Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series about the faculty of BYU-I

As a unique institution, BYU-Idaho’s mission is clear: to build students’ testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and provide them with a quality undergraduate education in a setting that allows them to succeed in all aspects of life.

The student-centered mission of BYU-I requires a unique faculty to make it work — one that is willing to sacrifice prestige and consecrate time for the benefit of the students. That dedication to the students is the essence of what makes BYU-I’s faculty different from any other.

“This is a student-centered university,” said Kim B. Clark, president of BYU-I, which he says is the opposite of most universities. They tend to be faculty-centered in that they exist to serve the interests of the faculty.

To create a student-centered university, BYU-I has established a student-centered faculty out of necessity.

“If you go to any school, you’ll find faculty who care about students, but this faculty really cares about students in an extraordinary way; it’s much more pervasive, much deeper [here],” said President Clark, who taught at Harvard University for 27 years before coming to BYU-I.

There are three important aspects of BYU-I that work together to create a unique, student-centered university and faculty: a determined focus on quality teaching, a lack of faculty ranking and an influence of gospel values.

Focus on teaching

Universities have historically prided themselves on being centers of learning. They gain prestige by the knowledge that they generate by research and spread to humanity at large.

“Universities’ primary function is to further research,” said Kip Hartvigsen, a professor in the English Department. “Their second function is to educate.”

“The standing of a university is measured by the research productivity of its faculty,” according to a report by The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. The report says that universities have long forgotten their original purpose of educating young men to be ministers, lawyers and such, focusing instead on their research mission.

It is widely recognized in academia that a professor’s ability to perform credible research and publish his or her results for validation makes or breaks his or her career as a professor.

“It’s very simple,” President Clark said, referring to practices at Harvard University. “Either you produce and publish, or you have to go somewhere else — find another job.”

But recent trends have suggested a shift in higher education to a stronger focus on teaching.

“Higher education is becoming more individualized,” said Arthur E. Levine in an article published in January 2000 in The Education Digest.

“Students, not institutions will set the educational agenda,” Levine said, who served for 11 years as president of the Teachers College at Columbia University.

“College teaching increasingly will be viewed as a true profession in its own right; professors will be understood to need solid grounding in both theory and practice in higher education,” according to an article, “Faculty Development in Higher Education” in the September 2000 issue of a newsletter produced by the National Academy for Academic Leadership.

The article includes a prediction that an increased emphasis will be placed on teaching ability and proficiency in institutional evaluations of professors.

BYU-I has maintained a dedicated focus on teaching through its transition to a four-year university from Ricks College, a two-year junior college. Maintaining that focus now puts BYU-I at the forefront of the movement to improve college-level education.

“BYU-Idaho faculty members do not face pressure to conduct research or engage in creative activity,” according to the university’s 2004 self-study report. Without that pressure to research, professors are allowed to focus more fully on teaching.

“BYU-Idaho is and will remain a teaching university,” said Edwin Sexton, a professor in the Economics Department, who previously taught for 13 years at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va.