to Hear—Listening to
49 Chapter V: Ears to Hear—Listening to Participants’ Stories Announcement Ricks College employees and students, selected community members, and local media responded to their late night phone calls and gathered in the Hart Auditorium even before 8:00 a.m. They were anxious, curious, and speculative. Then the Chairman of the Board read the announcement to those gathered on campus and to the Salt Lake City media who had gathered for the press conference. To recreate the sentiments of the initial response, the text from announcement (Hinckley, 2000) has been presented below in italics and interspersed with reflective comments about the reaction from those who were in attendance: The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Board of Trustees of Ricks College announce that Ricks College will change from its present two-year junior college status to a four-year institution. “Immediately a burst of applause broke out in the Hart Auditorium. A near halfcentury of speculation on the subject of whether Ricks would ever again become a four-year institution had ended” (Kinghorn, 2000, p. 61). The new four-year school will be known as Brigham Young University–Idaho, with the name change designed to give the school immediate national and international recognition. Applause again filled the auditorium. Some students said that even in their “naiveté,” they could sense they “were witnessing something very significant” (E. Nelson, personal communication, June 30, 2007). The memory of Thomas E. Ricks will continue to be appropriately honored and perpetuated. “The name Ricks College was to be dropped. What do you do about that? And how do deal with the Ricks family which is a huge family and has contributed over the years so much. How are they going to be made to feel good about this change?” (B. Kinghorn, personal communication, May 2, 2007). This change of status is consistent with the ongoing tradition of evaluation and progress that has brought Ricks College from infant beginnings to its present position as the largest privately owned two-year institution of higher education in America. With some additions and modifications, the physical facilities now in place in Rexburg are adequate to handle the new program. Undoubtedly, some changes to the campus will be necessary. However, they will be modest in nature and scope. BYU–Idaho's move to four-year status will be phased in over a period of time 50 and accomplished in such a way as to preserve the school's autonomy and identity. Adjustments to its mission will be minimal. The school will have a unique role in and be distinctive from the other institutions of higher education within the Church Educational System. For the immediate future, the president of BYU–Idaho will report directly to the Commissioner of the Church Educational System. To remain autonomous within the CES was significant. Many realized the trust of the Board in the leadership and abilities of those on campus. BYU–Idaho will continue to be teaching oriented. Effective teaching and advising will be the primary responsibilities of its faculty, who are committed to academic excellence. The institution will emphasize undergraduate education and will award baccalaureate degrees; graduate degree programs will not be offered. Faculty rank will not be a part of the academic structure of the new four-year institution. BYU–Idaho will operate on an expanded year-round basis, incorporating innovative calendaring and scheduling while also taking advantage of advancements in technology which will enable the four-year institution to serve more students. The statement was ongoing as Brent Kinghorn sat facing the audience. He observed the audience’s reaction: “I had picked out some of our coaches, and I had noticed how happy everybody was. Here they were thinking an opportunity to now take their level of coaching up to a four-year level as a college or university conference somewhere, and they had excitement for that…” In addition, BYU–Idaho will phase out its involvement in intercollegiate athletics and shift its emphasis to a year-round activity program, designed to involve and meet the needs of a diverse student body. “…and then when that announcement was made it was just like taking the wind totally out of them. All of a sudden not only are they not going to do that, they are not going to have athletics period. You could see the look on their faces. Does this mean we are out of a job? And I had not even thought of that until I saw that. It all happened so fast” (B. Kinghorn, personal communication, May 2, 2007). Of necessity, the new four-year institution will be assessing and restructuring its academic offerings. Predictably, the school will need to change and even eliminate some long-standing and beneficial programs as the school focuses upon key academic disciplines and activities. Kinghorn said, “I felt immediate compassion for many of my friends who have devoted their lives to intercollegiate athletics. I could only imagine the feelings they were 51 experiencing. And I knew there might be others, in similar circumstances, who would face the same challenge” (Kinghorn, 2000, p. 61). Specific programmatic details about and time lines for the change are presently being worked out. These details, which will be discussed with and approved by the Board of Trustees, will be announced at appropriate times in the future. The announcement concluded. The individual response was varied. Some describe it as exciting, others as surreal—“Not knowing, ok what does these mean in terms of the announcement. What does this really mean in terms of what we were doing?” (D. Lyons, personal communication, June 8, 2007). Some who happened to be away because summer employment was not included in their contracts were told by family members and responded with disbelief: “Are you kidding?” (V. Lovell, personal communication, June 15, 2007). Others who received the information second hand thought it might be a joke (T. McRae, personal communication, June 1, 2007). Many pondered on what it would mean for their individual responsibilities while others were impressed with the great impact for good that the changes would have on the students who attended what was now going to become Brigham Young University–Idaho. Communication quickly became a key component of the transitions. The Media Relations Coordinator for Ricks College, Don Sparhawk, said, “I knew immediately this was going to be a huge story that everyone was going to be asking information about. I had no idea. I mean we were speculating, but this was not among the things we were speculating. We had no idea it was going to be such a big story. It is a little unusual that the person in charge of the media would not have any idea…. Fortunately, Church Public Affairs did have a news release and they had a news conference in Salt Lake, so actually it went quite well.” (D. Sparhawk, personal communication, May 2, 2007) The Chairman of the Board and Commissioner of the Church Educational System fielded questions from the media in Salt Lake City immediately following the announcement. By that noon, Sparhawk had arranged for a press conference with local media in Idaho. Question-and-answer sessions were held for employees, students, and concerned community members throughout the day. Kinghorn (2000) describes the open sessions: [They were] conducted by President Bednar. He fielded every question, answering most himself and occasionally asking one of the vice presidents to respond. He was a master. We all answered the best we could with the limited information that we had. Most people seemed to still be excited and supportive, but some really had difficult feelings to work through regarding the name change and the 52 discontinuance of athletics. We listened, we responded, and we listened some more. President Bednar became expert in responding, “I don’t know” (pp. 62-63) There were more questions than answers, and the rumor mill started to fill the void. To establish a line of communication and to assure a consistent message, Kinghorn was designated as the spokesman for the school. He was faced with the challenge of “fielding phone calls from universities and organizations and radio and television stations from literally across the country” (B. Kinghorn, personal communication, May 2, 2007). Talking to the media had never been an enjoyable task for Kinghorn. He said, I remember thinking, “I can’t do that.” And then I remember thinking, “Bring it on!” And it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to grow. As I magnify my personal experience among the thousand employees and the potential we all have to grow and do things that stretch us beyond what we have ever been stretched before, I think that is one of the wonderful things; many of them not only succeed but succeed amazingly well. We can do a lot better than we otherwise think we can. I think we also learned that at this institution the Board of Trustees is led by a living prophet, and it gave us a chance to truly sustain him as such. (ibid) Perhaps Kinghorn’s response to the challenges as he viewed an opportunity to sustain a prophet is ultimately proof of a trusting relationship between leadership and those who choose to follow. Other participants in this research expressed similar sentiments as they explain the culture of the school, its history, and the processes they went through in the transition. Charles Frost, Director of Physical Plant, wrote in his journal the evening following the announcement: As I sit on my deck writing tonight, the breeze is gentle, temperature about 73. Neighborhood noises are normal. Everything seems normal when in fact the future of Ricks College was dramatically changed yesterday when President Hinckley announced the change in status to BYU–Idaho with a four-year curriculum and no athletic program. For the 2,000 plus students, faculty, and administrators in the Hart [auditorium], the news was first greeted with applause and then stunned realization of what this news meant. It was like throwing a large rock into a small pond. The waves and ripples extended outward creating new surprises as realizations set in…. Since the transition has barely started, many answers are unknown. The athletes and coaches are resentful and stunned, the faculty unsure of future curriculum changes, and students wanting to have the four-year bachelor’s of science degrees available right now. Creating BYU–Idaho is a monumental task. Interrelated Key Components After the announcement was made, President Bednar talked more in depth with his President’s Council and worked on details. Their communication had to be multifaceted as 53 the administration worked with the external publics and the internal audiences of employees, students, and the Board of Trustees. Two key metaphors helped the communication process: a cube and cheese. Similar in size to a Rubik’s cube, the transition cube was frequently held up as a visual aid in meetings. Christensen explained how the cube facilitated discussion: The Executive Committee and the Board wanted to be kept apprised of all of the different steps as they moved forward. In my opinion one of the key things that happened was the President’s Council created a metaphor that worked very well to see how all of the pieces fit together, and that was this infamous cube. (R. Christensen, personal communication, May 3, 2007) Christensen still had a diagram of the cube in his desk drawer. Pulling it from a file folder, he showed me the six-sided diagram which included key components of the transition to become BYU–Idaho: Side 4: Degree Programs 70 Credit Majors (11) 45 Credit Majors (23) Teaching Majors & Minors Specialized Associate Deg Top Support Services Side 1: Faculty Load & Annual Contract 37.5 Annual Load with opportunity to apply for 3 -hour load release for scholarship 45 Weeks Bottom: Student Enrollment 8,600 74.1% 900 7.8% 2,100 18.1% 11,600 TOTAL Side 2: Budget Year- Round School Upper Division Courses FIGURE 1. Transition Cube He continued his commentary: Side 3: Space Change or New 12-18% 54 There were six-sided elements that all interacted with one another. You couldn’t start making changes with one of those facets without impacting all of the other five. So every time there was a discussion or presentation, they would do it in the context that if you start talking about this, remember it is going to impact these other elements of the transition. Once that was well established, they started putting together the estimate and phasing it in over a period of time, then [the cube] identified all of those pieces. Every year as we reviewed the budgets, it would be this was the next layer of what we had talked about before, and the plan rolled out almost exactly as it had been formulated that first year 2000. (R. Christensen, personal communication, May 3, 2007) As the shockwaves began to settle from the Board of Trustees’ announcement that Ricks College would become Brigham Young University–Idaho, President David A. Bednar arranged for each employee to receive a personal copy of Spencer Johnson’s (1999) #1 National Bestseller: Who Moved My Cheese? A memo from the President had a simple oneword subject: change. The President’s invitation to begin learning about the impending season ahead created a common dialogue for those involved: Enclosed with this memorandum is your personal copy of Who Moved My Cheese?, a simple parable that focuses on the nature of change. Given the changes taking place at Ricks College, I thought it would be beneficial if all campus employees took the time to read this book. I invite and encourage you to read it in preparation for the all-employee meeting scheduled for next Wednesday…and believe you will find it to be a good preface to what will be discussed at that meeting. I look forward to being with you Wednesday and extend my best wishes to you for personal success and happiness during the upcoming academic semester. (D. A. Bednar, personal communication, August 10, 2000) Many employees appreciated the administration’s acknowledgement that their world had changed. The attempt to introduce a metaphor created a common dialogue and shared point of reference. In Johnson’s (1999) book, cheese represents one’s primary source of personal happiness and satisfaction, but sometimes life’s events bring a need to seek out “new cheese” in altered circumstances. For those at Ricks College, the brief announcement by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees had redefined the school. Those familiar with the school knew a lot about legacies and Ricks College—but not a lot about transitions or about becoming Brigham Young University–Idaho. Gone were many of their key identifying characteristics that brought satisfaction to their work and existence—the status of being the largest privately-owned junior college in the nation, the sponsorship of nationally-ranked 55 intercollegiate teams, the academic structure, even the name of the school. Their “cheese” had been moved; the analogy fit. There were similarities in the actions of Johnson’s characters and in the way individuals responded to change. Some eagerly set into finding the “new cheese” of upper level course work and an expanded student activities program. The analogy continued to be used to explain observations of individuals who “hemmed or hawed” in delay, “scurried” into action, or “sniffed” out solutions to the unfolding progress. As an organization in the season of transition, no one was immune from change. Administrators, faculty, staff, and students all began to learn together how to reshape a university. Cheese became an ongoing dialogue, and there were still references to Johnson’s classic ways of response as the participants told me their stories nearly seven years after the book was shared with employees. Any effort to be able to gain a common ground of communication was appreciated. As an administrator explained, “We really were rethinking how we were doing a lot of things. We came up with this glossary of new terms and new meanings for old ones” (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007). The glossary also helped establish consistency in messaging. Included in the glossary were basic assumptions that were the base for all the changes that would transpire: Assumptions – Institutional. It is assumed that the institution to be known as Brigham Young University–Idaho will maintain its present character with respect to types of students served and faculty employed. Additionally, the institution will require students and employees to live by an honor code, and it will continue to foster a nurturing, spiritual environment—often referred to as the “Spirit of Ricks.” BYU– Idaho will be a two-tiered institution offering both specialized associate degrees and bachelor’s degrees that will use 120 credit hours as the standard requirement for bachelor’s degrees. The institution will not offer graduate programs. It will provide a flexible year-round schedule; utilize technological innovations; and maintain contact and relationships with students when they are not on campus. Assumptions – Student/Faculty. It is assumed that the institution to be known as Brigham Young University–Idaho will maintain an enrollment of 8,600 freshman and sophomore students while adding junior and senior students. BYU– Idaho will emphasize the scholarship of learning and teaching, maintain a 25:1 student/faculty ratio, and continue the tradition of no faculty rank. BYU–Idaho will provide faculty with sufficient opportunities and resources for professional development and will retain present faculty by relocating and/or retraining as needed. (The Transition Glossary, n.d.) 56 Establishing assumptions, finding common points of communication, and developing a visual aid such as a cube helped individuals become grounded on what was known rather than becoming lost in the unknown aspects of the transition. It was a visual representation that transformation “touches on almost every aspect of organizational life” (Watkins & Marsick, 1993, p. 152). Using the pattern of the cube for my research, I set out to look at each side of the transition. Although interrelated and often overlapping, the six aspects have been reported individually rather than trying to spread all six across the chronology. This strategy was different than I had originally proposed for my logic model (Yin, 2003). I was learning as others have that “the sources of inspiration are everywhere” (Samuelson, 2001). Participants were then chosen who could tell their specific story as it related to the following: Side 1: Faculty Side 2: Budget Side 3: Space (facilities) Side 4: Degree programs (accreditation) Top: Support Services Bottom or base: Students Faculty Before looking at specific learning opportunities for faculty, it was important to better understand two key concepts from the announcement: First, “faculty rank will not be a part of the academic structure of the new four-year institution” (Hinckley, 2000). This concept was not new to those who worked at Ricks College. Faculty rank had never been a part of their contracts. Rather than seeking a tenure track, faculty members are offered continuing faculty status (CFS) after successfully demonstrating progressive professional abilities “Faculty members are on probation for at least the first four years of their hiring at BYU–Idaho” (BYU–Idaho, 2004, p. 189). Second, “BYU–Idaho will continue to be teaching oriented” (Hinckley, 2000). Effective teaching and advising will be the primary responsibilities of its faculty, who are committed to academic excellence.” The focus for faculty was to be on teaching and learning rather than research or publishing. “Most research or creative activity is typically designed to benefit students or to enhance a program’s curriculum” (BYU–Idaho, 2004, p. 192). 57 According to the 2004 Self Study, the full-time faculty workload was 37 annual credits with typical distribution of 15 credit-hours in fall and winter, and 7 credit-hours in one of the summer terms. For some in higher education, 37 credits may seem a higher load than other campuses, but one of my faculty participants reminded me to “stop and really think about what President Hinckley said in that announcement: primarily teaching. That is what our focus is going to be” (D. Lyons, June 8, 2007). Christensen, the Secretary for the Board of Trustees, recalled a similar concern for teaching load being raised during the accreditation process: As I recall, the woman who chaired that accreditation committee had an open discussion with the faculty and that point was raised with her. “By the way do you realize what our teaching load is?” And her response was basically, “I do understand that. And you recognize that that is your primary responsibility. You are not a research university where you are required to research and publish as well as teach, and so a heavier work load would be expected of you than at other research universities.” (R. Christensen, personal communication, May 3, 2007) In 2000, Ricks College had 8,950 students and 370 members of the faculty. With the addition of upper level courses, plans were made for a gradual increase in enrollment and proportional, incremental additions to the faculty to maintain a 25:1 student to faculty ratio. While 100 new faculty hires within five years was significant, the overall impact of new hires was even greater. Roy Huff, Assistant Academic Vice President for Curriculum, explained: Knowing that our enrollments were going to increase, we were given 100 new faculty to hire. So you think 100 new positions, but that was 100 new net positions. We also in those four years had a lot of people retire whom we had to replace. So I think we hired at least 175 people in that 4-5 year period. Here are two things we had to worry about that: (1) Will the new faculty have a sense of the “Spirit of Ricks” that we had as Ricks College? (2) If they are coming now to help us migrate towards this BYU–Idaho, it was so important that we get the right people in each of these positions. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) The concern about new faculty understanding the culture of the institution and the nurturing, selflessness affectionately referred to as the “Spirit of Ricks” seemed to be mitigated. Many felt that working at BYU–Idaho was not only a matter of contract but also of covenant. A faculty member wrote the following: Since arriving at BYU–Idaho, I have given much thought to my covenant and contract relationship with the Church and the University. This topic was also discussed in a recent new faculty training session. I believe, for many of us new to BYU–Idaho, the opportunity to come here feels as much like a calling as it does a 58 profession. I have spent much time in kneeling reflection, praying for spiritual gifts in areas of concern and weakness. I have prayed that I might measure up. (Kusch, 2003, p. 47) Steve Wheelwright (personal communication, May 9, 2007) observed, “Clearly the faculty have their hearts are in the right place. They are working hard. They are here because they feel they should be personally, and they do a great job of relating to the students and helping students when students need help.” The process of finding the right new hires was more complicated. Candidates for positions were expected to have solid professional and academic credential. They also had to be willing to support the university’s Honor Code of ethics and to live in accordance to moral conduct standards of the Church. Consider that “a professor with high standards and a caring personality can teach students more about ethical behavior than years of required courses” (Rosovsky, 1990, p. 129). For those involved in the selection process, the choice was not easy. Creativity opened up opportunities to try hiring in a new way: Because we didn’t always know and many times we were not able to get the right person, we opened up this idea of having a fulltime, temporary one-year hire. If we couldn’t fill it with the right slot, we are going to miss all the students that person could teach if they were hired. We thought what if we grabbed a graduate who had just finished a master’s degree and doesn’t have the work experience yet—someone who is not quite ready to start a career but could do some wonderful things for one year and then go off and use this as almost a resumé builder. This type of experience would meet our needs and the needs of that individual, and we are not making a 25or 30-year commitment to one person. That really helped. We had the same number of adjunct that we had in the past, it was that one-year temporary hire that really allowed us to get 30 new faculty members every year that were not long term but one to two years out…. It [was] a one-year renewable [contract]. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) Having the new one-year temporary slots plus the placements of the new full-time permanent hires brought a fresh awareness for those who were already teaching at BYU– Idaho. An observation from one of the faculty was shared as we talked about changed perspectives as follows: As faculty at a junior college with no expectations to publish or do research, we were sometimes a little unaware of when we were obsolete…. We just didn’t know. Suddenly when we became a university, we were hiring lots of new, fresh-outof-the-trenches, doctoral program students. You know they graduated last year, and they have all these cutting edge ideas… Suddenly I think those of us who have been here a while say, “Ok, we don’t know our own profession as well as we thought. 59 Maybe we should crack a book.” I think we [were] becoming aware of our needs and the need for continued scholarship even though we don’t publish or do research. (E. Landon, personal communication, July 11, 2007) Many faculty members, whether new or longstanding, seemed to grasp the understanding of the need for continued scholarship. Kathy Cook, one of the new faculty members hired in the early stages of the transition, stated the following: I studied a lot to bring myself up academically for a four-year program on my own. I did take some classes. I took whatever opportunity I could to improve. What do I need to do in my teaching to redefine my teaching philosophy for teaching fouryear programs, to become a better teacher, to set the objectives? How do I assess this, and how do I work with it? (K. Cook, personal communication, May 31, 2007) While the addition of one-year hires was seen as a viable option to supplement the teaching pool by those in the administrative offices, the concept did work equally well across the campus spectrum—nor did the prospect of using adjunct or part-time instructors, even though there are 100 such individuals adding their expertise to the University’s teaching pool. T. L. McRae, Chair of the Department of Interior Design, explains their situation: Hiring another faculty would be a great help for us, at least one faculty, or if we were able to have more adjunct faculty which is very difficult here. We tried. We don’t have a pool to choose from here in this area because almost all of our students leave here. They go someplace else. This is not an interior design haven. The consideration of a one-year hire opens up another interesting problem because the one-year hire would need to be versed in all of these different areas…. One of our faculty teaches kitchen/bath design, historical/contemporary, some introductory class in space planning and so on. Then somebody else teaches all the art oriented classes, the rendering perspective drawing, color, and three-dimensional design. And we have another that specializes in contract design. I suppose my specialty is design basics, residential aspects, business, and lighting. When you bring someone in for a one-year hire, is it for one person’s place, or can they do everything? The Music Department has the same problem when considering a one-year hire. Can they play the violin, the trumpet, and the drums and do it all well? We are very, very protective of the program and of the students. I guess more than the program, the students. We do not want them to have an inferior education or an inferior experience because we are tired and about ready to burn out. (T. McRae, personal communication, June 1, 2007) New faculty members added energy to the programs, but some sensed apprehensions within the department as programs were being redeveloped. They learned individually through changes in behavior, knowledge, and attitudes, but they also learned through working as teams (Watkins & Marsick, 1993). In becoming part of the collaborative process, they were able to better define their objectives, their shared vision. As explained by Senge et 60 al., this vision was “not lofty sentiments or inspiring phrases, but practical tools... an image of what [they] were seeking to create” (Senge et al., 2004b, p. 140). The faculty groups set out to do the following: Find a new vision, new expectations. What is it that we want our students to be able to do when they finish because we are not transferring to another place where they can get their upper division? As we were developing the upper division, there was a lot of retooling and learning—starting from scratch, unpacking the bags and then trying to put it together into something better. I think of being able to catch the vision of what was happening, time and a softening of hearts, and personal experiences that they have gone through with the students, with themselves, with health, with life issues. It was a moment to stop and to consider the past was good. We had good programs then, but it [was] time to retool for better programs. (K. Cook, personal communication, May 31, 2007) Wheelwright gave suggestions to help what he witnessed as challenges and uncertainty in the faculty. To improve as a teacher and have better content ask the following: How will I be a better teacher two or three years from now—dramatically better than I am now?” Think about it in terms of: “I am supposed to become a really top-notch teacher and that means________.” “How do my courses evolve and improve over time?” That is the content, the structure, the delivery.… “Am I teaching the same things that I taught ten years ago in the same way and if so, why? Do I really believe it is the only way, the best way, or is it just out of habit?” (S. Wheelwright, personal communication, May 9, 2007) While their efforts to becoming better teachers and delivering better content were noteworthy ventures, there was also an aspect of selflessness that came into the balance for BYU–Idaho faculty. There was talk about raising the bar of expectations for faculty. With the school now operating as a university, there was a desire to increase the number of doctorate degrees among the faculty. Since the “learning organization grows organically out of the drive in the people themselves to learn and grow,” (Watkins & Marsick, 1993, p. 279) it is significant that many individuals voluntarily stepped back into the role of student in pursuit of doctoral degrees. Their motivation may be seen as not only for professional advancement but also for the social welfare (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999) of their community of higher education. Daniel Lyons, an officer in the Faculty Association shared the following scenario: I had a friend, another faculty member, who left to complete a PhD and took a sabbatical for a year. Part way through that time, he sent me an e-mail. He seemed somewhat caught up in his PhD thing, and you know, “well, I am going to be a doctor.” He sent me an e-mail with just kind of an inquiry and said, “Do you think that BYU–Idaho will progress because of the wonderful faculty they have?” 61 I sent him an e-mail back—I don’t know if I burst his bubble—but anyway, I sent him an e-mail back and said, “No, I think we will progress fastest when the faculty become invisible in the process.” I really believe that. It is not about me. It is not about us. It is not “Look at me. Look at what I am doing.” I think that is part of this. The faculty in this transition need to just become invisible. It will not become great because of us; it will be because of the students. We need to do everything we can behind the scenes to help the students to get out there, and that is how we are going to be moved forward. It has never been about me. It has never been about what I can do. I will contribute what I can. I will contribute what I am asked. (D. Lyons, personal communication, June 8, 2007) Budget BYU–Idaho inherited a legacy of Ricks College’s frugality and trustworthiness. One of the reasons given by the Chairman of the Board when announcing the transition was that it would cost less on the Idaho campus to educate a student than it would at the Provo, Utah, campus of BYU. Initial projections of what the transition would cost during the feasibility study became guidelines for developing the school into university status. Therefore, for the purpose of this study, rather than delve into general ledger budget aspects of the transition, I looked at affordability issues for students. I did so from the viewpoint that expenses of any institution are ultimately passed onto the students. The U.S. Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, (2007) said, “For most families, this is one of the most expensive and important investments ever made.” In a competitive world, rising tuition rates and relative costs of enrollment often have an inverse relationship to enrollments as some felt may be the case in the fall of 2006 for enrollment numbers in Idaho. As enrollment figures took an anticipated jump at BYU–Idaho, Roy Huff, the Associate Academic Vice President for Curriculum, explained: It is very affordable. We have increased at 3-4 percent with inflation as far as our relative cost, where the other schools around us are 8 or 9 percent. They are double what we are. I thought it was interesting. Last fall we had an increase of 1,300 headcount of students from what we had the previous fall. ISU had a decrease of exactly the same amount. They had a 1,300 decrease headcount. They said, “Hey, did you take 1,300 of our students? We said, “No, well, not on purpose.” But if they keep seeing those costs rising and ours not going up as high, affordability and accessibility may be a factor. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) While that comment implies that the same 1,300 students would have enrolled at the two neighboring institutions, BYU–Idaho students came from all 50 states and some 60 countries while ISU’s were primarily Idaho residents (Statistical Reports, 2007). ISU’s 62 decline in enrollment included figures from its satellite locations in Boise, Twin Falls, Idaho Falls, and other off-campus delivery points. The number of BYU–Idaho students listing Idaho as their home state increased less than 500 students (Official Enrollment, n.d.) for the semester of concern. Huff also pointed to different recruiting strategies that help potential students see BYU–Idaho as a viable option. However, it was not the purpose of this research to investigate the relationship between enrollments at the two neighboring institutions. Suffice it to say, the concern for the rising costs of higher education is real and has caught national attention. Reducing the relative cost for students became one of the key imperatives when Kim B. Clark took over the helm of BYU–Idaho in 2005: The first thing he told one of the councils was, “You know that higher education nation wide is on an unsustainable course. They are increasing the cost of education much higher than the rate of inflation. It used to be that the bio-medical, pharmaceutical companies—the medical field—was actually leading the industries as far as being the increase in comparison with the inflation rate. Education has now surpassed that. We are the number one. It is almost like a train that is running off its track now days, and it is going to end up in a wreck.” He said, “Because they are going on an unsustainable course, we can’t follow them. We have to go to a new area that nobody else has gone because as they continue to go down that course, that train wreck is assured.” …When he said his three new imperatives were reduce relative cost, improve the quality, and serve more students, you think, “Well, if you serve more students, would that increase the cost? If you reduce the relative cost, how does that relate to quality?” You think to raise one, you have to lower the other. He said, “No we are going to do all three. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) U.S. Department of Education (2006) brought national attention to the issues in higher education including that of affordability. Their fact sheet states the following: Tuition continues to outpace inflation, health care costs and family income levels. While funding for Pell Grants has increased nearly 50 percent over the past five years, the financial aid system remains in urgent need of reform. We must streamline the process to help students and families prepare, plan and pay for college. BYU–Idaho has taken several innovative steps to lower the relative costs for students including three-track admission, throughput enhancement through 120-credit limit minimum and maximum on majors and encouraging eight-semester graduates, and textbook options. The 120 credits include University requirements of “(1) completion of one course delivered in online format and (2) completion of a specified amount of coursework in Religion” (BYU–Idaho, 2004, p. 46). 63 Three-track admission had been a Ricks College pilot program that became a key element to the transition to BYU–Idaho. Steps were taken to minimize expense for students by maximizing use of resources. While many campuses in higher education sit basically idle during the summer, BYU–Idaho adopted a three-track/three semester system. Each student is admitted to a track consisting of two semesters: Winter/Summer, Summer/Fall, or Fall/Winter and stays on that track through to graduation. By utilizing the campus resources year round, the relative cost for students has been lowered while the number of students being served has increased. While approximately 12,000 students are on campus at any one time, a fully instigated three-track program can serve 18,000 students per year. Implementing three tracks of admission has had its struggles. It “impacted everybody,” observed Gee, the Associate Academic Vice President. Research participants revealed implications not only in academics but also in maintaining physical facilities and grounds, scheduling of the entertainment series, and providing support services for students. According to Gee, “some of the academic departments up front said, ‘We can only operate on one track.’ The administration’s pushback was always, ‘then maybe we won’t have your program because we feel it is important to have the different tracks.’” He continued “Gradually over time, most of the programs have come around and can do it at least on two tracks; we have asked the ideal would be three” (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007). The acceptance of the three-track system was varied. The interplay of relationships and leaders who saw a problem as an opportunity to explore new options came into the picture as Gee and Huff explained the focus of the initiative to lower cost and serve more students: When President Clark came in, he had a problem because he wanted to increase enrollments in the summer. Well, over the years because I was the summer school director, it had been easy for me to say, “You’ll never be as big in the summer as you are in the fall and the winter because you only have half the faculty teaching at any given time in the summer. And we don’t want them teaching more than that. They have got to have a vacation.” I was pretty much resigned to just let it stay that way. Well, President Clark wasn’t.” (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) President Clark was not the first administrator to foster a spirit of focused innovation and change. One of the key institutional messages that came up time and time again in interviews with employees was the inaugural address of President David A. Bednar (1998, February) when he shared a scriptural account of a family and their travels in the wilderness: 64 As they reached the place called Bountiful, which was located near the sea, Nephi was commanded by the Lord to “… construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across the waters” (1 Nephi 17:8)…. Nephi was not a sailor. He had been reared in Jerusalem, an inland city, rather than along the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. It seems unlikely that he knew much about or had experience with the tools and skills necessary to build a ship. He may not have ever previously seen an ocean-going vessel. In essence, then, Nephi was commanded and instructed to build something he had never built before in order to go someplace he had never been before. May I suggest that Nephi's experience in building that ship is a model for us at Ricks College as we prepare for and move into the next century. We, too, must build something we have never built before in order to go someplace we have never been before. Nephi further describes the process of constructing the ship: …and we did work timbers of curious workmanship. And the Lord did show me from time to time after what manner I should work the timbers of the ship. (1 Nephi 18: 1-2; emphasis added) Two points stand out in my mind about these verses. First, the manner of workmanship was curious…. The word curious in these contexts does not mean strange or weird or odd. Rather, it connotes careful, skilled, expert, and deliberate. Clearly the concept of “curious workmanship” sets a standard for us at Ricks College as we move forward to meet the challenges before us. Second, the phrase “time to time” suggests to me that Nephi perhaps did not receive everything he needed to know about shipbuilding as he began his task. Apparently he received the necessary knowledge line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little as it was needed. (Bednar, 1998, February) In 2005 as Roy Huff was given the opportunity to guide the development of a new year-round academic calendar to better accommodate students on the three-track system, the concepts of the Bednar inauguration still echoed in his mind. The three-track system was still seen as a means to reduce the relative cost while serving more students, but had run into some snags with the perceived level of quality of education. Huff explained the challenge: Improve the quality and change the calendar system. We thought we were running at pretty high efficiencies before, but now we [were] saying, “No, we are going to run at even a higher efficiency in the use of our campus buildings, in the ability of our students to go year round, and improve the quality of our summer semester from two blocks to now a full semester.” It took fresh eyes to see, “You were doing pretty well, but that ship of curious workmanship is an ocean liner. It is not just a little timid tug boat. Be open to what new changes are we going to experience now.” Being along for the ride has been quite interesting, because once again, President [Clark] said, “We need this to happen, how will you do it?” He actually came into our office and said, “The academics should decide about the academic calendar. Now how do you make it work?”… This was the fall of 2005. 65 Later, President Clark met with the faculty and set the expectation of raising the quality every aspect of the students’ experience. One of ways to improve was to make the three semesters more equivalent. Students whose track included a summer semester felt disadvantaged. They sensed a discrepancy between the summer courses and those in the other half of their track (either fall or winter semesters). “So President Clark immediately said, ‘Ok, that is the area we need to improve the most’” (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007). They started to explore options as explained by Huff: If you have 16 week semesters, three 16 week semesters is 48 weeks. That would only allow 4 weeks off if you increased the semesters, with everything else there is not enough time off for faculty…. So we thought, “All right, how do we have the faculty? At what point can we have the faculty work full-time and still get enough time to have a breather, the natural breaks that we have?” So we revamped the calendar to have it three equal semesters, and they ended up being 14-week semesters, approximately. We had to increase the amount of time per class session, so that impacted the number of classes we could teach a day because they are 60 minutes with a 15-minute break instead of 50 minutes with a 10-minute break. With all those kind of changes, we had to have the faculty buy in. So we said, “All right here is an idea; how would you improve it?” We ended up having 14 variations. We attached names to the calendars. We started out with Abigail, Boaz, and Claudia. We went through the alphabet from A to N with 14 different letters. Then we said, “Ok, now you vote and you rank them. Give us your top three.” We narrowed it down; because the variations were small enough, we could group some of them. But we let the faculty do all that. The faculty members would get online and talk about the strengths of the specific calendar they liked, what they liked and didn’t like, what was wrong with this. So we had this kind of blog where the faculty members were all weighing in on the issues. Then we said, “Ok, we’ll eliminate the ones that didn’t get a whole lot of votes. Now we are looking at these.” It is interesting that the one they selected was very close to the one we proposed in the first place…. It did shift slightly; it was like Boaz on steroids. Since that decision was made and the faculty all bought into it, not one of them has complained much. There have been a few, but we allowed them to go on a reduced contract if they wanted. So once again, the faculty chose which contract. We said, “This will be a 100 percent contract if you teach all three semesters.” But we reduced the number of credits they would teach each semester. Instead of having 15 and 15 and 7 – that was 37; now it is 36 but it is 12 - 12 - 12. But the faculty could choose what we called the 91 percent contract, 83, or 75 as three other reduced contracts. They could choose which one they wanted. It is interesting that 95 percent of the faculty chose the full contract because they bought in. Many of them said, “This is great for our students. The students’ lives get blessed. Yeah, we have to work a little bit more, but in the end.” That is the kind of faculty and employees and really what you have on this campus. We have a motto: “How will it affect the students?” If it will improve the student experience, we ought 66 to be doing it. It is not faculty centered, it is student centered. That is nice because most institutions are backwards. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) In the spring of 2007, the Board of Trustees approved the proposal to change the academic calendar with its implementation set for Winter Semester 2007 (New Academic Calendar, 2007). The process of developing and adopting the new academic schedule fell within the delimitations of this research; however its implementation did not. Following its success would make an interesting future study. For now it is sufficient to understand that implementation of a solid three-semester/three-track system was key to the three imperatives of lowering the relative cost while serving more students and raising the quality of education. One of the apparent problems with the cost of education is the length of time a student is enrolled. Looking back at trends in higher education, the National Center for Education Statistics states, “Among bachelor’s degree seekers beginning at a 4-year institution in 1995-96, just over half graduated from that institution within 6 years.” BYU– Idaho looked at the problem as an opportunity to learn how to become better. A shorter length of enrollment would not only reduce the relative cost for students, but it would also open space to admit more students. BYU–Idaho administration promoted two concepts for expediting throughput for their students: 120-credit limit minimum and maximum on majors and eight-semester graduates. The 120-credit limit is discussed in detail later when looking at how the faculty structured the programs. The eight-semester graduate was explained by Huff: Normally when an institution gets a student, they consider that student as a revenue stream. It is going to bring money into the institution. The longer they can hold onto that revenue stream, the better because that is just money in their pockets. We look at it totally differently. We don’t look at them as a revenue stream. We look at them as the customer that we have to please, and the customers would be happier if they didn’t spend a lot more money. So show the customer, “If you can get done in eight semesters, not only will you start being a producer in society and be able to do some wonderful great things, but you won’t take a slot from another student who would like to come here, and we’ll pay you—we’ll pay you $500.” I mean that is unheard of. Registrars from other universities heard that about that incentive when Kevin Miyasaki went down to a regional meeting. He said, “You know we have a totally different idea than what you would consider.” Other people thought, “You take your revenue stream, you cut it off as soon as possible, and then you pay them when they leave.” It’s like: “that is weird.” (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) Whether seen as weird or innovative, the efforts to improve throughput made a difference. “Each year the percentage of graduates receiving this award increases – 8% in 67 2003, 12% in 2004, and 16% in 2005” (BYU–Idaho, 2006). Now that the pace of throughput has improved significantly, this incentive is being phased out. Seeking options for the expense of textbooks has become an ongoing process for the BYU–Idaho faculty. No one seemed to refute the concept of reducing the cost for textbooks, but the application is still being developed. Fenton Broadhead, Dean of the College of Business and Communication, explained how seeking the right motivation is vital to the successful reduction of relative cost for students: We want to be a model of efficiency, a model of supply chain management for the education world. And so when President Clark brings in his three imperatives, we are somewhat already moving along that line. It just gives us a better focus of saying, “What do we need to clear out? What do we need to do better so we produce more at a higher quality at lower cost?” We have experimented with a number of things. We went through a project with [a national education publisher] and kind of backed away now because [the publisher] cannot supply it for the cost that we want it supplied. They are not even sure how to develop their own model. So we have recently developed a model that we will use for online teaching and developing courses, and it will filter and impact the way content is delivered in the other regular courses. But as you look back on that, trying to create that quality is where you will stumble at times. We have said, “Well, let’s get rid of textbooks” with the idea of keeping costs down for students. But you see if you develop a goal just to get rid of textbooks for the sake of getting rid of textbooks, that is the wrong goal. If you are trying to move away from textbooks because it will improve your teaching and improve your learning and cut costs, then it is a good goal. (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007) Space (Facilities) Facility space was critical to the transition. There was history of a recent enrollment cap for Ricks College of 7,600 students due to limitations of space. Part of the campus was restricted by a previously established policy of zero-net-square-footage gain for building projects (if any construction was added, something of equivalent space had to be removed). With a student body that was projected to grow to 11,600, the largest gathering space was the Hart Auditorium which doubles as a gymnasium with its capacity of just over 4,000 when the floor was used for seating. “You just see a major impact as the student population grows, and as the faculty population grows. You have to find space for all these people” (C. Andersen, personal communication, June 8, 2007). As Gee pointed out, “We did not have space even to house new faculty at the time. We knew we had to build some offices” (personal communication, May 16, 2007). There 68 were other space needs. For academic departments, the availability of space became one of the deciding factors on establishing a timeline as exemplified in the following anecdote: People once again were clamoring to be one of the first to go. One of the department chairs was just adamant that their department be one of the first ones to go. And we said, “You have to have offices. You have to have classroom space. And you have to have faculty. We will provide the faculty, if you can provide the others.” And so the chair rolled up the shirtsleeves and went to work and came back in with numbers and proposals that showed they could do it. So we moved them in to be one of the very first ones that we started. However, once we had made that decision, then we started trying to do the actual programming to make it happen. The chair said, “You have got to help me find some classroom space.” I said, “You promised you could do this.” And the truth was they didn’t really have the space, and we had to struggle for a couple of years helping them along to get the classes they needed. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) The University tried to maximize the use of its facilities through careful scheduling of on-campus facilities. Additional space was rented off-campus to meet the needs. Before upper level courses could be added, in many cases adaptations to existing laboratories and classrooms was required. In other instances, new programs necessitated new construction. Enrollment could not expand as projected unless there was adequate space for them to attend classes, study, and reside. Buildings on the campus at BYU–Idaho are multi-purpose facilities. During the week, they serve the academic needs of the students; on weekends they are used as gathering places for Sunday worship services. Having appropriate space for ecclesiastical needs was another concern for the Board of Trustees and the university administrators: In addition to the academic space, we started looking at the need for additional ecclesiastical space, because when you start looking at changing from a campus of about 8,600 FTE students to 11,600 FTE students, we would need to have additional facilities for student wards. (R. Christensen, personal communication, May 3, 2007) And yet the announcement had stated clearly: With some additions and modifications, the physical facilities now in place in Rexburg are adequate to handle the new program. Undoubtedly, some changes to the campus will be necessary. However, they will be modest in nature and scope. (Hinckley, 2000) Administrators at Ricks College have high esteem for their Board of Trustees, and yet they began to sense needs that were greater than what had been anticipated when they had 69 quickly compiled the feasibility study under the restrictions of confidentiality. Jim Gee explained the ambiguous conditions that arose: Even though we had come up with all these plans on space, it is one thing to say this is what we need and another to have somebody say, “Ok, we can accept that.” Then we still had the zero-net-space rules that we had to follow. We have a little dispensation to add some extra space, but that always made it more difficult. We could not just open things up and do it the way we felt we ought to. We were always just edging as close to the line as we could to be frugal and not ask for too much. I know President Bednar did not want to ask [the Board of Trustees] for a lot. When you think of what we did—we were told to just make some estimates, but those estimates became rules that were set in concrete, and we had to live by them after we had made them. It was really hard to get changes. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) As other pieces of the transition came together basically as planned, the Secretary to the Board of Trustees in retrospect reported: The one piece that was probably underestimated both by President Bednar and myself was the change in physical space on the campus. But there are some very interesting things about it. All of the buildings have been impacted—almost all of the buildings on campus. When we originally discussed it, the Chairman of the Board said, “We will allow you to have the equivalent of one new building.” And so there was a lot of discussion between President Bednar, the Commissioner, and myself on what that really was and whether that included gross square feet or net square feet and a lot of discussion like that. But it just happened that at the time we were going through this transition, that they had just received the bids for the new Joseph F. Smith Building down at the [BYU] Provo campus. So we had a pretty good idea about what a new building would cost. There really was quite a remarkable experience because on one day Elder Eyring was holding very firmly that it was going to be gross square feet and no more than a certain size, and we had a budget review up on campus with the president and vice presidents. That was part of the discussion. The Commissioner was very firm that it would be no bigger than this particular size building. Either that night or the next morning as he was praying and preparing for the rest of the Executive Committee to come up on campus, he had a rather remarkable experience that he was being a little bit too firm with the President. I met with the Commissioner the next morning before the rest of the Executive Committee arrived. He was on the phone with the people in Provo to understand how big that building was and what the cost of that building was going to be. When I arrived, he said, “I think we need to change.” So when we met with the Executive Committee, it went from a certain size gross square feet to a bigger size net square feet, which transfers into a much bigger impact. What we then decided to do was instead of having just one building, we actually need that much space, but across several buildings. So that necessitated the expansion of the Benson Building, of the Austin Building, of the construction of the 70 Thomas E. Ricks Building, and several others. (R. Christensen, personal communication, May 3, 2007) “The academic departments were asked for input as construction proposals were formulated. How big should this be? How many labs do we need? How many classrooms do we need? What size do they need to be?” (D. Lyons, personal communication, June 8, 2007). The addition of facilities was critical to projections for adding faculty and upper level courses, and gradually increasing enrollment from 8,950 to 11,600 through the year 2005 while striving to maintain a 25:1 student to faculty ratio as indicated in Figure 2: Initiative Increase student enrollment Hire full-time faculty Change Timetable for Transition Activities Current 2001 2002 2003 250 600 100 2004 700 2005 1,000 Total Change 8,950 9,200 25 9,800 20 9,900 5 10,600 25 11,600 25 Total Change 370 395 8 415 8 420 17 445 13 470 0 8 16 33 46 1 2 2 3 2 9 7 5 2 0 Expansion Facility Expansion Ongoing Phase in new fouryear Total programs Phase out Change eliminated two-year Total programs Increase space Spori Building Married Housing Ecclesiastical Building Remodeling/Expansion Manwaring Center New Building Supplement student activities program Develop new policies and procedures 10 Phase In Ongoing Initial Phase Ongoing Ongoing SteadyState Ongoing FIGURE 2. Timetable for transition activities (Ricks College, Substantive Change Prospectus, 2000, p. 16). Chuck Frost, the Physical Plant Director, had been at Ricks College for over 30 years. He was well acquainted with the processes and time involved in campus construction and explained how the academic departments’ input became part of the pre-construction process: 71 The President’s role was to determine the need academically including a guess of about how big it would be. Then an academic committee would be chosen, and they would meet under our direction and write down what they wanted in each room in the building and then that would be reviewed by the Commissioner who has an office in Salt Lake City. We would review it here to see if it looked reasonable. Once that was approved, then an architect would be employed to do a sketch and help us to refine the budget. After that was approved and funds appropriated, an architect would work on the actual building design. But the old process took usually four or five years from the time that they were thinking about a building until they would move in. (C. Frost, personal communication, May 8, 2007) There was no change in the process of space assessment and feasibility studies, plans approved by the Board of Trustees, and funds appropriated before each individual project was commenced. But the pace hastened. Specific needs for new equipment were projected to be added over the time span as the construction was completed and the academic courses were developed. Frost shared more of his personal journal entries that helped me sense the growing momentum and the intensity that he felt: September 17, 2000: I spent a lot of time this week working on the capital budget 2001. Jim [Smyth, Administrative Services Vice President,] and I tried to compile our request for 2001 without a clear idea of what the academic departments will need.… Until the academic plan is completed, all we could do was suggest possible space projects. President’s Council was busy with Elder Eyring on Wednesday to try out some academic ideas, but nothing has been finalized. October 1, 2000: While the Executive Committee was here, the President’s Council discussed the conversion to a four-year status. While the academic plan is not approved, several building projects were discussed. The Spori project was officially given the Spori name for the replacement building. We will soon be able to start design for larger building, probably at 40,000 square feet to handle expanded Art and Communications Departments. Conceptual approval was given to convert dormitory 35 into married student housing. We signed a contract with Nielson Bodily architects to do that feasibility study. A request for increased ecclesiastical space was approved in concept…. For the summer of 2001, there could be five building projects under way…. This is an exciting time at Ricks. There is a lot of work ahead. October 9, 2000: My work week was filled with the usual meetings and activities…. The library east wing is nearly done, many books are located in the east wing, but our furniture is disappointingly delayed until the end of October. We can’t move in until the furniture arrives. We cannot miss and the auditors are assuming a hard role in project financial planning. Trying to satisfy their needs is one level of complexity bermed on the already difficult job of actually getting the project done. October 15, 2000: The ecclesiastical building is on a fast track for approval using the standard plan which was prototyped at ISU. Plans for construction will be negotiated through CES and the Church Building Department once a site is chosen. We are almost ready to start design on the Spori Building again…. 72 Frost chuckled to himself as he finished reading his entry, “…There is a lot going on and I am tired at the end of every day.” (C. Frost, personal communication, May 8, 2007) Dealing with space for the ecclesiastical needs of the students was handled as a separate issue. The Secretary to the Board of Trustees was involved in seeking options to expedite the construction of a multi-use building designed primarily to meet the needs for worship space and with academic needs secondary. Christensen explained how the 54,000square-foot building was added to the campus by the fall 2002, rather than being prolonged with architectural plans: I contacted Church physical facilities people who do those kinds of things. They had gone through three different scenarios… So I said, “Based on those three options, if you were going to put a building on campus at BYU–Idaho, which one would be best to accommodate both ecclesiastical and academic needs?” They said, “Without a question, this combined institute building.” So that was approved as…a shared use facility to accommodate both academic and ecclesiastical needs. (R. Christensen, personal communication, May 3, 2007) When submitted for consideration to the Northwest Council on Universities and Colleges, the Substantive Change Prospectus (Ricks College, 2001) listed seven construction projects related to the physical facilities as impacted by the transition: • Construction of the new Spori Building • Construction of a new classroom office building (later named the Thomas E. Ricks Building) • Construction of a building used primarily for ecclesiastical use (later named the Gordon B. Hinckley Building) • Provision for married housing (original plan was to reconfigure existing dormitory space; later a 156-unit complex called University Village was constructed) • Remodeling/expansion of the Snow Building. • Remodeling/expansion of the Hart Building • Expansion of Manwaring Center The construction of the new Spori Building intersected with the transition in a unique way. A feasibility study completed in 1999 had determined that the original Spori Building, constructed in 1903, was structurally unsound. Plans had been made to start construction in the spring of 2001 (Ricks College, 1999). But the designs for the space had been originally 73 based on the needs of a junior college student body; with the impending transition, things started anew. Chuck Frost shared one more of his journal entries: October 22, 2000: The Spori Building Committee met this week to start the design process again. The Academic Council and President’s Council have decided to keep and enlarge the Art and Communication Departments, which will be housed in the replacement Spori Building. We asked them to submit new program pages for the rooms which they added to the Spori plus a list of spaces that need to be enlarged. The net square footage will be allowed to grow by 7,000 square feet which will increase the building to a total of 40,000 square feet. The architects will start weekly meetings to develop new preliminary plans very soon. We want to start construction in June 2001 and have classes in the building by the summer of 2003. The exterior will stay three stories with a full basement, pitched roof, and vertical lines reflecting the original building. (C. Frost, personal communication, May 8, 2007) Like many of his colleagues, Frost’s retirement in 2003 opened the opportunity for new people to bring fresh perspectives and energy to campus. Charles Andersen, a new hire in 2002, became the new Director of Physical Plant. (His position later evolved to a newly created position as Director of University Operations overseeing physical facilities, the bookstore and food services, purchase and travel, the student identification card system, and shipping and receiving.) Charles Andersen added his perspective: “We have added probably about 450,000 square feet. I have been here not quite five years, so about 110,000 every year if you look at it that way. But some years are more expensive than others. It has just been major transition on the facilities” (C. Andersen, personal communication, June 8, 2007). Creating space also leads to maintaining space. The adoption of the three-track system has made this a unique challenge for watch care over the physical facilities at BYU– Idaho. Andersen explains: Before the three track, we really didn’t have very many students on campus in the summer time, and it gave us a wide open window of time and space when we could go in and do the things we need to do: the large maintenance items or the repairs or the projects. We don’t have that anymore. No matter what we do, we impact something. We try to schedule other things that we would have done during the day sometimes at night now. We have a greater load capacity on our chillers than we had, because we have people in the buildings so we have to chill the buildings down more than we used to. (ibid) It was obvious to me that learning to juggle construction schedules around the new academic calendar had been a challenge. Andersen described a specific renovation project they had completed during the summer of 2005 as follows: 74 It basically gave us from the day after graduation in April to the day before school in August to gut and renovate the Clarke Building as well as gut and renovate chemistry labs in the Romney Building. We literally took out the buildings down to the concrete slab and up to the roof structure and rebuilt. We did it all in the span of three months; basically it was over 100,000 square feet that we took off line, gutted, totally rebuilt, and had ready for fall semester. We were working around the clock. And it was a very intense summer—a very, very intense summer. (ibid) As I listened to the stories of these two physical plant directors, there was much more to their experiences than the brick and mortar of a university campus. They helped broaden my understanding of group dynamics and the role of leadership. I also better understood how the facilities plans were interwoven with academic development. Degree Programs (Accreditation) It was time to hear how the academic programs had evolved, and I next visited the office of Roy Huff, the Associate Academic Vice President over Curriculum. I asked him an open-ended query, “How would you describe the ‘dash’ between 2000-2005?” His reply was quick and precise: “Have you ever heard of the phrase rethinking education?” As not only the researcher but also part of the University’s communication team, I was well aware of the fact that this phrase had become the University’s slogan at the time of the transition and continues to be used to encompass the ongoing processes of innovation and change. “Rethinking” seemed to be a synonym for “reframing—that is reformulating one’s fundamental understanding of the situation” (Watkins & Marsick, 1993, p. 185). But as a researcher, I was gaining greater appreciation for the phrase and what it represents as I listened to the story of how 138 associate degree programs were revised by retaining 16 specialized associate degrees and developing 49 bachelor’s degrees—significantly more than the initial projection of “13 or more ‘specialized’ bachelor’s degrees” (Ricks College, 2001, p. 7). Continuing his thought in response to my question, Huff said, Rethinking education. That is it. The one thing that is constant is change. That is what we are experiencing. It has been complicated by internal as well as external factors. But internally, we get a message from the Prophet who says, “You will now do this.” [He] gave us general guidelines with some perimeters and then said, “Now you figure out all the details but with these principles.” President Bednar would teach the idea that there are doctrines, principles, and applications. I think we got the doctrines and principles, but then we were left with all the applications. That really kept us busy. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) 75 The phrase “kept us busy” seemed to be a bit of an understatement for everyone involved. Pulling snapshots from numerous participants’ stories and documentation, a more complete picture was given of how the academic programs developed. The public announcement that Ricks College would become BYU–Idaho was the catalyst for action: That immediately opened up the door for endless meetings with our Academic Council. We were happy to not have to keep everything quiet any longer and to jump into the discussions. We met with Academic Council more than our weekly meetings and presented to them some basic concepts that we had come up with. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) The basic concepts evolved into specific criteria compiled for departments to assess the appropriateness of offering new bachelor’s degree. These 12 points ( Ricks College, 2001) reflect concern for the students, application to the world of academia, and aspirations of the CES culture: • • • • • • • • • • • • Student interest. Can the program attract and retain students? Employability. Will the skills imparted by the program lead to employment upon graduation? Graduate school. If applicable, how well will the program prepare students for graduate study? Innovations. What innovations in teaching and learning do the program offer? Integration. To what extent does the program integrate with other disciplines? Resources needed. To what extent does the program require new and/or costly resources? Accreditation. Will the program require a specialized accreditation (e.g. NCATE)? Value to the Church and society. To what extent does the program address societal needs? To what extent does it relate to the needs of a worldwide church? Balance. To what extent will the program tend to attract a diverse student population? Future. Is this program an emerging field? CES bottlenecks. Does this program ease overcrowded majors at other Church schools? Personal/family enrichment. To what extent will this program enrich the lives of students who may not necessarily be in college for career purposes? College deans were then instructed “to start looking at what they would do with their areas” (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007). The deans counseled with their department heads and faculty. One of the department chairs who later became a college dean shares the sentiment: We looked at that situation: (1) This is going to be a lot of work. (2) We don’t have a real vision or perception of where we are going. (3) What does it mean for our jobs and where we are going in the future? There was some excitement from the standpoint that we would be able to teach upper division classes,…. and a little bit of uncertainty about what would happen with the department, whether that would be one 76 of the degrees. I think early on there were some questions. Some questions seemed almost territorial. Would you survive? Who would survive? What is the most important degree? I saw a little bit of what I would say, “Well, this is my turf.” (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007) For many of the faculty, this was a time of internal conflicts. Kathy Cook, a member of the faculty, observed her colleagues. She said,: Programs that people had put their whole heart and soul, their passion into developing were in the process of transition. I saw that it was easy to become… I think offended would be a good word. I remember going back to an article on pride and reading and rereading it and realizing that pride is a lot easier to see in other people than in yourself. I found myself having to stand on my own more, on what did I think about that, what were my feelings on this because there were a lot of emotions involved. People wanted to be very supportive, but the direction was not as clear on where to go. There was a lot of introspection among the faculty members that I worked with on: “Why are we here and why are we doing these things for students?” It was a definite learning curve there. (K. Cook, personal communication, May 31, 2007) Whether it was survival instinct, a drive to better serve students, or perhaps a combination of both, the academic departments became engaged in the discussion perhaps with more zeal than anticipated. Gee, the Associate Academic Vice President, and Huff, the Assistant Academic Vice President for Curriculum, share similar viewpoints: There was a suggestion made from the Commissioner’s office that we go really slow and maybe implement just a few programs and run them for four or five years and test it out and make sure things were good and then start phasing others in. Nobody wanted to do that from here. We all wanted to move ahead, and so we outlined this very ambitious program. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) In 2000-2001, there was a lot of strategic planning. You know, what do we need to do? How many do we need to hire? But here is what happened internally. The Board said, “We think you can handle about four or five programs. So we have 138 associate degrees. Keep most of those, and change a few of them into bachelor’s degrees.” They thought we could do four or five. President Bednar responded to them without talking to the faculty, “I think we can do about 10 or 12.” But the faculty wouldn’t hear it. The faculty said, “Well, our program should go forward as a major degree.” Others faculty added, “Our program should go [to a bachelor’s level], too.” And it ended up we did 49. And so the scope was our own doing, I think. President Bednar even told the faculty, “If you do 49 degrees, the next thing we will be hearing is that you are burned out.” And that did kind of happen for some, a small minority maybe 5 percent of the faculty felt like, “I am overwhelmed. I am burning out… or I have the potential to burn out at this pace.” Because when you begin to ramp up a program where you have done mostly transfers (e.g. you get the foundation, or you get the general education and then go somewhere else to get the 77 rest of it) you focus on entirely different things. With the first, you can have some gaps in your programs that somebody else will need to fill. And since they have to fill it, you don’t have to worry about it. We have good enough students; we are sending out a product that people like. But now we have to make sure there are no gaps because our students go right into the work force. If they have too big of gaps, it will get back to us that “you aren’t producing;” “your program needs reworking;” or “these employees we are getting from your school or these graduates that we have in our program, are not meeting the criteria that you profess to have.” So there was quite a lot of work that needed to be done. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) We worked with the deans. The deans worked with the department chairs, and they tried to outline what they saw as programs they could offer. We did put some very heavy restrictions on conditions for the programs that made it difficult: 120 credits for a bachelor’s degree, maximum and minimum. Immediately the sciences said, “There is no way we can do that.” And we said, “We have made that projection too, and we are assuming that we won’t have degrees in geology, physics, chemistry, and some of those programs.” But then they did not want to lose out either, and so they started trying to think outside the box and think of ways they could get a program. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) Having listened to the administrative academic office’s perspective of rethinking education, it seemed expeditious at this point to delve further into the transition by looking at how the process of developing a program played out in a specific department—to understand “higher level vision, but concentrate on how it translates in day-to-day decisions on the operating level” (C. Gilbert, private conversation, May 10, 2007). The name of the participant in this scenario is not included in the report as a reminder that similar circumstances could possibly be found in many of the other departments across campus. I met with the faculty member in his office. The recorder was set, the open-ended question was presented, and I listened. The faculty member leaned back in his chair as he reflected on his feelings following the announcement of the forthcoming transition to become a four-year university. He reminisced about professional peers who had forewarned him when he was considering teaching at Ricks College that he would be committing academic suicide and limiting his future career options. Now it seemed that his choice and his personal career pathway were changing directions. As a junior college, his department had offered students numerous options in associate degrees; the future was ambiguous. Initially he had received an e-mail from the department chair essentially saying: “I have looked over the courses that we offer, and here is a list of other courses that I think we ought to consider.” 78 The faculty member said there was something like 35 courses—a long list of new courses. There was speculation on the scope of the transition in terms of numbers and the limitation of not expanding to graduate-degree programs. Continuing, he then said, It was real interesting because the word coming down from administration was they wanted to kind of condense our numbers of majors. We had a lot as a two-year school. I think we offered 13 or 14 degrees. But they were really preparation; they really weren’t degrees. They were all associates [degrees], but it was to prepare [students to transfer] to finish a degree in [a professional field]. Now they were saying, “Ok, you can have one degree.” That is what we started with. They said, “You can have one degree.” The faculty member leaned forward as he explained the controversy that developed within “a very diverse department” with diverse bookends and a spectrum of foci in-between. He continued: You are telling us we can have one degree. The initial reaction was, “We can’t do it.” “We can’t compete with any other schools.” “Our graduates won’t…” You know, “Why try?” basically. But people sort of persisted and said, “Ok, let’s go. If we offer these 30 some odd classes, it will be ok. We can do this.” And so we initially listed all of those classes in our discussions. And then [the Assistant Academic Vice President] came and said, “You can have ten.” So less than a third of what we had put on that list. And boy, that created some real, “Huh!” “Whose ten?” “What do we choose?” “How do we do this?” One of the advantages is that several of the classes that we taught realistically were junior and senior level classes already being taught at a 200-level. All we had to do was change the number, and we already had some of our classes. So that helped really to relieve some of that pressure. But there was some real scrambling in the department saying, “How do we condense these?” So we did some combining and some other things. I think we ended up with 15 or 16 that we went back with. They accepted that and said, “Ok, you can do this.” The next big challenge was 120 credits. It has never gone away. That has been like the burr under the saddle for a lot of people for a long time. My own perspective has always been, “We can do this in one degree. We don’t need specialized degrees. We need a generalist degree.” I don’t see most of education as content education; I see it as more general anyway. I see us training students to be good citizens and good church members. Nobody else really offers a generalist degree, a good well-rounded [professional]. So I always felt like we can do this. It is ok. I never had any heartburn over one degree. I also never had any problem with 120 credits. The challenge that we ran into was we kept looking at other schools and saying, “They have this class, and they have this class and this class. And this is how many credits it is.” So we wanted to replicate those because, if we were going to transfer our credits down there, [the students] were going to have to have this class and this class and this class. That created a lot of that concern over those 120 credits. 79 [Faculty] would say, “We can’t do it in 120 credits. How do we possibly compete with school X when they have 128 and don’t have religion requirements?” And so really it is more like 140 or something like that. It was really a challenging time in the department—a lot of controversy. It created a lot of tension in the department. In fact, I think probably…we became as close to recommending splitting the department during this time as at any time that I have been here. What really held us together…[was] a set of classes that didn’t logically fit in either one. They sort of fit in both equally—and you know you are sitting here going, ok, where do they go? Who teaches those classes? Do they go with one group or do they go with the other? There really were two major poles and really wanting to have two major degrees. And we ended up coming back together in sort of…I want to say an uneasy truce that I think has remained. I don’t think it has gone away. We ended up with two degrees because of education. We ended up with a degree [in our content area] and a [content] education degree. With all the fluctuation in courses, the faculty member described a “notorious 2001 catalog which was a disaster for much of the campus, because we were in such a hurry to put something together.” Words of other participants echo a period of uncertainty: “hit the deadlines,” “grumble,” “messy,” “fight the battle.” Gee said: The faculty were really pushed, and I think they pushed so hard. I was doing the catalog, and so I could see what was happening—but the departments would hit a deadline and have to come up with a degree program with the courses and things like that. Some of the courses wouldn’t even be taught for two years after they conceive them. The departments had to work together to make sure all the support classes were available for the different majors as well as their major courses. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) Gee was responsible for maintaining a master file of all the courses. He described an ongoing transitional process when he said, There is a course listed in this master file on the computer for every course that we teach. If it changes, you have to track those changes so that if a student takes the class one year, you know that it is equivalent with something different with a different name and number the next year. You have to track all that, and we did thousands of those things. We created classes. Sometimes we created them, deleted them, and never taught them because the departments were changing so much. They would send program requirements into me to go in the catalog knowing that it would be totally different the following year. There were about three years or four years where every year just about every department that had a four-year program totally rewrote it. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) During these formative, uncertain years, a new Faculty Association president was selected. As he worked with the faculty, he became aware of feelings of “I don’t know what I am doing. I don’t know where I am going.” But being personally involved at a new level 80 broadened his understanding on the interaction between administration, faculty, and the developing academic programs. He said, I had that different perspective because I got to hear from a lot more of the faculty. The perspective that I got from them was administration—and I know that they did this on purpose, I really do—they were fairly silent about giving us specific directions. They gave us some real general parameters, and then they let us just sort of fight it out, if you will, and battle through. What do we think? I can’t say whether that was the best option or not, but that created some real interesting dynamics across campus because the Business [Department] obviously came up with one particular model [of how to construct a bachelor’s degree program] and somebody else came up with a completely different model. And well, which one is right? You start seeing, “Can I do this?” “Well, what about this?” I think it was good because it helped the faculty to have an outlet. “I can do something.” And then obviously we had to come in within some parameters. It was my observation as the researcher that there became two key driving forces in the transition: first, better serve the needs of students; and second, gaining accreditation at a higher level. The two were intertwined. Until accreditation was achieved, students would potentially be hampered in their quest for admission to graduate programs and in seeking federal financial aid. It was appropriate that the quest for accreditation became the framework for much of the ensuing early transition process. These sentiments were shared by Roy Huff as he said, The administration had to make a lot of tough decisions from the top down; and some of the faculty felt like, “We didn’t have any say because it is all coming from above.” But to expedite things, we had to get that done because as long as it took us to get accredited, our student[s]… were graduating under the auspices that we would have accreditation. But the sooner we received accreditation, the sooner we could kind of get that stamp to those students that were graduating, “You get a degree from a bona fide university” (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) So along with building programs, came the need to gain accreditation as a bachelor’sdegree-granting university through the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU). Even though Ricks College had been accredited to grant associate degrees since 1936 (Ricks College, 1999), it was necessary to seek accreditation at a higher lever. Within six months of the announcement, a comprehensive 36-page request was compiled entitled “Substantive Change Prospectus for the Addition of Degree Programs at a Higher Level.” Included with the prospectus was an attachment of nearly 200 pages outlining “New Program Descriptions” for 36 specific areas. After gaining Board approval, the 81 documentation was submitted to NWCCU on January 22, 2001. A review of the timetable included in the prospectus gives a better concept of the campus-wide impact of the transition and the involvement of the Board of Trustees required to get to this point in the transitional process. (See Figure 3.) BYU–Idaho Transition Timetable Planning Activity People Involved Time Frame Initial deliberations, feasibility analysis Board of Trustees, President, Vice Presidents May-June 2000 Announcement Board of Trustees June 21, 2000 Development of planning framework (e.g., goals, guidelines, concepts, processes, roles) and initial list of programs Vice Presidents, Assistant Vice Presidents, Deans June 22, 2000 to August 9, 2000 Initial concepts for new programs, changes in throughput, and infrastructure needs Deans, Department Chairs, Faculty June 22, 2000 to August 9, 2000 Presentation of initial concepts to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees Board of Trustees Executive Committee, President, Vice Presidents September 27, 2000 Planning for changes to students services, campus infrastructure, local community infrastructure Student Life personnel, Administrative personnel, Community Affairs personnel June 22, 2000 to October 13, 2000 New programs, programs to be discontinued Faculty August 15, 2000 to October 23, 2000 Initial plans for transition to BYU–Idaho presented to Board of Trustees Board of Trustees, President, Vice Presidents November 8, 2000 Continued development of transition planning and finalization of prospectus Faculty, Administrative Staff October 13, 2000 to December 8, 2000 Presentation of final plan for transition Board of Trustees December 13, 2000 Final prospectus generated and reviewed Board of Trustees December 13, 2000 to January15, 2001 Prospectus sent to Commission January 22, 2001 FIGURE 3. BYU–Idaho Transition Timetable (Ricks College, Substantive Change Prospectus, 2000, pp 3-4). 82 The prospectus was seeking conditional approval to move towards candidacy, a necessary first step in the time-consuming, energy-draining process towards gaining accreditation. Gee said, We were pushing early on to get the proposal for program change to the accrediting agency. Everybody pushed to get that done. We produced a book about two inches thick showing all the new programs and what they would do, and we were given approval on that basis to go ahead. The accrediting agency said, “We don’t believe you can do it, but you have shown the numbers, and so we will allow you to go ahead and do it.”(J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) Once the candidacy status was granted, the process of collecting data began anew. An overview prepared to help those seeking accreditation through the Northwest Commission of Colleges and Universities explains: Each accredited and candidate institution is expected to engage in ongoing planning to achieve its mission and goals, evaluate how well, and in what ways, it is accomplishing its mission and goals, and demonstrate that it uses the results for broad-based continuous planning and evaluation. (Baker, n.d.) In an interview in 2004, Scott Bergstrom, director of institutional research at BYU– Idaho, explained the accreditation process. Bergstrom has become very familiar with the accreditation process and the need to get many people involved, and he often participates in evaluation and training for other campuses. He described the process as follows: When accreditation comes to town, people get pretty serious about it. The work involved to do a good self study is really tough to marshal the resources. There are two parts. One is just getting everybody to do what you need to have done to have the institution properly scrutinized. The second thing is to have them show evidence that the study they do of their organizations leads to some action.” (S. Bergstrom, personal interview, December 20, 2004) My interview with Bergstrom was conducted as a work assignment shortly after BYU–Idaho’s successful accreditation evaluation in 2004. As we sat in his office, we discussed the formation of the 300-page self-study, but I could not help but notice the stacked, vast collection of file folders and boxes that had been deposited into his space waiting for appropriate final storage or disposal. Bergstrom explained the obvious: The self study is just one document. A lot of people do not realize that the commission asks for a whole other set of paperwork, reports, and documentation. So you submit a self-study and that is 300 pages, but there are many more times than that in documentation that they may want to look at. They are looking at all the individual 83 departments’ self studies, assessment plans. They are looking at syllabi. They are looking at exams and self-study for administrative units, so they like to see all.” (ibid) The accumulation of files had been gathered as evidence to be available to the accreditation team if they chose to seek more details than had been compiled into the self study. Bergstrom said he found the following to be true from his vantage point: The heart of all of this though is really assessment. And they have been driving people to do it right for so many years now. They are just now getting colleges and universities to use it. Businesses have been doing total quality management for twenty years, and as a result they have really done some good things. Colleges and universities just kind of go along and do the same old thing every year and pretty much assume that their students are getting a good education. But nobody has really stepped up to prove it, and so that is why a lot of this—the heart of this—is assessment. Try to do it right. Do it in the first place, and do it right. (ibid) With this looming responsibility to have assessment collateral as part of the accreditation process, the administration at BYU–Idaho was restructured to include a Learning Outcomes Assessment Coordinator. Esther Landon (name has been changed at participant’s request) shares her experience: I was specifically being put over the learning outcomes assessment coordination for the Northwest visit. I would be working in institutional research with Scott [Bergstrom] on that. So I set about figuring out what a learning outcomes assessment coordinator really does. I mean I was doing a job that was being created. No one had been doing that kind of thing. Scott would hand me some textbook and say, “Well, read this. See if that clarifies it.” Or “Read this manual.” Within a short time I kind of had a sense of what we needed to do to get ready for accreditation. The first step was to assess whether the program being delivered met the objectives of the program had set. I immediately commenced to meet with a few department heads. I contacted a few friends who were department chairs and said, “Hey, can I come over and look at your stuff?” I quickly discovered that, in spite of the fact that we were now a year into the transition truly, most programs had not solidified. We were shooting at a moving target. “I don’t know if it meets its goals. What is it?” They had not even landed, you might say. The President had said all programs would be 120 hours and no more, and yet what I discovered was that many programs were 120 not counting all the prerequisites. So you start throwing in all the prerequisites, and you had 136 or more; they were well over the limit. So we had to back up a bit. (E. Landon, personal communication, June 11, 2007) Landon went back to Jim Gee and Roy Huff and explained the situation. From the viewpoint of Gee, the lack of quality control of developing programs had been a matter of their volume of work as they tried “to learn as an administration how to be a four-year 84 school” and feeling like they were “always under staffed” (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007). He explained as follows: We really were working together like a team, and nobody was sitting anywhere calling all the shots. It was just too big of a project to do. People had to have a lot of input, and we gave them a lot of freedom.… There were so many areas where departments had violated the basic rules, and we had gone ahead and given them approval for them not really understanding everything they were doing.… It was just because we had this avalanche of things coming at us. We never had time to fully examine things. The truth was it was a difficult thing to keep a handle on. There were a lot of places where it slid by. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) Landon gave the executives an example, “If we have to cut five programs, we have to cut the programs first and see if what remains meets the goals.” As difficult as it may have been to acknowledge personal flaws, the academic leaders recognized the need for a more structured approach. Before there could be appropriate evaluation of the outcomes of the academic programs, the programs needed to be reined in to match the standards set by the University which included the 120 credit limit—minimum and maximum. Stretched to their maximum while dealing with other aspects of the transition, the executives gave Landon the assignment to “go out and make sure all the programs get down to the 120 before you can start doing the goals thing.” Gee said Landon as the Learning Outcomes Assessment Coordinator “did a great service by just pulling it all together, but it took her over a year to do it. Only after she had gone through all that could the programs settle down and became a lot more stable” (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007). Landon began the process of analyzing the emerging programs within the University’s parameters and coinciding objectives with assessment. She was able to take the “big picture, see what has to happen, and then break it down into bite-sized chunks.” She said, “I discovered to my surprise that a lot of people do not have that skill.” She describes her arduous process: I made a big matrix showing all the different steps that would need to happen as programs were audited and then goals were outlined. And then I had this little chart. [The Academic Vice President] sent word out, through the Academic Council I suppose, that I would be contacting each department and that each department would need to do these steps. A lot of people balked, “Who is [she] to be telling us if we can have that class number?” (E. Landon, personal communication, June 11, 2007) Faculty involved in the process of developing courses had their own perspective of the stricter enforcement of curriculum standards. They felt they were being told, “OK, you 85 have all had your say, now we have to meet these certain parameters.” For some the stress became compounded as explained below: That was hard for us. She came in and said, “This is what you have got to do.” We had to revise our program, and it was like ah… We can’t do this. You know there was more of that challenge of pulling things together again—the feeling across campus of being overwhelmed. I described it as sort of like a tidal wave that you know is coming. You can’t see it. You are not sure when it is going to hit. But you sort of know it is out there moving in your direction. That is sort of the feeling that I sensed. That uneasiness of “Ok, what are they going to throw at us next?” (D. Lyons, personal communication, June 8, 2007) With a slight laugh that hides her personal frustration, Landon continued her story: Whenever anyone had an issue, I would just take it back to [the Academic Vice President] and say, “Here is their program. This is the reason I feel they need an exception. Will you grant it?” We held pretty firm to the 120 limit. But what I did find is they would sometimes say, “Well, let that count as a GE class.” So we did a double-dipping kind of thing…. I think we got most of the programs in compliance during that first year, but it took a full year. It was about March when the last program finally cleared, and we could say everyone is at 120. It was just horrendous. When people say, “Oh, it must have been a lot of work.” How can you respond? “You really have no idea.” (E. Landon, personal communication, June 11, 2007) Landon said she determined not to become the adversary but to play a liaison role instead. Not only did Landon feel the pressure, she was quick to recognize how difficult the situation was for those faced with restructuring their fledgling programs. These changes were to be deep and real, and “often, like life, a bumpy ride” (Watkins & Marsick, 1993, p. 137). When you go into people who have done their very best thinking—and these are professional people who honestly truly had. “Here is the best thing we can come up with.” And you go, “Well, it just won’t do. You are going to have to cut this.” It was just awful. So I very early on decided that I am going to work with the departments. I am not in an adversary role. If they tell me this is absolutely essential that we have this class in there, then I am going to find a way to help them make it fit. We will start coming up with creative strategy, and we will see what we can do. It was quite a remarkable thing to go through. It was really fun afterwards to see how many department chairs came up to thank me, because at the time it was like kicking and screaming. They would haul me into department meetings to try to explain to the whole department what I had told them privately. And you know… shooting arrows…yelling… It was just horrible, and yet it had to be done. Somebody had to go in and just chop, chop. “You are eight credits over; you have got to take them out.” Ultimately, a lot of department chairs said it was a blessing because they had been too ambitious, and they had been putting in everything that had been desirable. But when I would force them to trim back and force them to cut, they said it made it much more manageable in the long run. These were sacrifices—but they found ways 86 to take the really, really critical stuff and embed it someplace else. And they didn’t over extend. There was a blessing to it, but it was sure hard to tell them that. In some cases, honestly truly, I agree with them: “Your program would be stronger if you had that class, but you have to get it down to 120. And so what else can we trim? If that one has to be there, what else can we do?” So that took about the first full year. But the departments that got right on it and got it finished quickly, I went ahead that first year and let them start into the next set of tasks on the big matrix which would be getting goals written for every class and getting assessment procedures in place. (E. Landon, personal communication, June 11, 2007) Even the perspective of the faculty member who initially felt a tidal wave was about to hit had a change of heart. He said she “did a marvelous job of getting everyone on the same page as far as degrees and programs and making sure you met certain standards.” He shared his observations on conflicts that arose: It is interesting as we went through that transition time with the meetings, the general background meetings and the other meetings. I would go and listen, and I would get the handouts and things. I had a stack of that stuff. I remember one, in fact, I think it was when [Esther Landon] was coming to meet with us. I was for some reason going through a stack of papers and pulled out a paper that sort of outlined what the parameters were for the degrees. I made a copy of it and gave it to the department. It created a lot of controversy. It was like, “Where did you get this document? We have never seen it before. Why weren’t we told about this?” Well, it was handed out at one of those general faculty meetings. The thought that came to me then and at other times, it is interesting how we selectively hear what we want to hear. (D. Lyons, personal communication, June 8, 2007). Over time, the faculty and department heads restructured their programs to align with the standards set by the university and began the process of collecting evidence of outcomes assessment that would be required for accreditation. Landon outlines the step-by-step process as she coordinated and helped guide others in preparing for the accreditation team’s visit: Every department had to write goals and so did every college. Then the faculty had to report on every single class and list their goals and methods by which it would be achieved and then the assessment of how to see if it had been achieved. Every class had goals, methods, and assessment procedures established. I had to meet with the departments. I had to go through a series of three in-service workshops, and every department had to receive all three…. Some departments were so intrigued by the whole process. They had known nothing about pedagogy. They did not understand that there were different methods and each method had its own assessment strategy. This was like, wow. They are content area experts. They said to me over and over again, “We have never had training in pedagogy. This is fascinating.” A number of departments as well as colleges requested full in-service lessons. Can we train them on the different methodologies and how they are done? How do you assess 87 them? And when do you use this one or that one? When do you use an eclectic approach and combine? So we did the training, and everybody wrote goals. Again it was very difficult for some departments to step back and say, “Ok, that may be the long-range vision of what we are trying to do here, but during the confines of this semester, how are we going to assess what we are doing?” And there was a lot of that trying to help the departments see. “Yes, you have to have the big picture vision, and probably ten years out you can do an alumni survey and maybe get some evidence of that. But you also have to have an immediate plan, and that is what we are talking about.” We also talked about some of the longer range elements because departments had to set up assessment protocol things: “We want to start doing elements.” “We want to do exit interviews with our seniors” and “We want to do …” whatever. So we outlined all that. (E. Landon, personal communication, June 11, 2007) While positive in its objective and final outcome, the continuous restructuring of programs and coursework had negative repercussions during the process. Gee explained: We could have avoided some of that if we had been a little more deliberate and not so kind of giddy in wanting to get in there and get going. But we did it and over a period of time, we finally got the thing settled down…. I kept telling the [Academic Vice President], “We have got to put a moratorium on changing these programs. These poor students don’t know if they are coming or going.” Because we were making such massive changes every year, it was kind of a messy process. (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007) Even though things have settled down and the goal of accreditation has been achieved, the evaluation of the academic programs is ongoing. Roy Huff described his role: We are accountable to our programs and accountable to our departments by saying you better have the right classes. That is where accreditation helps us. “You better have the right programs to lead to a career or a job for a student. You keep it at 120 credits.” I am responsible to do a curriculum audit on every single one of those majors to make sure that what we say we are going to do is what we are doing, and we are staying within the parameters that our accrediting body and also the mission our institutional has given us. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) In addition to the overall accreditation as a university, many of the departments had their own program accreditation hurdles. “Nursing had to have the national nursing foundation. It was the same thing with mechanical engineering, computer science, all of these programs that had to have their own” (ibid). One of the specialized program accreditation bodies explains as follows: Professional level programs…voluntarily place themselves before the scrutiny of the profession to ensure that students receive an education that will serve them not only during their time at school, but also prepare them for future professional growth. 88 Students enrolled in an accredited…program can be confident that the program meets the quality standards recognized by the profession. (Council for Interior Design, n.d.) It was my observation as a researcher that departments viewed program accreditation in one of three ways: (1) proceed because accreditation will help secure the auspices of a professional program and result in a more marketable graduate, (2) comply with government agency requirements, or (3) do not seek national recognition or accreditation but rather build an independent program to best meet the students’ needs. An example of each follows. First, a look at the Interior Design Department where the process of securing a professional program aimed at a more marketable graduate was a matter of raising the bar on what they accomplished years before. To satisfy the number of hours required for national accreditation, the interior design program at Ricks College had previously developed into a three-year program. Even though the interior design program had been accredited for years, just the mention of the process seemed to make the department chair shudder at the memory, but he then acknowledged the comparative ease of their transition into a four-year program which was accredited on 2001 (Council for Interior Design Accreditation, n.d.). Somewhat accustomed now to the scrutiny of the program’s accreditation review every six years, T. L. McRae, the Chair of the Interior Design Department, remembers the process of initially gaining program accreditation at a national level as follows: [It was] a horror story.… When I came here 21 years ago, the program wasn’t accredited. One of the reasons they hired me was to help with accreditation and so on. It was such a nightmare to get our accreditation…. The accreditation organization was FIDER [Foundation for Interior Design Education Research] then and is now CIDA, Council for Interior Design Accreditation. They require a certain number of hours; they have certain requirements that must be met and so on and so forth. We had to develop our classes so they incorporated all of these sorts of standards that they required in order to be accredited. By doing that, some of our classes were really upper level classes. Being at a junior college, we could do anything, but we had to use lower division numbers [for courses]. So when they said we are going to a four-year university, it was really easy for us to just transfer our classes to upper division credits because we had really been teaching at that level already. It was not difficult for us…. In essence we already had upper division courses. (T. McRae, personal communication, June 1, 2007) The interior design accreditation comes around for review on a six-year cycle. The Department Chair described the process of gathering evidence as an extension of the students’ learning experience, and he explained his high expectations: 89 When we go through accreditation, we could probably do it with less effort than what we actually do, but we want to be the best. I don’t mean that in an arrogant or prideful way. I mean we want our students, when they walk out that door, to feel competent enough to go and interview and have all the tools they need to interview with like cover letters and resumes that are beautifully done. We want them to be so confident that they don’t feel nervous when they go for a job interview. When I graduated interior design, I felt extremely cheated because that was not how I was tooled…. I knew nothing about resumés, how to interview, how to go get a job, or anything. I was bitter for quite a long time. I thought if I ever went into teaching, my objective would be to prepare the student to be competent to interview, go out and get a job, and be the best. (ibid) Similar concepts of marketability of graduates played a role in teacher education, the second example regarding program accreditation. But for teacher education there was also a matter of compliance with government agency requirements. State certification is required for education programs if the graduates are to be considered as candidates for teaching positions. In addition to the existing elementary education program that needed modest modifications, the initial prospectus for change (Ricks College, 2001) identified 12 new degrees for secondary education teaching majors. (This number gradually increased to nearly 25 content areas with varying options for bachelor’s of science and/or bachelor’s of arts degrees.) The process of seeking accreditation through the Idaho State Department of Education was conducted simultaneously with the accreditation process for the University. Spearheading the process was Esther Landon, the newly appointed Dean of the College of Education. Despite an internal search, no one else was willing to accept her previous position as the Learning Outcomes Assessment Coordinator with the University’s evaluation by the NWCCU just one year away. With the support and encouragement of her secretary, the Executive Office agreed to her fulfilling dual obligations. She described her role: They consented to release me from teaching at that point so I could do those two administrative assignments and just focus on them until we got through accreditation. And so until the accreditation visits were done, I was simultaneously trying to get the whole campus ready for the Northwest visit plus the education program. By this time we had already received conditional approval [to offer bachelor’s degree programs in education] from the State, and we were working towards the twoyear focus visit. When they had come to give us conditional approval, they said, “Within two years you have got to have evidence.” We needed to get our faculty to address the State’s standards, which are very rigorous, and they had to provide documentation. So I stepped into that a year into the task and it was like, “Ok. Where is the 90 evidence?” And nobody had collected anything. And it is like “Ok! Go chop chop, boys and girls.” So I got the representatives from each one of the education programs together in a big room, and I just explained, “Here is what you need to have happen for each one of your programs.” I assembled binders again. We were binder queens by this point. The dividers had things. “These are the sections; here is what needs to go into each one. We will be around to help you.” We had a lot of training meetings where we would bring in the program directors for each (for the math program, then English, and history, and everything). We would sit around a big table, and we would talk about what needed to be collected. We will never have that kind of headache again because now that everybody has done it once, it will never be that much work again. It never will. They have the binders. They know what the standards are. They already have evidence in the binders. It will just be a matter of updating it, finding a new copy of this, and another sample of that. (E. Landon, personal communication, June 11, 2007) Seeking program accreditation can also be voluntary. The third scenario was interesting for me as the researcher as I learned that BYU–Idaho’s College of Business and Communication opted to not seek the national recognition for the business program but to gage the viability of their program by the success of the students themselves. The Dean described a process not based on incremental review by an accreditation team, but rather ongoing evaluation of the end product: an employable-quality graduate. Broadhead said, The idea is that there is some human capital to be developed, knowledge, skills, values, and experiences. When you look at a product to be developed, then that impacts what you are doing in the process. You institute what we call employablequality graduate (or the product that we would like) and put into place a career map, which tries to polish from freshman through the senior year. You put into place a template for teaching, and we give them challenges in teaching. When you see what the end result you want—including values and experience—then it starts to impact what the process are and what the things you need to change in order to produce that product. In fact we have chosen to not even be concerned about accreditation in the College of Business. We have accreditation as a university as a whole, but [program accreditation] is a cumbersome effort. It requires some time and a little bit of a shift and refocus; we just are not going to go there. We do not have time. Our students are getting placed both in grad school and workplace, so why should we invest our time there to get a little more world attention and recognition on accreditation when we do not need to? (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007) The process of evaluation and assessment of academics should be ongoing not merely because of any accreditation process but because it becomes part of the natural process of learning and teaching. Wheelwright (personal communication, May 9, 2007) suggested selfexamination: “part of that has to do with the faculty, their skill, and their expertise as they get 91 better and better; but part of it also has to do with paying attention” to progressively improving. Likewise, the transitions in academics for higher education will be ongoing. For BYU–Idaho, the initial growing pains, mess, and turmoil of total reconstruction were not in vain. Their prospectus was approved and candidacy was granted allowing Ricks College to continue the process of officially becoming Brigham Young University–Idaho on August 10, 2001. The objective of achieving accreditation as a bachelor’s-degree-granting university was reached in 2004, a year after the first graduates which signified that the university would be able to successfully achieve the delivery of upper level coursework. Huff reflected on the endeavor: What we were trying to do was really superhuman when you think of it. The fact is that most people take seven to eight years to get a program from conception to where you have an output, because you really have to have graduates before you can actually say you have a viable program. You can do concept approval, but you have to have a finished product to say, “Did it work?” And they have to take praxis examinations if they were doing education; there are other national norming tests that you have to look at to see if you have a viable product. Then there become these [regional and specialized] accrediting bodies…. For us to be able to do 49 degrees and 48 of them received full accreditation in four years instead of one or two degrees taking seven to eight years, it really was remarkable. People began to use us as the poster child for accreditation. We suddenly had four members of our staff asked by the regional accrediting body to be on their accreditation teams that would go out to other universities. I mean we really received not just high marks, but it was like, “How were you ever able to do this in so short of time?” It really was different than what the world would have expected, but then we never shied away from doing things different. (R. Huff, personal communication, May 8, 2007) Support Services When reviewing the transitions in higher education, it would be easy to merely focus in on academics and faculty and overlook the contributions of the support services. I felt including their perspectives would give balance to this research. Roy Huff describes his own changed perception when switching roles from faculty to become the Assistant Academic Vice President for Curriculum: I lived in a faculty world before and never knew all the people that made it work. I mean the students showed up in my class; I taught them, gave them a grade, and they left. There were a lot of wonderful experiences that happened there in learning and teaching together, but I didn’t know what the Registrar did. I didn’t 92 know what Admissions did. I didn’t know Public Relations. I didn’t know what all these other entities on campus did and how they made it possible for me to teach classes because I only had the faculty perspective. Some of my greatest friends now are the people I work with from day to day. I mean, I couldn’t do my job without the Registrar. I also didn’t know all the things that happened on the curriculum level; one of the things I am responsible for is the curriculum and the catalog. I have a great appreciation for secretaries. I always knew that the secretaries ran the show, but I didn’t know how well they ran it and how without them, we really would be lost. I mean I wouldn’t know; I wouldn’t be ready for half the meetings I have to get ready for. My secretary makes sure that I am prepared. Where as a faculty member, if I wasn’t prepared for my class, it was my fault. So I have a great appreciation for all the support that happens on campus you don’t normally see. Because they do their job so well and so quietly, you don’t know. The greatest thing I learned is that for me to do my job in the classroom, it takes 100 people who make it possible. (ibid) The transition from Ricks College to BYU–Idaho had direct impact on the work of the support services. The Career and Academic Advising Center was decentralized with satellite centers located within each of the colleges giving students better access to counselors and more precise and accurate coordination with faculty and academic administrators. The Public Relations Office oversaw both internal and external communication and the development of a new visual identity and creation of a style guide for publications and marketing (BYU–Idaho Identity Guidelines, n.d.). The Bookstore was remodeled to accommodate the increased volume of textbooks and school supplies. A new Student Health Center was built to serve the year-round needs of an increased student body – and for married students, their dependent spouses and children. University Police, Parking Services, and the Safety Office saw their workload increase as more students enrolled and as the events and activities calendars expanded. Custodial and ground crews, information technology, food services, cashiers, the press, the library, purchase and travel, the identity card system administration, shipping and receiving, and the list goes on. Some might gratefully conclude that in “most of those areas they don’t have a problem—a little more stressed because there were more students, but that was about all. They just have adapted to the four-year school and done a great job of it” (J. Gee, personal communication, May 16, 2007). Nevertheless, through the progressive focusing of this research on organizational learning, I was led to specific support services: registrar’s, admissions, and advancement. As the participants shared their stories, I sensed that similar experiences could be gleaned from other areas across the campus. And as it was brought to my attention, 93 …different departments are at different stages of both their own development and being in a position to deliver whatever it is we are all working to deliver. Some people, some departments are much closer. They’ve got the people in place, the training, and so on that they need. In other departments they are still getting started. (S. Wheelwright, personal communication, May 9, 2007) When I visited with the Registrar, I was reminded that adults are working and learning in the midst of everything else that is going on in their lives. To me the Registrar came to exemplify the capacity of being teachable, metamotives, humility, and the capacity to facilitate change. Because of his willingness to learn, the organization made great strides in overcoming limitations. Kevin Miyasaki was invited to change positions from the Dean of Students Office to work in the Registrar’s Office. He explained: My background and training has all been in social work and social sciences. When they asked me to serve as the Assistant Registrar, [the Registrar] was suffering from cancer. It was in November of 2000. They asked me one week saying they did not know how well he was, but they knew he was not well and probably would not be able to come back. I went and visited him on a Friday; he was at home and he was ill—so ill that I didn’t really want to push him for information other than I looked forward to working with him and such. And then on Monday, he passed away. So when taking this position, I had no idea what a registrar was, what they did, nor any of all the policies and procedures and so forth and so on that happened with Ricks College let alone becoming a four-year university. I can remember sitting in that office on the very first day after he died. They said, “Ok. Well, you know you are the Registrar now….” I remember getting several calls, and having no idea what they were even talking about let alone how to answer the question, and looking at the wall and just saying, “I can’t do this by myself. There is no way I can do this.” Particularly being the Registrar’s Office and the curriculum and all the changes that we would have to make to become a four-year university with the same amount of resources and not expand, but yet become more efficient. So much like President Bednar taught many, many times about the ship of curious workmanship, I indeed was a strange timber that had to fit into that piece and did not know how to fit. I can tell you that there were many, many occasions of tender mercies that I witnessed throughout that whole process of our whole Registrar’s Office team receiving thoughts and feelings and inspirations and guidance between us and IT [information technology] of how to develop things in a whole different manner. I can remember one time when we were working on the whole concept of having a graduation plan and thinking how we can move students through on a more efficient basis and increase our throughput so we can bless more students. We were talking about that, and we came up with the concept of having a grad plan. We met with IT, and they said, “Well, give us a description of what it should look like.” I said, “I have no idea what it will look like, but this is what I want it to do.” They said, “Well, usually we get some rules, and we get some descriptions.” I said, “I know this is unusual.” I wrote about five pages of things that I want it to do, and then they just started playing and working and came up with the model 94 that now has been modified a little bit but was really the foundation to get us going in the right direction on that. We previously handled maybe 300 or 500 transfer evaluations a semester; we increased to anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 a semester.… We still only had one person doing it.... We developed a database with all of the colleges, with all of the transfer credits and what they were accepted as, and then we developed a matrix system to where the computer did the evaluation based on electronic feed from CES. All of that was just a combined effort. I remember going to BYU the very first time and saying, “You need to send your document EDI [electronic data interchange] to us” and I didn’t even know what EDI hardly even meant. As I went to a conference to learn about it, and I met with BYU afterwards and I said, “This is what we need to do.” I remember them asking me questions, and they were like speaking a foreign language to me. What I am saying is all of it was not anything I had as far as innate knowledge or skills or training, but all of it was divine inspiration through collective bodies, just feeling and getting inspiration of how we could transform things to a new system. The way we did things changed in business operations. Piece by piece, line upon line, each program and each service in that area, we learned to adapt. Everybody knew we had to do it differently. Everybody knew we weren’t going to hire on more staff. And everybody knew we were going to do it. We all had that faith that we could do it. And it came to pass. (K. Miyasaki, personal communication, June 8, 2007) In the process of helping their new leader become familiar with his new responsibilities, his staff clarified their own thinking and reasoning as they critically reviewed their processes (Watkins and Marsick, 1993). Under Miysaki’s leadership not only did these processes become streamlined, the influence of the Registrar’s Office evolved. He said there seemed to have been a time when the Registrar “kind of sat over here and was told what to do. But because we were changing so fast, the Registrar’s Office became part of the Curriculum Committee just to maintain that integrity. That was a huge step in helping us keep order” (K. Miyasaki, personal communication, June 8, 2007). I could see how the Registrar’s job meshes with the academic program development, as Miyasaki continued: For the first three or four years, all of the programs were changing just about every year with program requirements. There was confusion with the students and expectations of the departments of what the requirements would be. So we had to develop a system to where students could get credit and continue on with their program and complete it even though the programs were developing and maturing along the way. We had to develop a system of substitutions, waivers, and so forth. Because people can go back and use a catalog for five years, a lot of our early degrees have a lot of handwritten, manual changes. It is something we had to learn to track and automate and do some other things to make it more efficient. For example, within the first few years, we would take up to eight or nine weeks to evaluate all the graduation applications at the end of the semester. We 95 would have to do all of them manually because there were so many changes happening within the university. Last semester within three weeks, they were completed with the evaluations. That is just again a manifestation of how that piece worked in. As we have gone through time, majors have become more stable; we have become more automated in the way that we can evaluate things now. There is a combination of both that has increased the efficiency. The other thing is we have had to do just a lot of education of departments through this whole process. They would develop a course on paper before it was ever created thinking that was what would be needed for the department. Then by the time they arrived at the year—because you are always thinking a year in advance—by the time they came into the year they would discover “no, that is not really what we want. What we want is this course.” So they would want to create a new course. Well, you just can’t do it that way. Part of the Registrar’s Office [responsibilities] was always to help guide academics and keep them in line so we had integrity within the academic system. (K. Miyasaki, personal communication, June 8, 2007) There was a common thread in the discussion with the Registrar and the next participant who worked as an admissions administrator. Tyler Williams had also found himself in a learn-on-the job situation when he transferred from a position in the Financial Aid Office and then had a second assignment shift within the Admissions Office: You learn the word adaptability very quickly. At our school, you realize that it isn’t our work. You realize that there is a higher Deity that is running this, and therefore, you just put your trust and say, “I am doing my best work.” And you take it to the Lord. If He says it is right, then you move on; and if it is not, then you go back and you do your best thinking again. Faith based. Another thing is that I rely tremendously upon the skills and talents of those with whom I work. Their talents can overcome some of my shortcomings, and my talents can overcome some of their shortcomings. We can have some synergy. (T. Williams, personal communication, May 10, 2007) Williams seemed to be enjoying the energy and openness of the Admission’s Office. I asked him to compare it with his experience in Financial Aid. Having just recently completed his master’s degree, both offices had given him an opportunity to learn, but which was the better match for his learning and leadership style? When I was in Financial Aid, the environment was good; they encouraged me to develop my skills, but it was a much more subdued office from the standpoint that it was a Federal entity we were dealing with. So rules and regulations resulted in more of a management feel. You are going to manage some thing. When I came over to Admissions, we are now on the frontline of every change that could possibly happen; we are a year ahead of everybody else on the campus because we have to implement it with the prospective students and people coming in. So this culture here is all about the counseling with councils, if you will. We are given an assignment, and we throw it around. We come up with a proposals, 96 bring them in, people rip them to shreds, and you go “great” because you know because of their input the product will be better. They are thinking of things that you did not consider. You come back and rethink it, and take it back in, and by the time we are done, we feel we have come up with what is needed. I have seen it over and over and over again where: “How are we going to deal with this thing?” You throw it out and throw it out, and you finally come back and there is a solution just right there. And you go, “Oh well, that is great!” I think the culture of our office in Admissions was established a long time ago to be thinking outside the box. Bring your ideas, and don’t get so wrapped around it—meaning thinking that it is all you. This isn’t about you. What you are doing should have the intent of blessing the lives of everybody else. If it is a selfish reason, you are going to be offended. But if you are truly in it for everybody else, you are fine with the critiques. (ibid) The openness of the Admissions culture was noticeable not only in their attitudes but in the physical layout of the office. From one end to the other, the space was open and conducive to interaction. Administrators each had an office where they could consult with potential students and their parents as needed, but the walls were glass panels that retained the ambiance of no barriers to communication. I felt Williams spoke figuratively and literally when he said the following: We lived in an environment where there were four functioning areas in our office but there were no walls. They called it four silos without walls. We all had our areas we were responsible for, but each one of us depended upon everyone else to help us in our jobs. So that was huge. Many offices are segregated saying, “This is my responsibility, leave me alone.” And that was their culture. Our culture was always, “You need help with scholarships. Come, I am here to help you.” “You need to help with going out on the road. That is part of my job too.” And the expectation of everybody in the office was you help each other out. If you feel like you are an island unto yourself, then everyone will pounce on you. (ibid) The third support services participant in this research also had an on-the-job learning experience. His job had become obsolete with the phasing out of Ricks College’s intercollegiate athletics; Garth Hall had been the Athletic Director. That had changed when the Chairman of the Board of Trustees had announced: BYU–Idaho will phase out its involvement in intercollegiate athletics and shift its emphasis to a year-round activity program designed to involve and meet the needs of a diverse student body. (Hinckley, 2000) Hall talks about his paradigm shift: To understand my comments, you have to understand that I spent my whole life in intercollegiate athletics. That is what I did. That is what I loved, and I never really considered junior college athletics. I just won’t go into how I got [to Ricks College], 97 but when I got here, I frankly said, “Really, this is what I had been searching for.” I wanted a situation where it was competitive sports, but you also had some value in it. It was about the student athlete; it wasn’t all about just winning at any cost. That had been in the world I had been in, and it was kind of deteriorating where it was so money-driven. So I kind of fell in love with it. That was one part of the announcement that was really hard. You talk about June of 2000; I bet it was a month later that it ever really occurred to me: I didn’t have a job. Now about that time I agreed to go into the Activities Program. So I knew I wouldn’t have a job in Athletics because it was going away, but I would have a job. Then what was kind of cool about the Activities Program was that as we got in and kind of formulated what that was about, nobody really directed us. Nobody. Working for President Bednar, one of the things that was interesting was he never once told me what I needed to do. We would talk about things, but he just let me figure it out on my own. We knew we were going to have an expanded Activities Program. We put a committee together to put down what principles were going to guide and direct that program. But nobody every said, “This is what is has got to be.” It always just evolved. Things have happened. People have come and added and left. And it has just become.… I guess I never questioned that there would be anything else. I just said that is what I am going to get to do. By then I had learned to love this place and what it stood for and recognize that it was more than just an institution of higher learning. It was really something where people had such faith and such devotion and such humility about what they did. It was about the students. It was about the Lord, what His programs are, and how He wants it done. That element of consecration is so important here. I just said, “I don’t have a lot of years left, but I think I can get a lot of enjoyment out of doing this.” So I just stepped forward, and it just seemed quite natural. (G. Hall, personal communication, May 29, 2007) The changes for Hall were not over yet. Less than a year later, “President’s Council was realigned including refocusing the Community Service area to that of Advancement” (Changes, 2001). Hall was invited to serve as the Vice President of Advancement, an area of administration that included communication and events. He also simultaneously oversaw both the final phase out of intercollegiate athletics and the continued evolution of the Activities Program. Of his experience on the President’s Council, Hall said, I never saw it coming, never imagined it, never thought about it. Administration in higher education is something I had never, never even entertained. So it was kind of a shock when President Bednar came to my home and invited me…. I just said, “If that is what you want me to do, I will be happy to do it.” I didn’t know anything about it. I mean I had been in higher education for most of my life. I had some sense. But you can’t understand how it works here by observing other places, just because there is no other place like it. It has been a remarkable experience to serve at this level because you know you get the updates of the Board meetings with the Prophet and how he sees this and his counsel and direction. You see things happening in different places around the 98 university. So you have a much more global perspective. You are not just into a narrow focus. With that, I think, it just seems to be a more powerful witness of what is taking place here and why. You think you have it figured, but it is always much deeper, much richer, much bigger, much more important than you give it credit. You get into it and you see the evidence of those experiences and you go, “Wow!” It has been a remarkable experience. (G. Hall, personal communication, May 29, 2007) As a researcher, I was curious to learn more about Vice President Hall’s leadership style and how others were empowered under his direction. I sensed his methods had become so ingrained in who he was as it took a minute of reflection for him to be able to articulate them. I found nuggets of wisdom in his reply: I am goal oriented or vision oriented. Once I get that, I am not afraid to make changes. I don’t mind change…. When I see what has to be done, let’s just roll up our sleeves and get into it. I think I use a lot of participation in that. I don’t think it is totally mandated, but it is pretty much like, “Well, it might look and feel a little different, but I know we are going in this direction. We are not going back, and we are not just going to sit where we are at.” It has been funny but almost every area I have been in has been, “We have to change things. It has got to be better, and it has got to be ready to handle a lot more.” Then to kind of gain the insight, a lot of my education had to do with organizational change. Well, to change an organization you have to change people. To change people you have to do it within a collective; you cannot just force people to go. The Activities model was built upon [the concept of] counseling in councils (Ballard, 1997)…. If I look back in the training I have had [in ecclesiastical positions], frankly, that is all I have ever known. Coaching staffs work that way; you can’t be independent because it is so team related, so interconnected with all the different areas. I guess it is just the way I have always been brought up and what I have been taught. (G. Hall, personal communication, May 29, 2007) I watched Hall’s hands as he continued to explain. He held one hand high and steady indicating guidance coming from above, while the other one became animated with a constantly bubbling, stirring action below as he said, This institution is mission driven. That is what we are and how we do it. It has been pretty well outlined. You see everything just kind of fitting, particularly when you hear something from the Board or from someone on the Board or the First Presidency. Usually there are already some things happening at the university that you know about. You kind of say, “Oh, that is exactly what that is going to do.” You see to connect with that. It does not always come from the top down. It does in terms of vision and direction, but the Lord has got his hand in it way before that. You may see two or three people for instance in a council. One of the things I always smile at is coming into a council situation or even one-on-one and you go, “You know I have been thinking…” and the person or persons in council will go “that is interesting. I have been thinking the same thing.” And then your discussion allows 99 you to galvanize that thought and just kind of go “ah...” It is just the Spirit working; they didn’t come up with it by themselves. The counseling process is not where you have to move everybody really painfully in this work. I think the goodness of the people and their obedience is their privilege to revelation in that way. And so the evidence of that it is already kind of happening, and then the Prophet goes, “We should be doing something like this.” Or “This feels good.” Or “I’ve been thinking.” You kind of go, “It is already happening.” (ibid) Hall’s position as Advancement Vice President was relatively short-lived. The Advancement area was absorbed into the other executive alignments in 2006. A revision of the institution’s organizational structure streamlined “all university operations and group[ed] campus departments with similar functions and purposes together” (Revision, 2006). At that time Jim Gee retired after a short term as Student Life Vice President, and Garth Hall was asked to serve in yet another new position as Vice President of Student Services and Activities. This revision falls just outside the bookend of this research (but would make an interesting follow up study); it is mentioned to better understand Hall as he summarizes: In the early days it was about students. It was the focus on students. That is what Ricks College was all about, but now we make a university out of it and still keep that focus and that nurturing environment for students. We are learning how to organize education, deliver education, to impact more people on less resources. That is pretty dynamic. We have entered into a world that a lot of people talk about, think they know, and understand. The model was there as a junior college. We refined it, but it was still about that one-on-one. It was about getting kids to grow, about giving kids a second chance, about being more concerned about them than you, about changing their lives. I feel that part of my calling is to change things. When Jim Gee left here, he sat down with me, and we talked about a few things. He said, “Garth, I want you to remember you are taking over a well-oiled machine.” And that was true because Student Life at that time was very well run. They were very efficient with what they did. But I think what I brought to the plate was that I had come out of the world of a student-led model. I could see the benefit of structuring things in a way to better focus on the student—we are a student-focused university. My experience and what I have great confidence in is the student leadership model. I don’t know if we discovered it in Activities, but we enhanced a lot of it. We are still in a major reorganization and refocus, but a lot of it is built around: How do we use students? How do we better serve students? How do we get the right student? How do we best support students? I think it has been that shift. It is not just employees [doing their job] but that they will have the opportunity to work with students. And then there is the student who is serving and the student who is being served through students that is all watched over by an advisor or an employee who has that responsibility. So that is the thing that has been changed. But that has been kind of the hallmark, I guess, from 100 Athletics to Activities to Advancement to Student Services. That has been kind of the hallmark of it all. (G. Hall, personal communication, May 29, 2007) Students I had heard the concept of a student-focused university from numerous participants. The base of the cube, shown to me by the Secretary to the Board of Trustees, was the students. This positioning was not merely a diagram. As the research progressed, I wondered how well the students sensed that they were the focus or if the term had become empty jargon that didn’t really interpret into action. Were the needs of the students served? How was their learning experiences impacted by attending a school thrust into the midst of transition and still learning how to become a university? The viewpoints of seven students were gained. After a brief synopsis of the changed demographics of the student population during the delimited time span of 2000-2006, the stories of three of these participants have been incorporated into this report followed by more general statements representing employee/student interactions The research explored: • Changing demographics • Listening to student participants • In the classroom: student/faculty interaction • Outside the classroom: students expanding the academic experience Changing demographics. A look at quantitative data showed distinctive changes in the student body as whole. First, the enrollment for the semester prior to the announcement. Winter Semester Enrollment Enrollment 15,000 12,505 13,000 11,435 9,893 11,000 11,443 10,575 11,395 9,000 7,000 8,381 8,955 9,482 10,054 10,730 10,560 2004 2005 Headcount 5,000 2000 2001 2002 2003 Years FIGURE 4. Enrollment FTE 2006 101 Previously due to limited space, the school had operated for several years with an enrollment cap of 7,600 students and had felt justified in reporting only the full-time equivalent (FTE) numbers that were somewhat lower than actual headcount. The FTE is calculated by taking the total number of credits delivered in a semester and dividing by 15. This enrollment cap had been lifted slightly; so by the year 2000 enrollment at Ricks College was 8,381 FTE. Within the time span of the announcement and the first five years as BYU– Idaho, enrollment had grown nearly 50 percent even if we look strictly at a given semester. However, the impact of the three-semester/three-track system was substantial. If we assume that half of the students in the winter semester are on a fall/winter track and the other half on a winter/summer track (which is a goal of the university not yet totally achieved), the total number of students served by BYU–Idaho in an academic year would be closer to 18,000 students or a 115 percent increase over pre-announcement enrollments. Not only were there more students, but three factors pointed to a more mature student body: age of students, marital status, and the number who have returned to their academic studies following service as full-time missionaries for the Church. Age of Student Body 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 20 years old and over 40% Under 20 years old 30% 20% 10% 0% 2001 2002 FIGURE 5. Demographic shift in age of students 2003 2004 2005 2006 102 As a junior college, Ricks had served primarily students under the age of 20. After completing their associate degrees, graduates would either enter into the workforce using specialized skills or transfer into a bachelor’s degree program somewhere else. The opportunity to stay at BYU–Idaho for completion of a bachelor’s degree had dramatic impact on demographics of the students. Many students returned after deferred enrollment for 18-24 months while serving as missionaries. Before the transition, a high percentage of these students would have returned from their missions and enrolled directly into a four-year university rather than return to Ricks College with its limitation of only associate degree programs. The change had broad ramifications. Not only did these students become less egocentric through their service, but they had a broadened sense of cultures and societies and many gained foreign language skills. About 40 percent of the BYU–Idaho student body was composed of returned missionaries; it had been as high as 43 percent in the Winter Semester 2005. As the student body became older, the number of married students also increased. Looking at the year prior to the announcement of the transition for the school: “According to the academic office, the number of students who were married at Ricks in fall 1999 was less than 500” (Peterson, 2004) representing about 5 percent of the student body. By 2006, there were over 3,000 married students (Official Enrollment, n.d.) comprising about 25 percent of the student body. Married Student Enrollment 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 Fall 1999 Fall 2000 Fall 2001 Fall 2002 Fall 2003 FIGURE 6. Demographic shift in population of married students Fall 2004 Fall 2005 Winter 2006 103 The university had to learn how to deal with the needs of a changing demographic, specifically that of newly married couples. “Many couples need to work more hours to pay the bills so they take 12-13 credits instead of the usual 15-16.... Couples with children sometimes have to carefully arrange their schedules to ensure that at least one of them will be home to give care” (Rydalch, 2005). BYU–Idaho made numerous accommodations to better meet the students’ new needs as explained in the fall 2004 alumni magazine: In the past five years, the single student enrollment has grown 5 percent, while the number of married students on campus has grown 651 percent. The university is working to keep stride with growth and to provide for these students and their families…. Just as married students make adjustments to a new lifestyle, so is the university. Married students are organizing their schedules, studying, and working year-round to provide for their families. Likewise, the campus is planning, building, and implementing changes such as a year-round calendar and extended hours in the library and Hart Building to help students achieve their goals. As married students contemplate their new responsibilities such as health care, housing, and managing finances, the university helps provide means whereby students can fulfill these needs while balancing academics. Things like pediatric care in the Health Center, changing tables in the rest rooms, and strollers canvassing campus are evidence of an everdeveloping and transitional environment. (Peterson, 2004) The more mature student body impacted the classroom, but they also impacted the work place. The Director of Physical Plant was quick to observe the differences in his staff: One of the first things we noticed almost immediately that first semester was the number of married students employees started to go up. The married students for the most part were dedicated and focused and had a reason to work, and it reduced our turnover. That got better and better with more married students who stayed on campus. So that was really beneficial. They were mature and hard working and could be promoted into lead student roles to supervise other students, and that was really a good thing. (C. Frost, personal communication, May 8, 2007) It was not just the fact that there were more married students that made a difference in student employment. One of aspects of the increased enrollment was the general need for more students to have jobs. Adding complexity to the work situation was the fact that most academic majors included requirements for an internship and/or practicum experience. Opportunities to work in the community were limited, but many students found work on campus as administrators all over campus had discovered ways to relieve their growing workload. Administrators found that bringing more students onto their staffs had benefits for the students and for themselves. Don Sparhawk, an administrator in the Public Relations Office, described the impact: 104 We have become more dependent on students in our office with Center Stage [entertainment series], with performance tours, with media and all those areas where the full-time administrators do not have the time to do all of this like we used to. We are relying on students. We are providing them with a learning experience that probably is some of the most valuable part of their education—what they are learning in our office. Learning occurs everywhere, really. It occurs, of course, in the classroom. It occurs if they have jobs on campus. I have more opportunities to supervise. Instead of just doing it all myself, I am helping younger people to do things. I guess it takes on more of a teaching role than normally you would have in an office like this or what we had before as Ricks. I spend more time working with students than ever. I firmly believe that everyone on this campus is a teacher. We may not teach in the classroom, but we have one-on-one opportunities to teach. They keep me young. I think if you are a good manager you should always be learning from those who work for you. Some organizations would just go ahead and hire more full-time people. But we are fortunate enough to first be a university and have the students work for us, but secondly to have the philosophy that we want students doing things. And they are doing real, real work. It is not perfect, you know. Maybe a full-time administrator would plan better …, but these students are learning so much and they are going out and getting great jobs out there. I think part of it is because of the responsibilities they have had here. (D. Sparhawk, personal communication, May 2, 2007) Listening to student participants. As the researcher trying to progressively focus, I searched out one of the students who had worked with Sparhawk in the Public Relations Office during the early years of the transition. I tracked Ben Sweat down through e-mail and found him in California where he had recently started a job in new product development for Yahoo after completing his MBA at the University of Chicago, the number one business school in the nation according to Business Week (MBA, 2006). In a telephone interview, I listened to Sweat’s story. “I knew that I wanted to go to a top-tier business school for an MBA, and I guess I was thinking like, ‘No one is going to know BYU–Idaho. Hey, this school is not even accredited yet’” (B. Sweat, personal communication, June 19, 2007). Ben Sweat described his thought process. He had come to Ricks College in 2000 and completed the requirements for an associate degree with plans similar to those of the Ricks College students for decades who had transferred to complete a bachelor’s before pursing a graduate degree. He continued: 105 I had already been accepted [to a couple of other places] and had a pretty substantial scholarship. In fact, I was going to be a sports editor for their paper and had a few other things that had lined up. I didn’t think it would change my plans. It wasn’t until the actual day of graduation [with my associate degree] that I really started thinking about staying [to pursue a bachelor’s]. Following graduation…I got the internship with BYU–Idaho in the Public Relations Office with Don Sparhawk. Working during that summer, I was still thinking that I was not going to stay. I had a list of concerns. [The other school] is going to be better for me. That was kind of my thinking. And then I didn’t know that I could finish in two years just because I did not think the programs were going to be coming on line in time. During that summer, I changed my perspective. It was a slow change. I had a lot of opportunities to interact with then-President David A. Bednar. To make the long story short, I was seeing the transition from the inside. I felt there was this great big thing happening, and I had an opportunity to be a part of it. For whatever reason, I felt that there was something I could contribute to this new school, this whole transition process. I didn’t know necessarily what that was then—maybe down the road as an alum, I could help out in some sort of way. But I felt, hey, I can go to school and get a degree anywhere, but here I can do something that is just incredible and gain an experience that I can’t get anywhere else. The big concern I still had was that business school. I remember President Bednar had these Q & A sessions, and I went to a number of them, primarily for the PR job. I remember a specific time I went, and I asked him: “Hey, I want to go to the top business school, and I think this is going to hurt me if I stay. What do you think?” In that setting, he kind of said, “Hey, Ben, you of anybody are going to have probably the best opportunity to get a lot of faculty attention. We want that first group to be solid.” The thing hit home. I think he basically said, “Ben, I promise you that you are not going to be hurt in any sort of way in your goal of going to a business school.” I felt an internal confirmation that what he said was correct. I knew that I could get into a top school, and this would actually help me. That was kind of the final drive. I decided to stay. (ibid) Sweat curtailed some of his normal extracurricular activities and pushed to “cram in a lot of classes in the two years” so he could graduate. He continued to work in the Public Relations Office as he balanced the dual roles of being a student and an employee. He said, Public Relations was essentially being part of the internal advertising agency. I was seeing these two different worlds. I thought there should be something like this for the students. The school has this great style guide and all these standards, and student government is so blah. It wasn’t looking good. There was this missed opportunity; so I kind of started socializing the idea of some sort of student agency. (ibid) Sweat’s idea grew and gained momentum. He obtained approval to create a subcommittee of four students to develop a marketing strategy for student government. By being involved, he started thinking, “Hey, this is pretty cool.” The groundwork was laid for a 106 student communication agency (SCA) to serve the expanded student Activities Program. Sweat continued his story: Then the summer happened, and there was essentially no progress. It was just kind of hanging out there. I was expecting someone in the administration or someone on the faculty to basically drive the direction of SCA, and I was doing a lousy summer job selling pest control in Florida. I remember e-mailing Merv [Brown, BYU–Idaho’s marketing specialist,] about it and saying, “Hey, what is going on?” He said, “You know what. Frankly, nothing is going to happen until you are actually here. You are actually going to have to do a lot of the ground work.” (ibid) Sensing that he needed to get some summer school in anyway to graduate on time, Ben worked with the administration and arrangements were made for him to come back to school and thus to be able to work on the structure of the Student Communication Agency during the summer through collaboration with an advisory board: So during that summer it was just me for that two months and at that point, I just said, “Here is what I think it should be. Yes or no?” And I would get advice from [members of the advisory board]. The initial vision that was directed to me was 20 student volunteers. I wanted and thought it could be bigger. It should be bigger to expand the involvement. I thought people wanted to do it. (ibid) Sweat was familiar with the academic requirement in the Communications Department for each student to have eight practicum experiences prior to graduation. By fall the agency was ready to be launched, and a news release introduced the agency to the rest of campus and the community. “He ‘bounced around some ideas’ to various people on campus, and before long, he had proposed a student communication agency, a mission statement and budget. A name was determined. Approval was granted. Office space was acquired. Equipment was purchased” (Media Relations, 2002). The agency had an advisory board but was essentially student run. In fall semester, a University press release describes the creation of the Student Communication Agency as SCA became part of the school’s transition: Brigham Young University–Idaho’s new Student Communications Agency is holding true to the university’s motto of “Rethinking Education.” The agency, which is designed after a professional public relations/ad agency, was introduced this fall. It goes beyond classroom theory by allowing students to delve into tackling publicity and advertising tactics for organizations and events…. “The same thing is happening throughout the campus,” says Garth Hall, advancement vice president. “Students are learning in the academic setting and then broadening their learning experience through practicums and at the same time blessing other students with their knowledge and training.” “There is no more powerful experience than to get the intellectual learning 107 and then go out to apply it,” Hall says. “It is enhancing the students’ university experience. In almost every area, we’re giving students the chance to act for themselves. People are stepping up and demonstrating their ability to learn and to perform at a certain level. Students are taking a concept and making it a reality. It is immensely satisfying to see young people act on their own and to grow from it.” …Heading the agency as creative director is Ben Sweat, a senior from Iona, Idaho, majoring in business management with a marketing emphasis…. “A powerful element in this is that of serving others,” Hall says. “As students participate, they are learning to give to others, lead others and teach others. We can’t know exactly where it will take us, but one absolute for BYU–Idaho is that it is focused on making the student a better person, preparing a student to go out and make a difference in the world, in their families, in their communities, in their church service and in their careers.” “We had been equated to building an airplane in the air,” Sweat says. “From a business management perspective, this has been very much an entrepreneur effort. We are shaping the identity of who we are going to become….” (ibid) The passing of years since Sweat’s involvement in creating SCA as a student at BYU–Idaho made it possible to see who he is becoming. He reflected back on his experience: Up until probably my job here at Yahoo, I had to say this has probably been my proudest achievement. I had it on my resumé and my business school application because I felt that it was something that would differentiate me. How many people can say they started some agency and got budget and did all these crazy things? It was satisfying. Through the whole experience, it wasn’t perfect. We had a lot of frustrations with getting things done.… It was difficult, but I think overall people felt like it was a concept that had validity. It was a good experience for students, but it is good for the University, good for the Activities Program. I mean it was the right time in the transition point that enabled this opportunity that we otherwise would not have had. People were open to this idea of change. Nothing was off the table. Nothing was too radical to think of. I got a taste of being an entrepreneur, and now I want to do it again. I certainly learned more in that experience than I ever did in any school work. You know, the leadership experience, how not to lead sometimes, how to lead. I think again the experience was so neat because it was student driven. People didn’t really have to do what we asked them to do, but they did it.…Those kinds of things I think will continue in the future and I hope it does. These students are getting the experiences that I had of acting for themselves and leading and not having people dictate to them what they should do. It is more empowered. I hope it is still that way. But it is one piece of what I felt like I was supposed to contribute to…. I guess I felt it was one of the reasons that I stayed at BYU–Idaho. I think that is what made it so worthy. (B. Sweat, personal communication, June 19, 2007) As the researcher listening to Sweat, I gained new appreciation for the empowering aspects of the transition for student growth. Similar to how others have defined 108 empowerment, I do not “suggest that this is something leaders magically give or do for others” (Kouzes & Posner, 2002, p. 288). But it is a sense of helping them reach their potential, “setting them free, of expanding their opportunities to use themselves in service of a common and meaningful purpose” (ibid). I sensed Sweat’s confidence; he was in control as he expressed his “self-worth and an ability to make a difference in the world” (Watkins & Marsick, 1993, p. 196). Yet about the same time another of my participants kept my thoughts in balance. The Dean of the College of Business and Communications, cautioned me to keep a perspective: We are getting our students to rise up to that level. That is our top students. See sometimes you have to be careful because we will pat ourselves on the back and say, “Look how well we are doing. We have these students at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and these at Ford” and that type of thing. But what about those in who are in the middle or at the bottom? Are they any better now than they were before? (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007). The day I met with the Dean of the College of Business and Communication, his statement brought to my mind words expressed to the BYU–Idaho students by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees who said, “You are just simple kids. You are not geniuses. I know that. But the work of the world isn't done by geniuses. It is done by ordinary people who have learned to work in an extraordinary way.” (Hinckley, 2002). Just ordinary people, ordinary students. The middle of an interview was not a time for personal introspection, but it was a time to listen. I narrowed the discussion with the Dean to a specific recent graduate familiar to both of us, Eddy dos Santos. I had met Eddy in Brazil in 1999 while accompanying a group of Ricks College dancers as their tour manager. At that time Fenton Broadhead was serving in Brazil as a mission president for the Church and had helped arrange for Eddy to travel with our Ricks College group as an interpreter and guide. During the lengthy bus rides Eddy and the student performers became fast friends. He expressed the desire of becoming a Ricks student too, someday. Now sitting across the desk in the role of a researcher, I asked Broadhead about Eddy. He said, “Eddy is not brilliant, but he is smart enough to realize what he wants to do and how he has to do it” (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007). In my mind, I paralleled the description with counsel of the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, “You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to be a straight-A student. You just 109 have to do your very best with all the capability you have. You have to do your very best” (Hinckley, 2002). Broadhead continued telling me about Eddy: “The University has blessed his life, and it has helped him prepare. I was not sure earlier on that he would make it through. But he is tough enough that he stays with it. He knows the importance of it enough, and I think actually he is kind of amazing. Where he has come from, from that background, and what he has had. He was student body president for a semester, and he even has a degree. And it is kind of an interesting story right there. (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007) The words “an interesting” story stayed in my mind and led to me to seek out Eddy. I knew that because of the track system, student body elections are held each semester giving more students an opportunity for leadership. But was that enough time for a student to really get a valid experience and learn anything? How could Eddy help me see the transition through a student’s eyes? Eddy happened to be back in Rexburg for a few days after successfully completing an academic internship in California. He accepted the invitation to be a participant in my research and met me in my office. Another student joined us making it a focus group of two: one Eddy, a recent graduate and student body president, and the other Josh, a junior English major who seemed to become as intrigued by Eddy’s experience as did I. Eddy began his story: I started working at the Church Office in Sao Paulo when I was 16. Then at 18 I had a position with the Church with the construction that builds all the chapels all over the place in Brazil. I always wanted to go to Ricks, but things didn’t work that way so much. So I just let go and started going to another school in Brazil. Then I went on my mission [a 24-month voluntary service fulfilled by many LDS young men and women]. Almost all my mission companions were Ricks kids or alumni. They had this ability to enthuse people with the “Spirit of Ricks” and the mentality of Ricks. I always had the dream in mind, because of what Ricks did for the kids that I worked with in the mission field. It was an amazing experience for them; and I said, “I want to experience that too.” But it didn’t work that way, so I got a technical degree in basic accounting. I found out [that Ricks would become BYU–Idaho] while working in the Church Office in Brazil. Someone called the Area President and let us know that had happened that day. “Oh, darn it,” I thought. “No way.” But I had the idea in mind. At the end of 2000, I wrote a letter to the Ricks College Registrar…. I heard from him, and he said, “Well, there may be a chance. Let’s see how it goes.” Because I already had a degree, there was an iffy opportunity. I think I probably got a call…saying, “For some reason your name came here, and we talked in a meeting. If we give you a scholarship and a chance to come to Ricks, would you be interested?” 110 And I said, “I definitely would be!” So it happened. I made it to Ricks! It was still Ricks when I came here in January of 2001. It was cold as heck here, but I did what I intended to do. So I am still a Ricks guy! We became BYU–Idaho later that year. (E. dos Santos, personal communication, July 13, 2007) I asked Josh if he had anything to share, but by now he had become curious about Eddy and the sentiment attached to being a Ricks College student. He said to Eddy, “To me growing up in Pocatello, when I heard about the change to BYU–Idaho, it was just a name” (J. Ormond, personal communication, July 13, 2007). Even though others in his family had attended the school, Josh had not felt any personal connection. He asked “What was that like for you? Ricks was such a big thing for you while you were in Sao Paulo. Then you came in and it became BYU–Idaho. Was that a big change for you—the name?” (ibid) By listening for Eddy’s response, as a researcher I gained verification for the depth and clarity of understanding he had gained through the transition. He said, Yes. But I think BYU–Idaho carries way more weight than Ricks College. Way more responsibility you have. In fact when President Hinckley announced the transition, he already said the name BYU–Idaho would be international recognition. It definitely did. Sometimes people don’t have an idea of where BYU is and what BYU–Idaho is and what BYU-Provo is. But they know it is a great institution. They definitely do know. (E. dos Santos, personal communication, July 13, 2007) Eddy became a business major with an emphasis in finance. Knowing of the time span of several years Eddy spent on campus, I asked for his perception of what had changed. He replied: “The spirit is the same. A lot of procedures have changed” (ibid). He listed off aspects of the academic changes and physical facilities, and then he said, Besides academics and building wise, I think after the transition, the attitude of the people changed. I see it even in my teachers. I remember the teachers that I had in the first semester. I see them now and talk to them now—the attitude—they stopped thinking small. That is for sure. Teachers do not think small any more when you go to a class today. Like my first semester, even though the announcement had already taken place, we still had teachers who had the mentality of a two-year school, small place. You go for bigger things in bigger places. That doesn’t happen any more. We kind of seized the opportunity right now. My last few years of class, the teachers no longer have the attitude of “this is a small place; you can experience bigger things in bigger places.” It doesn’t happen any more. You experience bigger things right here, right now. It is your moment, just seize it. So attitude wise it changed completely. The same teachers by the way are still here, but you know, they find a way to catch the vision and just move on with it. I see it…all over the place. They really believe that it is bigger, and it is 111 getting better. We just move it to bigger and better things…. They believe that now. It changed my vision, progressively. I think I already came here with the idea that BYU–Idaho would be a big boom in Rexburg, because it was already taking place. But I think I grew with the help of the teachers for sure. My attitude has changed gradually. The effect was greater on the teachers because they were here for way longer. They were used to this old style of teaching at Ricks College. But I think the teachers’ ability to teach better and to believe in what they teach influenced me and impacted my life. It definitely did. (ibid) I asked Eddy to describe what the teachers were doing in the classroom that was seen as better teaching through his eyes. He gave me an example of a specific teacher: I was thinking about him just this morning as I was preparing for an interview with a possible prospective employer. I was thinking about Brother Kusch. Brother Kusch is only one of them. I can go through a lot of people who are really amazing. Brother Kusch is an amazing business teacher, really good in strategy. He influenced me with a desire to learn about corporate strategy because he came from an industry background. But he also believes that the transition from Ricks College to BYU– Idaho brought a momentum for growth and a lot of opportunities that you had to embrace in order to become what you intend to become as a BYU–Idaho student. He had this ability to make us believe that. So he influenced me. He really filled me with that desire to become something better because he believed. I could see that in class. He always believed that students could be the best strategists that you could ever have outside. He believed that you could be the best financing guy that the world ever knew…. He believes in you. I think the transition brought this kind of belief in what the students can do. Just teach and let them do. Let them really work on things. He was a very challenging teacher. He gives you challenging assignments that really stretched you beyond your limits sometimes. Sometimes we would go crazy in class, but he believed in you. He believed in me. (ibid) Eddy learned to believe in himself and to embrace the opportunities. “For the Winter Semester 2005, Brigham Young University–Idaho students elected Eddy dos Santos to be student body president…. In the history of the school, he was the first Brazilian and third foreign student to serve as a student body officer and by far the oldest at age 28” (Rydalch, 2004, Nov. 14). Eddy speaks of his experience in campus leadership: I was the first South American to be ever elected. I got a letter from Mike Simpson in behalf of the Congress, and then I got a letter from Representative Butch Otter, who is now the governor, on behalf of the State of Idaho. It was a big thing, especially in Brazil. I got a lot of letters from all over the place. I got a lot of calls from Boston, New York, places where they have a concentration of international Brazilians living. It was kind of an embarrassing situation. Who is expecting that? It puts you too much in the spotlight. But I influenced a lot of people. After I was student body president here, the flood of international students who became officers or involved in the school is amazing. I am not taking 112 the credit for that, but I am glad that they were confident. I think before there was a mentality that, “Well, let’s let the American students do the whole thing. It is their school. They [have] already [been] doing that for years, so let the position go that way.” But it changed. A lot of people said, “Thanks very much for showing that I can find a way to get involved. I don’t need to be embarrassed for maybe not speaking the language or for being from another country.” …People started believing more in themselves. I got a sense of the involvement, a vision of involvement that I never got before. My sense, my perspective of giving back is way bigger since I served as an officer because you can see behind the scenes. I saw so many people. I think I got a taste of how much goes into BYU–Idaho…. I gain a perspective of being involved to spread the influence and gratitude for what this place has given for you. You can use your influence to do a lot of good. Sometimes it is not about changing things. It is not about changing rules. It is not about making policy, even though you can help here and there. But it is about influencing people, catching the vision of what BYU–Idaho is, and just spreading the vision to a lot of people. What is the difference? I think Ricks College set a very strong foundation and preparation for becoming BYU–Idaho—a foundation of obedience, a foundation of faith, a foundation of preparedness, a foundation of excellence. BYU–Idaho is an interesting community; I think mainly because the principles of caring are so emphasized. People care about me here. Everyone—from the students, to the teachers, to the staff, to people in the community—cares. Here and there you are going to find someone who doesn’t, but I overlook that. I pretend that I never see it. I try to be nice back to them, so they know that is not the way you do. But people care. It is part of what we are at BYU–Idaho. I think it is emphasized, and people really do it. It is automatic. (E. dos Santos, personal communication, July 13, 2007) As the researcher, I sat back and observed as a dialogue emerged between the two focus group participants. It became a session in peer-to-peer learning as Eddy shared his experiences and the process of gaining an academic internship through networking. The concept of caring in the individuals continued, but it was not idle talk. It was Eddy’s life: People are always impressed when they know that you care about them for whatever reason because they are not used to that. That is how the business world works. They are not used to having people who care about them or who know about them, or even care about their existence. So if you know about them, if you remember their name, they will never forget you. If you do that sincerely because you want to know more about them, they are really going to find the time to stop and talk to you. They will see things in you that they do not see in other people. And that is amazing. Out there a lot of people need that because people do not care very much about others. If they know that you care, they will care about you. (ibid) It was obvious that the expectations Eddy had dreamed of years before in Brazil for an experience of greatness had been met. But what about the other student in the focus 113 group? Josh had never held great aspirations for being a student at BYU–Idaho, but now he was in his senior year. What was the experience like for him? I listened to his reply: My first semester here was terrible. I hated it here. I wanted to go. I was accepted to ISU, BYU–Idaho, and Boise State. I really like Boise and have a lot of friends there, so I was going to go to Boise after my first semester here. I hated it, but I met my wife here and was dating her at the time. That is why I actually stayed. It really did dawn on me that BYU–Idaho was the right place for me to be at the time. But that is kind of how I went for a while. It was an “at-will” university. I would evaluate my time every semester, and I would look back and see what had happened and where I was going. It wasn’t until recently… that I really looked back and reflected on my time and knew that BYU–Idaho was the right place the whole time. The grounds that I was basing my dislike for the place are really not grounded in anything solid; they are just personal immaturity at the time. And you know BYU–Idaho has done great things for me and my wife…. BYU–Idaho has been a great experience for me, especially now with my teachers and at a senior level. I think there is a better fellowship between me and the professors…. I have no regrets about staying at BYU–Idaho and doing the things that I knew all along that I should be doing. It has been a great experience because of the progression—the progression coming from just not liking it at all to being able to see how it has been a great blessing in my life, to see the quality of education I have gotten, the amazing people I have met (including my wife), and the great opportunities and enthusiasm that the faculty provides the students…. All my teachers and even the students I have talked to are always very encouraging…. That I can do it. I will go. “Go find.” That is what makes it a great experience: the people, the quality, and just the optimism that is BYU–Idaho. That is what the “Spirit of Ricks” is to me: the optimism of a future. (J. Ormond, personal communication, July 13, 2007) As the researcher, I sensed that for Josh being at an institution caught in the vision of becoming something better had helped him gain that same optimism for his own future. I listened to other student participants in focus groups share their stories of the transition years; they also gave examples of meaningful learning experiences in and out of the classroom. Much like Josh, several had initially felt less than enthusiastic about attending BYU–Idaho. A student from California confessed, “I thought Idaho was just a weird state. I didn’t know much about it. People made lots of jokes about ‘go pick potatoes when you go to Idaho.’” Others from the East or big cities found “the whole culture is different.” The students said as they become more involved at BYU–Idaho, their perspectives changed. It became their “safe place.” “Heaven.” Being involved changed their self-image. “I have become more confident because I have had responsibilities given to me…. When 114 responsibilities come, even bigger ones, it is more exciting to me where before it was a fear.” They discovered an enhanced “education experience, not just learning book smarts, but learning people smarts.” If being involved is such a powerful factor in student success, then creating more opportunities for students to do so would seem a natural step in the transitions in higher education. This should not undermine the academic processes of the past. “Transition does not require that you reject or deny the importance of your old life, just that you let go of it” (Bridges, 2001, p. 16). President Kim B. Clark (2005) states the following: The challenge before us is to create even more powerful and effective learning experiences in which students learn by faith. This requires, but is more than, teaching by the Spirit. To learn by faith, students need opportunities to take action. Some of those opportunities will come in a stronger, even more effective Activities Program where students lead and teach one another and participate broadly. Some of them will come in the classroom, where prepared students, exercising faith, step out beyond the light they already possess, to speak, to contribute, and to teach one another. In the classroom: student/faculty interaction. Broadhead, the Dean of the College of Business and Communication, beckons to students, “If you want to be involved, if you want to grow and have opportunity, then this is the place to come. And you will be better, and you will rise to a new level.” I watched the Dean’s hands one held low, circling and in motion— the other high and steady as he continued, “We have got to help students who now are here and in the middle, all of them rise to a new level and step to a higher step” (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007). I had seen that same hand motion several times. The concept of having a vision or goal and then the momentum from below that incrementally rises to higher expectations. A closer look at incidences revealed changed perspectives and methods in the classroom experiences. Eddy and Josh both shared feelings of the powerful influence of teachers who care enough to push them to raise the bar of their own expectations and to have faith and believe in themselves. But how do members of the faculty articulate the action through their perspective? As explained previously, members of the faculty at BYU–Idaho are not tenured, nor are they required to do research. Their focus instead is on teaching and learning. This, in many ways, makes change more feasible. Otherwise the situation would be similar to what was explained in a recent article in The Chronicle for Higher Education: 115 While college leaders talk about the importance of better teaching at their institutions, the academic departments controlling tenure decisions fear that an emphasis on teaching will lead them to fall behind peers at other institutions in the race for prestige, in which the winners are determined by their research productivity. (Brainard, 2007) I listened to what BYU–Idaho faculty had to say about their own changes and the changes at BYU–Idaho. Their ability to focus on the students was evident. The Dean of the College of Business and Communication stated, Whose responsibility is it for change? The student or the teacher? Well, it is both. It is very much both, and we are not there yet. We are not even close to being there yet to where we will be when we develop this into a learning institution that will be, I envision, as good as any thing there is upon the earth. But we are not close.” (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007) Using a metaphor of building construction, he continued “Foundation wise, I think we are close, but there is a lot do upstairs” (ibid). Developing the institution also means developing the individuals who work there. A faculty member in the Department of Home and Family hired at the onset of the transition explained her efforts to make changes in her own personal development as she states, I am able to let go of the perfectionism in me and the needing to be in control and to instead try to understand what is it that needs to be done. What would the Lord have me do here? And on the one hand, you want to do very well. You want to be highly competent in everything and to really do well, but it is not about me. I still maintain trying to have that expertise and that quest and that trying to learn. That is a really strong desire and passion that developed in my early years…, that love of learning. But it is giving up some of, I guess perhaps you would classify it as pride, giving up some of that “I have got to do, I have got to be the best, I have got to really do well to justify being here,” and being a little bit more accepting of myself and letting the students become. Moving from that very strong teacher-centered, to more focusing in on the student and the developing of the students and that process. (Cook, personal communication, May 31, 2007) As the researcher striving to capture an accurate moment in time, I also listened as student participants’ responses to the open-ended questions. Though the sentiments of some of the faculty are great and noble aspirations personally, the students are finding varying levels of faculty adaptation. The students’ responses indicate sensitivity to the attitude of the instructors that is not always positive. One commented as follows: There are a few that I have had for a course that I didn’t agree with, their teaching style or something. I thought they might have been more interested in dealing with 116 content. Maybe even less than that, maybe just concerned with doing their job—kind of like getting the course done. (Focus group, private conversation, June 21, 2007) No. BYU–Idaho was “not there yet.” But if there was a problem, there was also an opportunity to improve. As a researcher, I learned along with the participants as I first listened and then later tried to better define some of the principles that arose. Cook, a member of the faculty, shared the following: I see the opportunity to be able to have an impact on students’ lives. It is not so much a learning of the content to go out, but a becoming of somebody who can make an influence throughout the world, the disciple leader. It took me a long time to understand what a leader with a small “l” is. I heard people quote that quite a bit, and I am going, that has never really been defined for me. What are you referring to on this? (Cook, personal communication, May 31, 2007) Even as the participant continued talking, my researcher mind did a quick connection to the definition that “leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow” (Kouzes & Posner, 2002, p. 20). Then later I followed up on the participant’s lead to review President Clark’s explanation of the concept of leadership with a small “l” given in his inaugural speech. He said, When I use that word leader, I have in mind leadership with a small “l” [italics added]. This is the kind of leadership we need in every part of every kind of organization in our society. We want our students to provide the kind of leadership that serves, and inspires—first and foremost in their families and in the Church, in their communities, and in their work. (Clark, 2005) To President Clark, leadership with the small “l” is an essential part of the mission of BYU–Idaho. Later he expounded on the concept for the alumni magazine: Our mission is to do two things. One is to prepare young people to be disciples of the Savior. The other is to develop them as leaders—first and foremost in their families so they will be great moms and dads, great husbands and wives. We want them to be leaders in the Church—faithful, active and committed, but also capable of taking on the responsibilities the Lord gives them. We also want them to be leaders in their communities, the world they live in, and in their work—wherever they are. The kind of leadership we have in mind is leadership with a small “l.” It’s leadership that serves and inspires in every kind of organization at every level…. It’s the kind of leadership someone running a company wants in their team leaders and department heads…. It’s the combination of skill, ability, and training not only in the classroom but in practical experiences where they really develop their skills in leading and directing. And it happens in an environment where they become disciples of the Savior. Many of our young people will go on to become a significant influence because of what they learn here. (A conversation, 2006) 117 Statements such as those made by President Clark give the faculty a sense of their product, the student. He defines them first as disciples. The concept and how that vision affects the relationship between the faculty and the student was expressed by T. L. McRae, Chair of the Department of Interior Design, who described counsel his faculty gives students: They hear from us all the time, “You are not just here learning some facts. You are here to learn how to be a disciple. There is much more expected from you than facts. When you go out in the industry, we still expect of you. We still expect you to give back to the university, not necessarily financially—although that would be nice—but we expect you to tell us what we need to be doing. We expect you to be representative of the Church, of the University, of the interior design industry, to raise the level of the interior design industry.” They hear us telling them that all the time, and I think when they leave they are just power packed to go out and do that. (T. McRae, personal communication, June 1, 2007) Helping prepare students to be successful employees was important. Realizing students need to have a marketable skill set, faculty kept an ear to the needs of industry. The Faculty Association President said he had been visiting with several faculty to get their perspectives about what employers look for in their candidates for a new position. A specific conversation with Rudy Puzey, Chair of the Construction Management Department, stood out. The students in this department have been highly successful when competing on a national level and are sought after as interns. The Faculty Association President related: I had a conversation with Rudy Puzey in construction management. He met with employers, these big companies, and asked them what they were looking for in the students. He was trying to find a skill set that he wanted to teach his students; he was looking for this skill. Employers would not take the bait. They said, “No, we will teach them the skills. I want somebody who is a good at communicating. I want someone who is good at getting along with people. I want somebody who is good at problem solving.” You know it is those general skills that they really look for. Yes, they need some knowledge of business or biology, but not near as much as we like to believe. (D. Lyons, personal communication, June 8, 2007) The faculty at BYU–Idaho were discovering for themselves the same things that were being observed by others. In January of 2007 the Association of American Colleges and Universities sent out a warning: College graduates are increasingly less prepared to compete in the global economy. The solution, the group said in a report, is for colleges to adopt a broader curriculum, with less focus on specific technical training and more on skills like critical thinking and problem solving…. In the survey, “How Should Colleges Prepare Students to Succeed in Today’s Global Economy?” 305 executive companies that employ at least 118 25 people were asked what they looked for in a job candidate. The top three choices were “teamwork skills,” “critical thinking and analytic reasoning skills,” and “oral/written communication.” (Vance, 2007) For faculty who catch that vision, their role becomes that of “helping the students realize who they really are. It is not about the content of the classroom; it is developing something broader for the students. Helping them become somebody rather than just knowing something” (K. Cook, personal communication, May 31, 2007). The Dean of the College of Business and Communication puts it this way: BYU–Idaho becomes a facilitator in helping them step out. I think the idea of leadership with a small “l” is very important in all of this…. Basically it is made up of two parts: the inner person and the tools that they would use. When you talk about leadership with the small “l,” you talk about leadership in the community, leadership in your work, leadership within your family. On any of those, if you have a solid person and some basic tools and skills, then they can make a good leader at any of those levels. That is how we are trying to do it. That is what I mean by leadership with the small “l.” The other thing that people do not realize, is that everybody thinks they have to be the chief, when leadership can be demonstrated by a person just by how he works, how he treats others around him, what type of a team player he is. That is all part of leadership. (F. Broadhead, personal communication, July 5, 2007) The concept of leadership with the small “l” was vital to the transition for the University. It was essential for individuals—students and employees alike—to demonstrate their willingness to lead out through their work and studies without relying on the “chief” for every direction. In becoming, both the individual and the university had to extend beyond the baseline to become dynamic—vibrant and ready to continue the processes of learning and growing rather than just knowing how to pass the test (whether it be associated with a specific course or accreditation) and then becoming stagnant and motionless. Even though there have been significant strides, the Dean of the College of Business and Communication is not content with status quo for his college. “There are a lot of opportunities for us that we do not even perceive out there,” Broadhead said. He continued: Students do have to be willing to change. We are a long ways from where we need to be with students, but we are also a ways from where we need to be with faculty. Students are responding. We have been using participatory-based learning in the College of Business and Communication longer than others who are starting to move into it, just because of the nature. We have got to move forward, we decided to move ahead and try some things. We had some perception…. I think we are making some progress. Can students come prepared to class? Can a teacher set it up so they can see 119 the preparation? Can students come and participate and share their learning? Those are the major three ways they will have to change. The days of coming to a class in the College of Business and Communication where you just come in and sit there and take notes and record and go take a test, I hope are totally gone. There is a fine balance there. I say those three things: preparation, participation, and sharing and teaching one another—a team concept where we are in this to make the product better and I need to be better. That is what students will have to do. (ibid) As faculty continually adjust their methods of delivery and raise the bar of expectations, they express high aspirations for their students. The students are rising to the occasion. One of the department chairs said, I give credit to not just the faculty but to the students. They are amazing. When you expect a lot of students—meet a certain standard or else you are out—it is amazing how they will reach and move to that standard and compete for that standard. But you know, the students we have are just choice…. They are here for a reason. You know that you are helping prepare them for a reason. You just know that. (T. McRae, personal communication, June 1, 2007) Outside the classroom. When Steve Wheelwright came from Harvard to assist the Executive Office as a service volunteer, he looked into the “corners” to gain insight into the organization. I, as a novice researcher with a lengthy association to BYU–Idaho, was curious to learn how an accomplished researcher with a new association to BYU–Idaho viewed the University. One of the things he discovered was an abundance of students leading students. Students were learning things—because of the position they were in—things they would not have learned in the class. He explained as follows: It is almost like you have two universities where teaching and learning are going on. One is the regular classroom, the regular faculty and the other is—and I would include the Activities group in this too—it is the other stuff that is not academic classes. Some of it is related; obviously the learning centers are related to the academics they are learning. But I think most of the academic side probably underestimates what it contributes and what it can contribute. And yet it is one of the real pockets of strength I would argue in the school. (S. Wheelwright, personal communication, May 9, 2007) As the researcher, I followed Wheelwright’s lead and looked into the other nonacademic university and why it would be considered a strength. Students are leading in academic societies, cultural associations, the learning centers, Activities Program, and so on. By progressively focusing, I zoomed in on the Activities Program in stages: first, an explanation of the Activities Program development and guiding principles; second, a perspective from the administrator who oversees the program, Clark Gilbert; third, 120 viewpoints from the secretary who had given administrative assistance for a number of years; and concluding with the students who had been the participants in the Activities Program. When the Chairman of the Board of Trustees announced the transition, he said there would be an expanded activities program. This is “one of the most important changes that has taken place with the transition” (BYU–Idaho, 2004). As previously explained, the Director of the Athletic Department, Garth Hall, was invited to oversee the evolution of the new programs. He met with a committee and began developing guiding principles which were: • A wide range of activities will meet the diverse interests and abilities of students. • Students choose their own level of participation. • Students are the participants rather than the spectators. • Participants have an opportunity to act rather than be acted upon. • Participants will develop personal and spiritual qualities that prepare them for life. (ibid) The programs would “foster the personal, interpersonal, and leadership development” (ibid). Hall said, “I started to see what a blessing it would be for more kids, and it wasn’t just about participating. It was about developing them and having them be able to act and be able to take programs of responsibilities themselves. I got pretty excited about that” (Hall, personal communication, May 29, 2007). The Activities Program still included competitive athletics but at a different level. Rather than being intercollegiate, it became intracollegiate. This concept became a curious attention getter. A reporter for The Chronicle for Higher Education came to Rexburg, visited with students, and attended a game. She reported: It looks like a real college football game. Fans, sipping hot chocolate, cheer on the players, who make hard tackles under the glare of stadium lights. The university's mascot, a white-bearded Viking, energizes the crowd while the band plays and the spirit squad throws mini-footballs into the stands. But a look across the field reveals a strange emptiness. No fans from another university sit in the bleachers. Students from the same university, it turns out, are actually playing each other. When Brigham Young University–Idaho expanded from a two-year college to a four-year university two years ago, officials gave up a successful junior-college athletics program in favor of one where its own teams compete against each other. The Knights and the Wildcats, two teams in the university's six-team football league, are facing off in this Saturday-night game. The program officials envisioned would give more students more opportunities to play sports, and by all accounts, it has done so. According to officials, what was then known as Ricks College had 268 varsity athletes in 2001-2. 121 Now the institution has 1,500 students, a little more than 10 percent of the student body, participating. At a time when varsity sports have become increasingly expensive and typically give only a few students the chance to learn teamwork, selfdiscipline, and competitiveness, Brigham Young's Idaho campus has created, supporters say, a cheaper, more inclusive alternative. The university, unlike many other institutions, has turned its back on the “arms race” that some critics say college sports has become and freed itself from the competitive pressures facing most college teams. (Jacobsen, 2005) Impressive, but competitive athletics with some 94 teams was only one segment of the Activities Program. The program was organized into four areas: Arts, Enrichment, Physical, and Social (see Figure 7). “Each area has a wide range of activities in which students participate as organizers, performers, or spectators” (BYU–Idaho, 2004). ACTIVITIES Physical Arts Enrichment Art Dance Music Theater Leadership Service Married Women Academic Challenge Fitness Intramurals Athletics Outdoors Social Talent Entertainment Dances FIGURE 7. Components of the Activities Program (BYU–Idaho, 2004, p.143). “The reach of these activities has been exceptional, with nearly every student being touched by some portion of the Activities Program” (BYU–Idaho, 2004, p. 142). BYU– Idaho’s 2004 Self-Report stated that student leaders/advisor volunteers gave 50,000 hours annually supporting the Activities Program. Commissioner Henry B. Eyring, called it “leadership training of the broadest and most exciting kind” (Activities, 2002). The Activities Program is student-led. Coincidentally, a student involved in the Enrichment/Leadership area led me to Clark Gilbert as I sought to better understand how concepts of organizational learning and accountability in higher education are exemplified in the Activities Program. Gilbert is the Managing Director of the Activities Program and peerto-peer learning. As explained before, Gilbert came to BYU–Idaho in the fall of 2006 from Harvard. I wondered what he saw in BYU–Idaho and the students. When I entered his office—or more accurately his unpretentious cubicle located in the midst of a busy interactive office setting—I became curious about a sketch on the whiteboard on his wall. It 122 showed an x-y axis with an intercepting line headed up into infinity; a slope intercept formula was written above and to the side. The diagram caused me to do a paradigm shift; I came expecting motivational phrases on leadership, organizational structures, or notes on any of the numerous events within Activities. But the mathematical dominance was unanticipated. I had “an inquiring mind” (Yin, 2003b, p. 59) and asked for an explanation. Gilbert kindly handled my query as he explained the following: What matters more, the slope or the intercept? If you take a snapshot or a point in time, the intercept matters more. But if your set is ∞ (infinity), then actually the intercept in all statistics wipes away as none significant. You don’t even report it in some places, because it doesn’t matter if you have an infinite rise. All that actually matters is your slope. Or are you improving? And so we should not become comfortable. Our sense of progress should be around if we are improving. Are we changing? Are we fixing things? Are we learning? Not how much have we done. I think that is one of the problems with any kind of changes. We can look at progress and think we are done or that we are good already. You know, I am a great teacher as opposed to saying, “How can I be better?” “How can I teach more students, how can I reach out?” And so the slope matters. People focus way too much on the intercept, and people judge each other: “Well, he’s a great teacher.” I think God only looks at the slope. That quest for the upward slope is life in Activities. Even the areas reported in the 2004 Self Study are changing. Much of what Gilbert shared with me lies outside of the delimitations of this study, but suffice it to say that the nature of innovation and change has become part of the Activities Program and thus part of the University. The statements included represent principles rather than specific programs. He said, “I don’t think anything is stable—nothing is static. Everything is changing.” His sentiment echoed experts on organizational learning who have said: “The creation of a continuous deliberate process for change and innovations is a critical component of a learning organization” (Watkins & Marsick, 1993, p. 185). Gilbert then referred to a statement made by the Commissioner of the Church Educational System in 2001 as follows: Change will not end. The phrase “rethinking education” is not to be only a slogan for the transformation from a two- to four-year status, the school is to be a place of educational innovation—permanently... I can with confidence make you a promise. When you return in some distant future, you will find great innovation has become commonplace, and yet, amidst all the changes, the school will have retained and enriched the basic characteristics that blessed your life. (Eyring, 2001) 123 The pieces of the transition were fitting together in my mind as I listened to Gilbert. Wheelwright (personal communication, May 9, 2007) had pointed out that leaders often state what they hope “will be, not just what it is. This is very common for somebody in a leadership position…. If we set the expectation, people will meet the expectation.” I was beginning to see that the leader might be a commissioner of education, a university president, an administrative advisor for Activities, or perhaps even the students leading students and teaching each other as peers on an upward slope of dual self-improvement. To help the students be prepared to teach their peers, they are given some guidance. Vickie Lovell, the full-time administrative assistant for the Activities Program, shared the following observation: Clark [Gilbert] introduced the advisor role model of prepare, observe, and reflect and taught how we do things in Activities so they can empower students more whether it is Admissions or Registrar’s or Honor Code or all of the aspects of student services. That was 32 people who were taught a little bit more …. Now they are going to go out in their areas and teach their councils. (V. Lovell, personal communication, June 15, 2007) In the role of the researcher, I asked Gilbert how he felt students were adapting to being in an environment where everything continues to change. He replied, Better than the school. They are ahead of us in many ways. For example, in peer instruction, we are just trying to figure it out. The students are ready. If we had everything for them, they could take it all. I work with a biased set because every student here is like our best. I know I am biased, and so I hear sometimes “students aren’t mature enough to do this” or “they don’t have the expertise” or “they are not reliable enough.” My experience is they are better than we are, and they are ready to take on leadership. When they do, the learning goes through the roof. The temptation is always to say, “I have got to explain it.” I was with one of my lead students last fall, and it was a lesson on teach by asking questions. I had been trained in one of the best institutions in the world on that very skill. I thought, “Man this is going to be hard to let him explain it to other people.” That is how I felt all the way leading up into the lesson, until the lesson started. And he walked through First Nephi when the Angel Moroni teaches Nephi about the Tree of Life – Lehi’s vision by asking questions. Then he goes to the Savior and how the Savior taught the apostles by asking questions. Then he went through an Ensign article entitled “Questioning Questions in Gospel Teaching” (Monson, 1979) which I never even knew existed. He had found it because he was researching for the lesson. It gave six types of questions you could ask and what the benefits are to different learning outcomes. And then he had us all take the next lesson and write discussion questions about each of those six questions. And I thought, “Boy what if I thought I was the only one who knew about this. Not only would he not have learned 124 as much, but I wouldn’t have.” I find the students are absolutely ready for this. Sure there are unprepared students, but I think we need to trust them and raise the bar. (C. Gilbert, personal communication, May 10, 2007) From a researcher standpoint, Gilbert and his small full-time staff seemed obviously enamored by the students and the opportunity to facilitate the ongoing changes. “Leaders are open to receiving ideas from anyone and anywhere; they’re porous people” (Kouzes & Posner, 2002, p. 195). Gilbert’s administrative assistant, Vickie Lovell, said, Every time some little change comes along, it is just like, “Ok, let’s just push forward. Hang on and here we go.” Even changing from watching how it was when [in the beginning] to get the student face, to allow the students to lead, all of these things that have helped to get Activities ready for the next change with peer-to-peer learning, and the student spirit events area. I think we are closer to connecting with academics than we ever had. All of these little baby steps have just gotten us closer to the transition. It will still be changing. Look where we are in seven years. I can only imagine where we are going to be in another seven years. Because the things we are working on right now will probably be in place and there will be whole new things. It will be exciting…. I think how few students were involved at a junior college level in just the Activities Program. They went to class, did things, and they were involved in sports. [Look at] just that small group who were involved in sports compared to now the thousands who are involved in those leadership roles of coaching and just coordinating. It is phenomenal: the [level of] involvement and the students are better prepared. You just see how much better leadership they have. (V. Lovell, personal communication, June 15, 2007) As a researcher, I wanted to check how well the students were developing in leadership—leadership with the small “l”. Would I see the same qualities of leadership in the students as those who interact closely with them on a day-to-day basis? A visit was set up with Katherine Mitchell, a former student body officer. She shared her perspectives: It has changed since then, but when I was a student body officer, we were over the Activities Program. We would counsel with other student leaders on campus and talk to them about how they could improve their committees, improve their organizations. I also sat on the Advancement Council with [Vice President] Garth Hall and helped with…events. It was so good. The [student body] president at the time was so amazing. It may be why it was such a good experience, but I remember [him] telling me that he had seen me grow a lot. He was surprised at how much I had grown in those three or four months. And looking back at how I was when I first met him when we started out the first few weeks and then at the end, I had seen a lot of growth. That wasn’t something I planned, but just the way the program is set up. It just naturally occurs. (K. Mitchell, personal communication, June 15, 2007). 125 Involvement in the Activities Program seemed to be such a learning opportunity for the students. I asked Katherine how it compared for her with what she was learning in the classroom. She responded: I think it surpasses it. I think in the classroom I personally have not had as many opportunities, as many responsibilities in the class. There is the equal responsibility that everybody has to do homework, but not too much [personal] responsibility. If I fail, I get a grade, but I don’t own it as much. Maybe that is just a personal thing. (ibid) I next asked her what made her feel more accountable or responsible when she was involved in the Activities Program rather than in a classroom setting. Her reply sounded like the Activities guiding principles, and yet I sensed they had become applications through lived experiences for Katherine as she said, The opportunity to act rather than be acted upon. How we have the opportunity to participate rather than be a spectator. It is those principles that are not just talked about, but they really happen. I guess things that I see happen, people who might not feel comfortable growing in a competitive place. I think some of the negativity of competition is taken out here where it really is ok to fail. If you fail you do not lose. But if you fail, you grow. It is a loving place where you can fail and it is ok. It is almost encouraged but not really. (ibid) The idea of encouraging failure might be a bit disturbing for some in higher education. It might seem more accurate if you consider first that the fear of failure can curtail action. The need for constant success can cause some to avoid any situation that risks failure. “It is ok to fail, as long as you learn from it” (T. Williams, personal communication, May 10, 2006). Katherine describes a situation where from her viewpoint she could have failed, but by taking the opportunity to act, she pushed aside her self-concern to make a difference in the life of one of her peers: For instance there is this kid, who actually I met right out here [in the student center commons area]. He was sitting by himself, and we had just had a meeting about inviting people to participate. I went up to him. I invited him to come be part of the Activities…. When I started to talk to him, I went, “I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t even know him. This is tough.” But we had talked about opening your mouth like the scriptures say and it will be filled. And I went up to him and went, “Hey. Aaa” And he went, “Hi.” I said, “How is your apple?” It was just kind of awkward. But anyway he came in, and he was one of the best members. He was in the Student Alumni Association. He came to every meeting, every activity. He invited his friends to it…. [Later] he was kind and thanked me— 126 but really this Activities Program—for the changes that brought about in his life. He was able to become more open, more sociable. He met more people, grew, and had opportunities. (K. Mitchell, personal communication, June 15, 2007) As the researcher, I was impressed that Katherine could see herself as someone who was overcoming her fears. First she had raised her own self expectation and perhaps esteem with encouragement through interaction with her peers; she then in time reached out to lift another student. It seemed to be similar to the faculty becoming invisible as the students become better, only here it was a peer leader becoming invisible and finding satisfaction in helping someone else gain leadership skills. There was a momentum, a movement on an upward slope. In addition I found that it was not just students who were gaining leadership skill through involvement in the Activities Program. It seemed everyone was a teacher and a learner at BYU–Idaho. In addition to her duties as an administrative assistant and being able to observe students interacting in their councils, Lovell was asked to chair the Employee Advisory Council. She described her experience as follows: It was so scary when President Bednar asked me to serve in that capacity. I remember sitting in his office and I just cried. I said, “Oh, you don’t want me to do that.” And he said, “We feel strongly that you can serve in this capacity.” It was very frightening for me to do that. I am much more a behind-the-scene person, but I had a great council to work with, and it was amazing to be given assignments from the President’s Council to meet as a council and review…. We were asked to give insights,… to get feedback from employees, and then also share that back which helped change some of the policy…. The things I learned in Activities helped me be effective on that council. (V. Lovell, personal communication, June 15, 2007) My one-on-one interview was not the only place I heard similar statements. Others in the student focus group could see they had learned to “think outside the box a little bit,” “to innovate and change things,” “to not be satisfied with the way things are, just to have that perspective that things can change, and things will change.” One of the students declared, “This school has taught me…how to become a better leader. I think that will help us out when we go out to work because there are a lot of jobs that are looking for leaders—people who have learned and developed those skills.” Another student had come to realize an ongoing responsibility: “This school wants us to go out there and be like ‘I am from BYU– Idaho. You know they are changing things there, and this is what I am from this school.’” 127 Being a student in higher education during a time of transition had seemed to multiply the opportunities for students rather than diminish the experience. Katherine Mitchell stated, The transition period. I think it has been wonderful, because somewhere along the way I have been blessed by a perspective that this is all for the better.… I don’t know who taught me that, I can’t pinpoint it. But I know a lot of people have influenced me in seeing that the transition process at this school has been for the big good. It hasn’t been going downhill, but definitely uphill. (K. Mitchell, personal communication, June 21, 2007) Chapter V Summary In Chapter V, the researcher listened to the participants’ stories and wove them together to present a tapestry of the transition and changes as Ricks College became BYU– Idaho. It began with the voice of the participants describing mixed response as the announcement was received. Participants openly shared their experience in response to the open-ended questions of the research. Interrelated aspects of the transition were visually presented as a cube with sides representing (1) faculty, (2) budget, (3) space, (4) degree programs, (5) support services, and (6) students. This visual aid guided the development of the story as participants helped explore each of these six aspects and their learning experiences in greater depth. In Chapter V the researcher listened and described what was observed. Realizing that in so doing she was “creating something that has never existed before. At best it can be similar, never exactly the same as what [I] observed” (Wolcott, 1994, p. 151). To preserve the story, researcher comments were intermingled only lightly leading up to the researcher’s evaluation presented in Chapter VI.