The BYU-Hawaii President's Council question and answer forum on June 5 tackled the following:
• When would the new student employment standards model be implemented? "Actually, they've already started," replied Michael B. Bliss, Vice President of Administrative Services. He added that the new Job Evaluation Committee would process new job descriptions "in no more than a week," and that the new human resource guidelines are already posted on the web.
President Wheelwright also pointed out "the goal is to better match people with job with the requirements, the people and their skills. We want to make sure we keep a balanced system."
• Would international students be restricted from certain majors? President Steven L. Wheelwright first made two points in response: BYU-Hawaii consistently emphasizes the goal of returning students to their home countries; and Church Employment Resource Center leaders in Asia and the Pacific report "there are simply no jobs for the areas some graduates major in."
He said in regards to International Work Experience Scholarship students, "we're looking if we should narrow the scope so that when they apply to BYU-Hawaii, they know what the majors are for that IWES scholarship. But if a student is not on scholarship or funded by the Church, then it's really up to them what they major in."
"The students need to understand what majors work in their countries," he continued, "so they don't come and then discover, 'I don't have any place to go in my country with this major.' I think we've done them a disservice if we didn't inform them of those things. Our charge is to develop young men and young women from greater Pacific region who will return and build the Kingdom." He added that the IWES program is designed to insure students return to their home countries.
The president said he recognized that many students "have prayerfully considered their majors, but others have not. We're trying to help guide students so that they're better informed and better prepared, so that we can meet our charge." He also said that the Church Area Presidencies in Asia are "desperate to help us...to find ways to get students back."
• Will the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) accreditation team recommendations effect BYU-Hawaii's evolution in the next few years? President Wheelwright responded that the WASC draft report contained six major recommendations — "four of which began with the word 'continue.' We intend to continue those things." He added that the final WASC report will not be available until July.
"WASC is not set up to have universities change their mission, vision or goals. WASC is actually set up to help them be more systematic, objective, and use more assessment systems with outcomes and measures for whatever they decided is their mission. They're actually very carefully about saying, 'You tell us what you're trying to do, and that's the standard we're going to judge you against."
Dr. Max L. Checketts, Vice President of Academics and a trained evaluator, stressed it's important to know accreditation is "a peer review process" that the university will take seriously. "We'll try to do our very best to take their counsel, because I think they have some great ideas."
• Are student evaluations at the end of each semester used to help improve teaching? Checketts said research shows "the best measure is a couple of questions: Did you like the class? Did you like the teacher? It's far more important to get the students to say why."
Similarly, he also suggested using focus groups to discuss three questions: What did you like? What didn't you like? What would you change? "Students are pretty savvy... They have some good counsel for us," Checketts said. "My experience has always been that faculty members want to teach well, and we ought to give them information to do that."
• Has the vision of the university recently changed? "I don't think the vision has changed in the last 50-plus years," President Wheelwright answered, but he did point out that since BYU-Hawaii was founded three of the four Church areas in the target region are now in Asia. He also stressed BYU-Hawaii’s mission is to improve the integration of spiritual and academic knowledge — at a lower cost to the Church — and said he hoped three things would be distinctive about each of our students when they graduate: They have a "sound educational foundation for a lifetime of learning"; they're excited about education and want to continue learning; and they are "young men and women of character and leadership ability that comes from integrating the academic and the spiritual."
Asked if such things can be taught online, President Wheelwright responded “that at this point, we’re not looking to distance learning by itself to accomplish all of this,” but he later said distance or distributed learning can be of great value in preparing students who would also spend time on campus.
He added he believes the new reorganization will help. "We need to continue to work on the processes," he said, "and ask yourself, what differences can I make."
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