In a smaller afternoon follow-up session on his September 6 academic convocation address, BYU-Hawaii President Steven C. Wheelwright explained several important lessons as well as differences can derive from the business innovation and product development models he described earlier that day in the Cannon Activities Center to help faculty, staff and students achieve the university's two-fold mission.
Responding initially to questions from a faculty panel consisting of psychology professor Edward Kinghorn, international business professor Helena Hannonen, biochemistry professor Daren Heaton, and facilitated by political science professor Dale Robertson, President Wheelwright said people traditionally think of the "best characteristics" of universities in terms of disciplines. "That's not unlike many companies," such as Xerox and Kodak, which became "well-known for a certain set of technologies."
The former graduate business school professor at both Stanford and Harvard pointed out universities also have "ever deepening disciplines, ever more specializations," while still facing the typical business challenge of "making products that appeal to a very diverse customer base."
He also said universities are different because, historically, "how do you tell when someone is educated or not? In business, the market pays the price you're charging...and yet in academics there's always been this insatiable appetite for more education. The question then becomes, how do we judge the quality of what we turn out?"
"We have a much more complex measurement issue," President Wheelwright said. "We don't have a single 'product.' Our output is actually much more multi-faceted. We've got to figure out what are the processes we use to adapt what it is we teach our students and how we teach them, to the world they're going to face."
Asked about human factor challenges, President Wheelwright replied, "A lot of what we do is based around our specialized areas, and yet...what the students need are the themes that cut across all of them. One of the natural ones we have is obviously the gospel of the Church."
"We need to make sure more faculty and staff have student contact and more people feel responsible for the educational outcomes, so that even if you're in departmental facilities, you think of yourself as supporting the educational mission, and you know what that means," he said. "We probably need to sharpen our focus back on students."
"In the core of this education we're trying to deliver, we better have a set of core elements that are true in the gospel sense, they're consistent with the vision that the prophets have given us over the generations, they are relevant to the target 'market' areas that we serve, and they really will prepare our students very effectively for what their lives will become and that the Lord knows they will become." President Wheelwright said he thinks of these characteristics as the "substantive content."
He said BYU-Hawaii has to "spend some time to make sure we understand what is it that the Lord wants here, and He'll help us do that. Secondly, we have to agree on what the core elements are, so that we put emphasis behind the few things that make a difference, instead of hundreds of things — some of which would have made a big difference, but if we didn't put enough emphasis they won't show up as being meaningful."
At one point in the follow-up session, Professor Hannonen shared input from her students on some of the areas they feel need emphasis. For example, the students asked for "more responsibility in their jobs. They are ready to take it," she said. They want field trips and "real-world experiences." Also, underclassmen want projects that are as "real" as those done by upperclassmen."
"There are ways we can creatively deal with those larger, first two year classes, so that they feel what it is they say they're not feeling, so that they feel more responsible and more engaged. We need to find ways to deliver those larger classes that still keep the scale advantage but also give these other qualities," President Wheelwright responded. He added in his own teaching career he was able to know each student among the typically 100 that were in his classes.
"Clearly our faculty are the ones who have the greatest single impact on our students and their learning," he said. "If we have to be really good at something, I think it ought to be teaching, and helping these students learn in the classroom. That's the heart of where these things go on."