Brigham Young University
|
|
| Name |
Brigham Young University
|
| location (main campus) |
Provo, UT 84602
|
| Established |
October 16, 1875
|
| Community |
Urban
|
| Type |
Private coeducational
|
| Classification |
Parochial
|
| Religion |
Owned and closely controlled by the LDS Church
|
| Enrollment |
32,400
|
| Faculty |
2,100
|
| President |
Cecil O.
Samuelson
|
| Nickname |
Cougars
|
| Mascot |
Cougar
|
| School Colors |
Dark blue and beige
|
| Motto |
"Enter to learn, go forth to serve"
|
| Newspaper |
Daily Universe
|
| Yearbook |
Banyan (no longer issued)
|
| Website |
Link (http://home.byu.edu/webapp/home/index.jsp)
|
| Email |
Link (http://home.byu.edu/webapp/home/level3/feedback.jsp)
|
|
Brigham Young University (BYU, or simply the Y) was founded as Brigham Young Academy in 1875 by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church; see also Mormon).
It has grown to become the largest private university in the United
States and one of the world's largest church-affiliated schools, with an enrollment of roughly 32,400 undergraduate students
at the beginning of 2003. BYU is located in Provo, Utah, with sister schools in Lā'ie, Hawai'i (Brigham Young University-Hawaii) and Rexburg, Idaho (Brigham Young University-Idaho) serving an additional 12,000 students. The main campus
sits on approximately 600 acres (2.4 kmē) at the foot of the Wasatch
Mountains and includes 333 buildings. Additional facilities include the BYU Jerusalem Center, the
BYU Salt Lake Center, and the Joseph Smith Academy.
Demographics
Students from every state in the nation and from many foreign countries attend BYU (in 2001, 110 different countries were represented by more than 1,600 BYU students). Although students are not required to
be Mormons, about 98% do belong to the church.
Academics
BYU offers bachelor’s degrees in 198 academic programs, master’s degrees in 69, doctorates in 27 and juris
doctorates in one. The university is organized into 11 colleges.
BYU's Harold B. Lee Library, which in 2004 the Princeton Review
ranked as the #1 "Great College Library", has more than 6 million items in its collections, contains 98 miles of shelving, and
can seat 4,600 people.
Honor Code
All students and faculty must agree to adhere to a strict honor code. The
BYU honor code governs academic behavior, morality, and dress and grooming standards of students and faculty, with the aim of
providing an atmosphere consistent with church principles. Students must commit to being honest, chaste and virtuous; abstaining from illicit
drugs, alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea (substances forbidden by the Word of Wisdom); using clean language; and abiding by the guidelines for dress,
grooming, and housing. For example, skirts and shorts must reach to the knee and shirts may not be sleeveless. Male students may not sport beards or goatees without permission, usually granted to men with severe
skin conditions aggravated by shaving; or to men whose religious beliefs, such as Islam
or Sikhism, require them to wear beards. Students must live either in on-campus
housing or in off-campus housing which has been approved by the University. The specifics of the honor code provide a perpetual
topic for debate among the students and alumni.
Subsidization and religious education
LDS tithing funds subsidize roughly 80% of the cost of education at BYU, allowing
affordable tuition for its students regardless of their membership in the LDS church, although tuition for students who are not
Mormon is fifty percent above usual rates. In addition to fulfilling general-education requirements, students must complete 14
semester hours of specialized religious education which include some mandatory classes on LDS scripture.
Reputation
BYU consistently receives national recognition for its strong undergraduate and graduate programs. U.S. News & World Report ranks BYU's Marriott
School of Management and the J. Reuben Clark Law School in the top 40 in the country.
In the July 2002 edition of the Chronicle of
Higher Education, BYU was recognized as the best in the nation at turning research dollars into inventions and new companies.
Some notable inventions originating at BYU include a drug for treating a rare form of leukemia, water modeling software, and the
modern word-processor. Philo T. Farnsworth developed some of
his ideas for the creation of the television while attending BYU. Harvey
Fletcher, a BYU alumnus, went on to carry out the now famous oil-drop experiment with Robert Millikan,
and was later Founding Dean of the BYU College of Engineering.
BYU is on the list of censured administrations of the American Association of University Professors due to past violations of the
generally recognized principles of academic freedom and tenure as
recognized by the AAUP. BYU has been on this list since 1998. The AAUP report states that
"the climate for academic freedom at Brigham Young University is distressingly poor". The president of BYU at the time of the
investigation and censure left office in 2003; the AAUP has subsequently sent the new
president a description of the steps needed to have the censure removed.
Study abroad program
BYU runs the largest study-abroad program in the United States, with satellite centers in London, Jerusalem, and Paris, as well as more than 20 other sites. The Institute of International Education ranks BYU as the number one university in the US
to offer students study abroad opportunities; nearly 2,000 students take advantage of these programs yearly. BYU's motto is "The
World is Our Campus".
(The BYU Jerusalem Center closed indefinitely in 2002
due to safety concerns related to the Second Intifada.)
Language program
Seventy-five percent of the men and twelve percent of the women at BYU have served as missionaries for The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, with roughly half serving in non-English speaking regions. Seventy-two percent of the student
body speaks a second language, and many faculty are fluent in at least one language other than English. During any given semester, roughly twenty-five percent of the student body may be enrolled
in language courses—a rate three times the national average. BYU is renowned for its depth of foreign language and
linguistic training, offering courses in 74 different languages (according to President Bateman, Fall 2002), many with advanced
courses which are seldom offered elsewhere. The multi-lingual student body proved to be a valuable resource for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Foreign film program
BYU's International Cinema is the largest and longest-running foreign film program in the country, showing 20 screenings per
week to roughly 1,000 people. Its main purpose is to supplement the curriculum of the College of Humanities and the Honors
Program with culturally and linguistically diverse films.
Independent study program
BYU's Department of Independent Study is accredited by the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools (NAAS), the Northwest
Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), and the Commission on International and Transregional Accreditation (CITA). The
department offers courses to nearly 500,000 students every year, many to students in countries outside the United States.
Ballroom dance team
The BYU Ballroom Dance Company is known as one of the best formation ballroom dance teams in the world. The NDCA National
Dancesport championships have been held at BYU for many years, and BYU holds dozens of ballroom dance classes each semester,
totalling thousands of students per semester, making it by far the largest ballroom dance program in the US.
Athletics
From the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, BYU had an outstanding football program. In 1984, BYU's football team went undefeated to become the NCAA Division I-A
national football champions. This was the first and only time that BYU won the football national championship. They became
champs by beating Michigan in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego, marking the first time that a number-one ranked college football
team did not play in a New Year's Day bowl game. Some like NBC's Bryant Gumbel and Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer criticized BYU
for having a weak schedule in 1984. It didn't matter however, since BYU was undefeated and they had attained the number one
ranking in the AP, UPI, and other polls.
In 1990, quarterback Ty Detmer won college football's most prestigious
individual award, the Heisman Trophy. Detmer is the only BYU football
player ever to win the award. During the 1990 season, BYU defeated the number-one ranked Miami Hurricanes in Provo. Detmer passed
for 5,188 yards and 41 touchdowns during this season.
The head football coach during BYU's football glory years was LaVell Edwards. Edwards is a legend among college football coaches, winning 257 games over
a span of 29 years. Only five other head coaches have won more games. He was twice awarded with coach of the year awards (in
1979 and in 1984). Edwards' last season as head coach
was in 2000. (Sources:http://www.byucougars.com/football/history/honors.html; http://web.ksl.com/TV/byufb/01year.htm).
During BYU's football glory days, the school colors were bright royal blue and white. At the beginning of the 1999 season, the
school colors got a makeover, switching to dark blue and beige.
The BYU women's cross-country team won the NCAA National Championship in 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2002.
BYU has also won NCAA National Championships in golf, track, and men's volleyball (3 times: in 1999, 2001, and 2004). The
school colors are blue, white and tan and its mascot is Cosmo the Cougar and its
primary conference is the Mountain West Conference.
Its men's volleyball team plays in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.
BYU's men's soccer club participates as a university-owned franchise in the United Soccer Leagues' Premier Developmental League.
BYU also has a strong intramural sports program, offering more than 30 sports and involving more than 10,000 participants each
year.
Culture
BYU's social and cultural atmosphere is unique and often conflicted. The high rate of enrollment at the University by members
of the LDS Church results in an amplification of LDS cultural norms which is often caricatured.
What makes BYU most unique is probably that most of its students abstain from all forms of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. The
majority of the students likewise avoid premarital sex. This surely sets the university apart from other American universities.
They avoid these things because of their LDS (Mormon) beliefs.
The confluence of students from predominantly Mormon communities from Utah and other parts of the Western United States with
that of students from regions where Mormonism is much less prevalent results in intrareligious conflicts that are played out on a
campus-wide stage.
One of the characteristics of BYU most often noted (and derided) is its reputation for emphasizing a "marriage culture". LDS
Church members highly value marriage and family, as well as marriage within the faith. Consequently, the enormous population of
LDS single adults in and around Provo makes it a mecca for singles in the church, irrespective of their affiliation with BYU.
(Nearby Utah Valley State College, in Orem, is notorious within the LDS Church for attracting marginal students whose
primary motivation for attending the school is to marry a BYU student.) BYU's "meat market" reputation is well known both within
and without the BYU community, and is encouraged to some extent by the school's administrators and ecclesiastical leaders, who
publicly highlight "successful" marriage statistics (http://saas.byu.edu/depts/graduation/statistics.aspx).
The perception of BYU as a glorified Mormon dating service, combined with the high esteem in which most Mormons hold
stay-at-home mothers and breadwinner/homemaker marriages, has resulted in stereotype of the female BYU student more interested in
marriage than education--in a popular phrase, "pursuing her M.R.S.". (M.R.S. aspirants traditionally major in Child Development
and Family Relations, a program regarded by most within the LDS church as a vocational "mommy major".) Derogatory nicknames for
the school include "B-Y-Woo", "Bring'em Young University" and "Breed'em Young University".
Most BYU students are acutely aware of the marriage stereotype, and many female students who attend the school go out of their
way to defy it (earning the unflattering nickname of "Mormon nuns"), even as others contribute by dropping out before graduation
because of marriage and subsequent pregnancy. The reality is slightly more nuanced, as statistical analysis bears out. 56.3% of
the men and 42.4% of the women in BYU's class of 2004 were married (the average age at graduation being 24.3). Marriage
statistics for the state of Utah as a whole indicate that BYU's marriage rate falls well within that of the state in general,
with the median age at marriage in Utah being 23 for men, and 21 for women. It should be noted, however, that the percentage of
married students at BYU is much higher than at most universities, and the median age of marriage in Utah is significantly lower
than in the United States as a whole. In regards to marriage, BYU is thus best described as a reflection of the cultural
practices of the Mormon population as a whole (and particularly that of the Mountain West, which is significantly more culturally
conservative than Mormon populations elsewhere within the United States), rather than as an outlier.
BYU's large body of students who have served as missionaries for the LDS Church significantly shapes the institution's
culture. Young men are strongly encouraged to serve two-year missions for the LDS (Mormon) church at age 19. Consequently, most men attend BYU for the freshman year and then take a two year break from school to serve the mission. The average male sophomore at BYU is thus 21 years old. Although LDS girls can also serve missions, the
church does not encourage them to do so. Also, missions for LDS females are only 18 months and girls are not permitted to serve
missions until reaching 21 years of age.
Perceptions
Although BYU is held in high regard by many employers, there is a good deal of antagonism toward BYU both from inside and
outside of the Mormon community. The LDS Church's racial policies attracted a great deal of protest in the 1960s, with African-American athletes frequently boycotting athletic events at which
BYU competed. (The most notable examples of this were a football game forfeited by the heavily black University of Wyoming team in 1969, and the refusal of Texas El-Paso long jumper Bob Beamon--who set a world record in the long jump at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City--to participate in a track meet against BYU in the spring of that year.)
While the LDS church's 1978 renunciation of its previous doctrines on race eliminated most of this hostility, traces of lingering
resentment against the school remain in many African-American communities.
Some of the most vitriolic opinions about BYU are held by LDS students at colleges and universities elsewhere in the US, proud
to be in "the real world" instead of immersed in BYU's "bubble" of shallowness, focus on appearances, and casualness toward
marriage. (The fiercely secular University of Utah, in
particular, is perceived as the nearly complete opposite of BYU, and is renowned as an outpost of leftism in the nation's most conservative state.) BYU students and alumni often contribute (with varying levels of
knowingness) to this perception, displaying chauvinistic attitudes toward even the most elite secular universities such as the
Ivy League schools, and often adopting the much-despised Utah practice of
referring to areas outside of the mountain West as "the mission field". The nonchalance of many BYU students toward the weekly
(and sometimes even more frequent) visits by the LDS Church's General Authorities is also a source of frustration for students in
places where such visits occur once or twice a year, if at all.
On the other hand, many visitors to BYU, and the Utah Valley as a whole, report being surprised at the genuinely wholesome
environment. Very few BYU students consume alcohol, tobacco, and illegal substances; crime is low, with violent crime being
virtually nonexistent. (Provo and Orem are, however, major centers of methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution, perhaps owing to the drug's popularity among Utah teenagers
and the proximity of Interstate 80 and Interstate 15.) The Princeton Review has
rated BYU the "#1 stone cold sober school" for several years running, an honor on which LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley has often commented with pride. The school's
straight-laced reputation is a major selling point in athletic recruiting: as non-LDS players (particularly African-Americans
from inner cities) have become ever more important to the school's teams, BYU's
wholesomeness is often attractive for parents who have raised their children in conservative environments.
Notable alumni
- Danny Ainge, professional baseball and basketball player
- Ezra Taft Benson, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, President of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
- Brian Billick, Baltimore Ravens Head Coach
- Clayton M. Christensen, Academic, coined the term
"disruptive technology"
- James C. Christensen, noted artist
- Todd Christensen,
former NFL tight end for the Los
Angeles/Oakland Raiders
- Mike Crapo, US Senator (Idaho)
- Ty Detmer, professional fooball quarterback
- Richard Dutcher, film director, producer and actor
- Aaron Eckhart, actor
- Harvey Fletcher, US physicist
- Orrin Hatch, US Senator (Utah)
- Jon Heder, actor
- Ken Hunt, former MLB pitcher
- Ken Jennings, Jeopardy! champion
- Neil LaBute, film
director, screenwriter, and playwright
- Rex E. Lee, Constitutional lawyer, BYU President
- Jim McMahon, professional football quarterback
- Frank Moss, US Senator (Utah)
- Scott Nielsen N.Y. Yankees, Chicago White Sox pitcher
- Carmen Rasmusen, American Idol finalist, currently attending
- Andy Reid, Philadelphia Eagles Head Coach
- Kevin B. Rollins, President and CEO of Dell
- Cory Snyder, former MLB
player
- Julie Stoffer, The Real World housemate
- Olene S. Walker, 15th Utah
governor
- Mike Weir, professional golfer
- Steve Young, professional football quarterback
- Wally Joyner, MLB baseball player
Related articles
External links
|
