Prophetic guidance, emphasis on students more important for BYU than lofty new research status

For the first time, Brigham Young University is now classified as a top American research institution, but it did not seek the designation and it is neither the school’s mission nor its biggest advantage, leaders said Monday during the annual University Conference on the campus in Provo, Utah.
BYU’s biggest advantage is the leadership of the chairman of the BYU Board of Trustees, President Russell M. Nelson, the prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Elder Ronald A. Rasband, a member of the board’s executive committee and is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
“As the senior apostle, President Russell M. Nelson represents the Savior as the head of Christ’s church on the earth. Access to prophetic guidance is at the very design of this university,” Elder Rasband said during the general session of the University Conference for faculty and staff at the Marriott Center.
“Our prophetic governance is more than a boundary constraint that lists things we can and cannot do at Brigham Young University,” he said. “In fact, when properly understood, our prophetic governance is a strategic asset that should allow us to do things unique in all of higher education.”
He asked BYU employees “to consider the ways of prophetic guidance from President Nelson shapes and strengthens this university.”
He also praised them and called on them to continue to improve.
“The Board of Education is pleased and even inspired by the work you are doing,” he said. “The inspired future of this university can only be achieved as we continually elevate our sights.”
Reese reported that BYU was in the midst of improving its accounting of research expenditures when it learned the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education had updated its standards to define R1 institutions — doctoral universities with very high research activity — in 2025 as those with $50 million in annual research expenditures that grant 70 research doctorates a year.
BYU has met the doctoral degree standard for some time, but the revised accounting of its 2023 expenditures found that the university exceeded the new standard.
“Please note, BYU did not seek this new designation,” BYU President Shane Reese said in his University Conference address.
“We sought to provide accurate accounting for the government and, emphatically, an R1 designation does not signal a change in the university’s mission or focus,” he added. “BYU is committed to remaining a primarily undergraduate teaching institution that is unequivocally true to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Research efforts on campus remain secondary, supplemental and supportive of the university’s primary teaching mission.”
BYU had embraced its status as an R2 research institution that focused its faculty on undergraduate teaching over research, albeit with a heavy emphasis on inspiring or experiential learning, its term for undergraduate research opportunities.
Latter-day Saint leaders charged Reese with maintaining that direction during his inauguration last year, and he didn’t waver from that on Monday, when he said that nothing had changed because of the R-1 designation.
“Everything we do at BYU begins and ends with the student in mind,” Reese said.
Elder Rasband underscored that statement.
“Everything at this university should help students become covenant disciples of Jesus Christ,” he said.
Reese has named his team’s strategic plan for the school “Becoming BYU” as the university prepares to celebrate its 150th anniversary next year with sights set on fulfilling the prophetic vision set by the late church President Spencer W. Kimball in his 1975 address about BYU’s second century.
“Building on previous statements about the future of this university,” Elder Rasband said, “President Reese has summarized our efforts at ‘Becoming BYU’ as a call to become ‘the Christ-centered, prophetically directed university of destiny and promise.’ What a wonderful mission statement.”
“Being Christ-centered,” he added, “implies everything we do at this university should help students become covenant disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. This Christ-centered purpose should shape decisions around curriculum, our mission statement, even measurement, and of course, our hiring.”
He and Reese said one proof that students remain BYU’s top priority is the school’s new Univ101 course, “BYU Foundation for Student Success,” which is required for every freshman.
“For the first time this semester, every first-year student will enroll in one of 280 sections of University 101,” Reese said. “It is a major accomplishment to roll out this ambitious undertaking, including capping enrollment of each class at 25 students.”
Reese taught one of the sections during the last school year and will again this fall.
“Our students will get a clear sense of mission, understand the resources available for their success and will have a sense of connectedness,” he said.
Reese said 84% of 2024 graduating seniors said their BYU experience had a strong or slight positive impact on their faith in Jesus Christ, while 78% reported their BYU experience had a strong or slight positive impact on their testimony of living prophets and apostles. He said that was good but that, “We have work to do in this area.”
Elder Rasband laid out the ways President Nelson’s prophetic direction has guided BYU both financially and spiritually. He also asked the university community to honor President Nelson’s 100th birthday on Sept. 9 in three ways:
1. Consider how they can amplify his teachings, particularly those he has shared with young adults.
2. Consider how they can better recognize and support the prophetic direction President Nelson is providing BYU and its leadership.
3. Provide President Nelson with the birthday gift he requested, “to reach out to ‘the one’ in our lives who may be feeling lost or alone.”
Elder Rasband replayed his own words from Reese’s inauguration that BYU’s prophetic governance structure provides BYU “a tremendous advantage.”
“I should note that President Nelson and the church Board of Education are extremely generous in their financial support of this university. Frankly for me, it has been staggering to see firsthand that commitment since my new assignment to the board,” he said.
The church, through the board, provides $1 billion a year to BYU, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii and Ensign College.
“For example, at a time when very few universities are able to support even sustained faculty commitment to the arts and the humanities, BYU’s Board of Trustees has made significant investments in the new music building and the current construction of the new arts building,” Elder Rasband said.
Another major example of investment is the recent announcement that BYU will launch a medical school, he said.
Elder Rasband pointed the BYU community to President Nelson’s emphasis on temples and temple covenants in his first message to the church when he became its leader in January 2018. He also asked them to consider, especially, President Nelson’s messages to young adults.
And he specifically referred to President Nelson’s one talk at BYU while serving as church president and chairman of the board, about the love and laws of God, and to his church wide message about letting God prevail.
Monday marked the fourth consecutive year that a member of BYU’s board of trustees, who are seniors leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has spoken at University Conference. President Jeffrey R. Holland delivered the keynote in 2021. Elder Quentin L. Cook spoke in 2020 and 2023. Elder D. Todd Christofferson spoke in 2022.
Elder Dale G. Renlund was the 2019 keynote speaker. Elder David A. Bednar delivered a talk in 2017.
Elder Clark G. Gilbert, church commissioner of education and a General Authority Seventy of the church, attended the conference and introduced Elder Rasband.