BYU-Idaho Newsroom

The BYU-Idaho campus is ready for students amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. To ensure a safe environment for students and employees who are returning back to campus, the university has implemented new course offerings and adjusted campus activities to create the best learning and social experiences possible for students and their individual needs.

Brigham Young University-Idaho will hold its annual Education Week conference exclusively online this year. As a health and safety precaution due to COVID-19, a face-to-face conference will not take place on the BYU-Idaho campus. In place of the traditional three-day conference, a free one-day virtual conference will be held on Friday, July 31.

We are pleased to announce that Brigham Young University-Idaho will broadcast an online commencement service to celebrate and recognize our Spring Semester 2020 graduates. Elder L. Whitney Clayton, Senior President of the Quorums of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will address the 2,558 graduates of Brigham Young University-Idaho in an online commencement ceremony on Wednesday, July 22, 2020. The event will begin at 7:00 p.m. MDT at www.byui.edu/live/video.

With the anticipated approach of Fall Semester 2020, BYU-Idaho is coordinating a safe return to campus and continued delivery of high-quality, flexible education. University faculty and administrators have organized several course delivery options in order to better protect the health of students and employees and to meet the academic needs of all students wherever they are physically located. The course options for Fall Semester 2020 will include:

As part of BYU-Idaho’s mission, the university aims to provide a high-quality education that prepares students for lifelong learning and employment. Although there may be many motivating factors for why students choose to obtain higher education, employment is a main determinant.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, online courses have quickly grown, as has the need for improvement in making the online classes the best they can be. More courses are currently in development to provide students a remote/hybrid class experience. These courses will incorporate both an online methodology and a face-to-face learning environment.

Due to COVID-19, the David O. McKay library has been closed to patrons since mid-March, but the services it offers continue to allow students to learn and grow wherever they may be.

Idaho is carefully monitoring COVID-19 and planning to potentially open campus this fall semester. While an official decision has not been made, the university is working to make the following course-delivery options available. Each option satisfies state, federal, and Church guidelines—with emphasis on health, sanitation, and safe practices.

BYU-Idaho is exemplary in its efforts to provide an education to thousands of individuals throughout the world. The university recognizes that because BYU-Idaho students come from a variety of backgrounds and have varied educational goals, there is often the need to provide students with a non-traditional degree experience. In the past, the university studies degree filled this role by allowing students to add more components to their degree. However, in the 2019-2020 catalog, the university studies degree was retired and the professional studies degree was introduced as an improved, renamed, and restructured version of the university studies degree.

The experience business students gain while studying on the BYU-Idaho campus prepares them for the real world. The capstone IBC course that is required for most business majors strengthens the hard and soft skills students will need to succeed. Knowing this, faculty members that oversee the IBC program have found ways to make sure students still exercise those skills while heeding social distancing guidelines.