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Inauguration Event/Other Events
Q: Can you share information about an Inauguration event for President John S. Tanner?
A: President Tanner’s inauguration will be held on Tuesday, November 10, at 10 AM in the Cannon Activities Center. Because this year we’re also celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the University, and the 150th Anniversary of the LDS Church in this area, there are some other major events to keep in mind:
- Saturday, August 29: Grand Opening of the new Marriott Oahu North Shore hotel (and hopefully the McDonalds)
- Sunday, November 1 (7 PM, CAC): Elder D. Todd Christofferson will hold an evening Devotional for the campus and community. It will be focused on the 150th Anniversary of the Church.
- Monday, November 2 (9:30 AM, CAC): Graduation with Elder D. Todd Christofferson as the special guest.
- Saturday, November 7 (5 & 7:30 PM, CAC): “Behold Laie” cultural celebration. This will be by the youth from the local stakes. Tickets will be required for this celebration and will be distributed through wards and stakes.
New Hales
Q: When and how will we be moving the students from Hales 4 and 6 to Hales 3 and 5?
A: On Saturday, August 29, as part of the festivities around the hotel grand opening, we will be running a shuttle over here for anyone who wants to tour the rooms, so we will have furniture in a handful of the rooms. During September, we will get the furniture into all the rooms, and then at the end of September or beginning of October, we’ll do a split moving – moving Hale 4 over, moving Hale 6 over – and then we’ll start work on Hales 4 and 6. Students will remain on their meal tickets even though they’re in an apartment. They can decide if they want to do more cooking on their own or continue to use their meal ticket. The rents will stay the same for that semester even though they’re going from a dorm to an apartment, and then it will be apartment rates the next semester (because some may choose to not be in an apartment at that point).
Fine Arts Classes
Q. There seem to be fewer Fine Arts classes offered, such as certain theater or ceramics classes. Why is that? And does this take away from David O. McKay’s vision that this school is supposed to be a place that doesn’t just ‘educate the masses’ but produces leaders in all fields?
A: We let students pick their majors; we don’t try to tell them. BYU–Hawaii does not meet the technical requirements of a Liberal Arts college – which is that we have to have over 50% of your classes in what Liberal Arts considers to be liberal arts. With four colleges, three of them not in the liberal arts, we are what is called a comprehensive university, and that’s where we want to be. Now, obviously, faculty can recruit students in to different majors, but we don’t tell students which majors to take – they choose. And then the staffing levels and the number of courses have to do with the number of students taking the classes. So, we have some guidelines for each of our colleges for how many classes they can have with fewer than ten students because it’s not economical to have a hundred courses with fewer than ten students in them. You obviously want to save the ones you do need for the specialized senior courses as opposed to having G.E. courses with less than ten and then find you’ve used up the ability to have smaller classes for the ones you really want it for.
One of the reasons for growing the university by another 500 students is that it will help with the problem that this question is referring to because we do not plan to add any majors at this point with the additional student body. We may add one or two, but for the most part we’ll be filling in so there are more students in the existing majors, which should help the traditionally smaller majors.
TVET
Q: One of the words I hear more and more as I go to the South Pacific is TVET – that’s Technical Vocational Engineering and Technology. It looks like there’s going to be a lot of emphasis there – so I was just wondering what kind of consideration that would have at the university?
A: Similar to STEM in America (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), other countries have TVET, or Technology and Vocational Education and Training. It’s all aimed at having more science and more technical skills – whether it’s computer based or technology based.
Architecture Classes
Q: I know we have a strong computer program here – any thought of adding architecture/architectural drawing?
A. Probably not unless there is demand for it. Our graphic design department has actually done very well at training students who are interested in design and architecture. But adding an architecture program is a real challenge – although we’ve discussed the idea of adding construction management, and have that be like civil engineering but with a more managerial focus. We’ve also looked at if we have the G.E., getting an associate’s degree and having the students go to one of the other BYU’s to get an engineering degree which they could easily do in two years at BYU–Idaho. So we will look at those things but it really depends on where the demand is, and what the student interest is. We obviously want to do what the students are interested in, and what will help them with employment opportunities in their home regions.
Athletics
Q: If someone could come up with the amount of money to support intercollegiate athletics from the interest, will you have the ability to reverse the decision to cancel intercollegiate athletics?
A: Here are the basic economics. In order to run a program that is not run by tithing funds, which is what the Church considers athletics, it has to be self-sustaining. What you have to do then is have an endowment – or funds that will generate enough interest to cover everything. For the intercollegiate athletics program at BYU–Hawaii, our best estimate is that we probably would need about $50 million in an endowment. I’ve talked to specific donors and we could probably get enough money to run the program for a year, but the Board is not going to change the decision without enough money to run it in perpetuity because they would likely then be back in the same place once those donors have felt they’ve done their share. I really think it is a final decision – we provided options and data, and they made the decision. And the Board is very happy with what’s happened at BYU–Idaho over the years. It’s now been fifteen years since Idaho transitioned out of their intercollegiate athletics program, and it’s certainly not hindered them at all, and has allowed them to do other things with those funds.
Housing and Policies
Q: How does housing look for the Fall semester? And is there a policy to have freshmen live on campus?
A: Yes, there is a policy for freshmen to live on campus. There are three challenges with this and our current housing situation. One of the housing challenges that has occurred in recent years is that the students seem to like the new housing that we’ve built and they don’t want to move out. Previous to having our new on-campus housing buildings, when freshmen finished their freshman year, they couldn’t wait to get off campus and so you had plenty of slots on campus for freshmen. If they don’t move out, we don’t have the slots for the freshmen, and that’s the challenge. So the question is, who are you going to kick out of the dorms and out of the apartments? And of course we think the problem might get worse before it gets better because students will like the new apartments (Hales 2-6) even more. And with a higher percentage of return missionaries because of the change in age, we think we might have more demand for new freshmen in the new apartments – whereas historically we’ve always put freshmen in the dorms and what few apartments we had we used for students further along in their studies. That’s the number one challenge. The second challenge is that we’ve lost about 150 beds in off-campus units as students have compared what’s available both on and off campus. For the most part, that’s because they were so marginal. Think of it as if you took all the off-campus places from the best to the worst and chopped off the bottom 150 beds or units. We saw this last Winter when about 100 students did not come because they couldn’t get confirmed housing. Now, I will just say as an aside, having lived in Boston for 25 years, every single fall they have this problem. You cannot get an apartment in Boston in the fall unless you are physically there and willing to pay your deposit. When you find a place, you can’t go home and think about it because it will be gone by the time you get back. So that’s the second thing, so with those marginal units disappearing, or at least students being unwilling to be in them, that complicates the housing situation. The third issue is that coming out of the recession, tourism has picked up again, and so landlords – instead or renting to students – are renting to tourists because they can get more money per day/week/month. One thing that we’ve done to hopefully mitigate this is we’ve contracted this year for five houses in the community that our housing office will run. They will be off campus, but will operate as part of the university housing inventory.
We are looking at many options. We are likely going to need one more building right at the back of campus, even to get to 3,200 students, and we’ve already started that process. We do understand that we need to have a good housing environment for the students to be successful. So the question was really about if we are going to limit the university because of housing – we are trying not to but in the short term there will be some limits on how many students we can take just because we don’t have places. We are on the path to fixing it; it’s just going to take a while.
Intramural Activities Program
Q: In regards to athletics, and how BYU–Idaho has gone to their intramural activities program – has anyone on campus been tasked with that?
A: Yes, Exercise and Sport Science, under the direction of David Porter, is taking this on and he’s already got a long list of ideas. What we have said though is let’s get athletics closer to being finished before we spend a lot of emphasis on starting other activities, because we want to focus on having the best couple of years ever. But if you have ideas, Dave is who you should give them to.
New Running Track
Q: Is there a track in the long-range planning?
A: Yes, we’ve had a tentative plan to do a track, and we expect that we will have one – it’s still a few years off. A nice track would be very useful to a larger percentage of campus.
Rugby
Q: Could rugby be a part of the activities after intercollegiate athletics is done?
A: Rugby was discontinued originally due to policies put in place related to violence on campus, and the decision was made with the input of the Executive Committee and the Board. But having been here as long as I have now, and seeing the rugby pick-up games on the field in the mornings, I think that we could have rugby as a sport for intramural activities. I think we’ve done very well on the zero tolerance policy; students treat each other much more respectfully and that’s great.