Brigham Young University Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Brigham Young University
| Motto | Enter to learn, go forth to serve |
|---|---|
| Established | October 16, 1875 |
| School type | Private |
| President | Cecil O. Samuelson |
| Location | Provo, Utah, USA |
| Enrollment | 32,400 undergraduate, X graduate |
| Faculty | 2,100 |
| Campus | Suburban |
| Athletics | 21 varsity teams |
| Homepage | www.byu.edu |
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 km²) at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains and includes 333 buildings. Additional facilities include the BYU Jerusalem Center, the BYU Salt Lake Center, LDS Business College, and the Missionary Training Centers around the world.
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.
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 them. The honor code provides 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 and alumni
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. Rex E. Lee, alumnus and 10th president of BYU from July 1, 1989 to December 31, 1995 served as clerk for former United States Supreme Court Justice Byron White and as the United States Solicitor General under the Reagan Admnistration. He argued more cases before the Supreme Court than any other lawyer.
Jeopardy star millionaire contestant Ken Jennings played on the school's quiz bowl team during his student days.
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.
Numerous intramural sports are also available to students many of whom participate.
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. 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.
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 at BYU than at most universities, and the median age of marriage in Utah is significantly lower than that of 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 an outlier.
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, 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.
This is an Article on Brigham Young University. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Brigham Young University 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 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 are held at BYU in March of every year, 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
BYU is home to the 1984 NCAA Division I-A national football champions. 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 (twice: in 1999 and in 2000). The school colors are blue, white and tan and its mascot is the cougar and its primary conference is the Mountain West Conference. Its men's volleyball team plays in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, and most recently won the national championship in 2004. BYU's men's soccer club participates as a university-owned franchise in the United Soccer Leagues' Premier Developmental League.Culture
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.
BYU's large body of students who have served as missionaries for the LDS Church significantly shapes the institution's culture. Young men who are planning on serving missions ("pre-mish") are stereotypically uninterested in marriage, while those who are "returned missionaries" ("RMs") are stereotypically anxious to marry; women, in turn, frequently refuse to date non-RMs. Many returned missionaries who served in foreign countries retain a significant interest in the cultures in which they served (q.v.), leading to a proliferation of restaurants serving cuisines that are decidedly uncommon within the Mountain West.Perceptions
Although BYU is held in high regard by many (particularly by the American business community, which regards its graduates as some of the hardest workers to be had anywhere), there is a good deal of antagonism toward BYU both from within and without 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.Notable alumni
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