In May, President Alvin F. Meredith III announced that Brigham Young University-Idaho would be undergoing a program restructuring, and in June, announced what programs would be under evaluation.

Scroll met with President Meredith in July regarding how the restructuring would be handled. The president said there would be different "phases" to the restructuring.

I had the opportunity to meet with President Meredith, Rob Garrett, Chief of Staff and vice president of executive strategy and planning; and Jon Linford, the school's academic vice president, about the current restructuring phase.

Some of my takeaways included their desire to prioritize incoming students and to maintain transparency, for both faculty and students, as they make decisions.

President Meredith also said the restructuring will help maintain the university's original principles and keep the focus of being student-centered.

"I would say it's a return back to the principles that BYU-Idaho was established on, which is being student-centered and being very frugal," President Meredith said.

The following has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: You met with Liberty Gonzalez last semester, and I'd like to hear a summary of where we left off. What happened with that last phase, and where are we right now?

President Meredith: Yeah, great question. We are still in the middle of quite a bit of analysis and collaboration, but there's some really key decisions that we've already announced.

The first is that there are going to be no layoffs as a result of this, and the second is that we're going to take three years to enact these changes. So we're not going to sprint off and do something rash. We're going to be very prudent about this. Make sure that we get feedback from faculty on other changes.

If you remember, back in the spring, we had tasked Jon and his team with two objectives, and both of those objectives had to do with making sure that our students were going to receive the education and the teaching that everyone deserves at BYU-Idaho. The two objectives were, one to make sure that the programs or the majors that we're offering are aligning with student needs, and the second is to allocate faculty across departments in a way that aligns with those shifts and what students want to study.

Over the last five years, we've seen pretty significant shifts in what majors students are selecting, and it's really important to us that we be responsive to those changes. BYU-Idaho is built on the principle of being student-centered, and all of these changes are driven by that principle of being student-centered.

The most recent announcements that were made back in September, though, are also an acknowledgement of how much we appreciate our faculty. We feel like we can make these changes and meet the students' needs, while also ensuring that faculty aren't going to lose any jobs.

Q: In the recent General Faculty Meeting, you mentioned that some faculty would be placed in new spots. How are you planning to go about that shift?

President Meredith: Yeah, that's a piece of work that's still underway. We're not quite sure how many that will be, but it could be that if we have faculty in departments where student demand has shrunk significantly, some of the faculty in that department might be reallocated to departments where there's been a growing student demand. I think the principles that will guide us will be, first, to do what's best for the student, and second, will be very collaborative with the departments and faculty when we're when we're making those decisions.

Q: How soon are you planning to make those changes?

President Meredith: I think we're going to give ourselves three years, and if it takes a little bit longer, great. And if there are decisions that we can make that make a lot of sense immediately, we'll do those as well. But, it's really important to us that people understand why those decisions are being made and have a voice in expressing and kind of helping us determine what the best path forward is.

Linford: Greg Roach, who is my associate vice president, calculated that so far we've had 100 meetings with faculty right now. So we have it. We have a team that's kind of the leadership of this process, and we have data, and the data is a good place to start the conversations, but we believe that we need to have these conversations with the people that are affected, with the faculty. So I think the number 100 speaks for itself. We were serious about communicating with our faculty.

Q: With all this restructuring being implemented, are we planning to have that all be done in the 2027 catalog?

President Meredith: No. No, it won't all be done by then.

Q: There's an impression among some faculty that some of these changes are going to be implemented by 2027, and I think we've seen some anxiety from faculty who are under that impression still. Are there any changes that maybe are going to be implemented as soon as 2027?

Linford: I think probably the ones where there's broad agreement, yeah, but there'll be ones that we won't implement that soon.

President Meredith: And by the way, I mean, there will be no surprises. Like Jon said, we've had 100 meetings. And when I say we really mean Jon has had 100 meetings with faculty on this, and so there won't be any changes that will catch anyone off guard.

Garrett: That's really important to us. It is important for us as a leadership team to be transparent. Now, let me be clear. If there are tough decisions to be made, we'll make them. We'll make them because the students deserve that, but we'll do it in a transparent, collaborative way, and we don't expect that everyone's going to agree with all the decisions. I'll tell you, one of the things I love about our faculty is I got an email from a faculty member yesterday who said, 'We appreciate the transparency of the administration. We recognize that we might not always agree, but we appreciate now that we understand, and you give us a chance to voice our opinions, and we want to continue to lead that way.'

Our faculty are amazing. I mean, they have many of them have made sacrifices to be here. They love our students, and so much of what makes this place special is how passionate our faculty are about their jobs and their students. And so all of this is being driven by the student, and we can do this in a way that still meets the needs of the students, but still involves the faculty as we're making these tough decisions.

Q: I've heard there are plans to let students have seven years with the change to get their degree. How are we planning to implement that when classes are changing?

President Meredith: So, two things to note on this. One, we would do it anyway. Two, we're required to do it. So what that means is, any student who's in a major that if that major, if we decide to discontinue it, they will have seven years after the decision to complete their classes, to finish that major. So it's really important that our students understand that they will not be negatively impacted by these changes.

Q: Will required classes be adjusted to classes in other courses?

Linford: We're taking it a course at a time. Some will have a different need than others. Some will be lots of students. Some will be a few students. Some we might have some substitution and waiver process. Some we may offer online. Some maybe we have a hire an adjunct to teach that course out. So we recently discontinued a program not having anything to do with this situation. When we just hired a visiting hire to teach that program out over the next two or three years, we figured it would take better because what it is, is the time for the students that are in it currently to graduate. And we counted all that up, and we said two years probably. So we hired a visiting hire for two years to teach out that program.

Q: How do we see this new culture of efficiency staying in the long run and not changing in the future?

President Meredith: I wouldn't say that it's a new culture of efficiency. I would say it's a return back to the principles that BYU-Idaho was established on, which is being student-centered and being very frugal. It's been tough coming out of COVID to make some of these changes. And the world was changing so rapidly that we needed a little space between COVID and now, but I would say going forward, we will continue to have the courage to adapt to student needs. I think Jon, in particular, has been really clear that this isn't a one-time thing at this scale, but going forward, we will continue to make shifts to align with what students want to study.

Linford: Sunsetting programs that no longer have student enrollment isn't a new thing at BYU-Idaho; we did it at the beginning of Rick's College. We've done it through that period of time. I could make a list for you of all the programs that I know of that have been canceled through the years or combined with another program or restructured in some way. So it's not a new process. I think what the President said about COVID and other societal changes, and we're seeing AI, so I can't promise this is never going to happen again. In fact, we hope that we're setting up a process that we'll be able to do it gradually and a little at a time as we see this happen, so that we don't have to clear a backlog the way we're kind of doing.

Garrett: One thing that you might want to look at is the announcement that President Hinckley made when he went from the transition from Rick's college to BYU-Idaho. In that announcement, he talks about restructuring programs. This very thing it's going to be part of BYU-Idaho. And so for President to say we're just doing what BYU-Idaho is, and Jon to say, we've been doing elements of this, like you go read that. And that's part of our DNA. Part of BYU-Idaho's creation is to have this type of review, to make these types of decisions and have these processes.

Q: I hear people talk about how BYU as "the superior school," and this readjustment may solidify that idea. What would you say to students or people who think that way?

President Meredith: I love BYU, but there is something special and sacred about this place. One of the things that makes this place so special and sacred is its unapologetic focus on the student. This makes BYU-Idaho much, much stronger. I've done focus groups with students on this very issue, the students, once they understand that if they're in a major that's being discontinued, that they have seven years to complete that major, Once they understand that, the students have been overwhelmingly in favor of this initiative, because they get that if a department is teaching 40% less students than they were five years ago, we should be looking at that. And conversely, we have departments that have grown 20 plus percent over the last five years without any additional resources. And the students have told us, 'Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for looking at that.'

Linford: That's great. I'm not ascribing this to BYU. I don't know what BYU is thinking about and doing and things like that, but I'd say ascribing the lack of willingness to change to being a weakness in our DNA. I think that's wrong-headed. I think we have to change with the times. If universities hadn't changed, we'd still only be offering theology here. That's what they used to do in the old days, theology and medicine, and law by the end of the Middle Ages, and we wouldn't be offering business. We wouldn't be offering health care. Look, look at the burgeoning growth in the health care industry. If we're going to have students go out and get jobs, we have to be able to grow that, and and same thing would be true of various aspects of internet technology and AI, and we just have to be on top of that. And if, on the other hand, some programs are like President said shrinking, we have to be willing to say, well, we have to reposition some of these retiring FTEs to just to just mindlessly take an FTE and give it back to that same department, regardless of any data that we have or any purpose that we have that would, that would not make us a superior university.

President Meredith: We will never change our focus on our mission to develop disciples who are leaders, but we will always have the courage to change to meet student demand.

Q: What opportunities do you see this restructuring giving students?

President Meredith: I think, for students that are in programs that are growing and that are under-resourced, it will give them more faculty mentors, and I think it will give us an opportunity to look at what programs are we not offering now that there will be a demand for in the future that we can resource as a result of these changes.

Q: Pre-COVID enrollment numbers were higher than now, but we continue to have record numbers of incoming freshmen. How do you see the restructuring benefiting this resurgence?

President Meredith: Well, the students that are coming in now have different interests than the students who came in in 2019, so this restructuring is going to allow us to align with the needs of our current students.

Linford: Otherwise, we'd have to cap popular programs and turn students away.

Q: BYUI accepts a wide variety, and with so many students enrolling and the limited housing, do we see any possibility of making those exceptions more selective?

President Meredith: I think we're a long way away from that. We still have a lot of capacity in our spring track, so we're full and fall, and will probably be full and winter, but we could handle another 6000 or 7000 students in spring. We want this to be the place both for those high-achieving academic students as well as for those students who worry if there's a place for them in college. We hope that we will always be a place where we can accept people who want to learn and are willing to embrace our very special mission.

Q: What has all of this restructuring taught you about leadership?

President Meredith: One, it's reinforced my faith in our faculty that they're willing to do hard things that will bless the lives of students. It's been a reminder of how important it is to communicate in a time of change. As Jon said, he and his team have done 100 faculty meetings in an attempt to over-communicate. And just communication in a time of change is just so valuable.

And then I would say the last thing is, leadership requires courage. Leaders have to understand what their mission is and who they serve, and they need to listen, but then have the courage to make tough decisions, even if there are people who may not agree with those decisions. And I would want the students of this campus to know that the administration and the faculty will always put them first.

Q: Is there anything that you would do differently if you were to start this restructuring process over again?

President Meredith: Oh, I'm sure there is. We've looked in the rear-view mirror quite a bit.

Linford: There were mistakes we made, but they were made in all earnestness. You know, if we could go back with the knowledge you have now, then we would do it differently. We just had to go back and do it again. We would probably make a whole different set of mistakes.

Garrett: It's also an answer to the last question of leadership. You can't wait till you have everything in front of you to move on important things, and because you can't do that, and there are times you need to act on things and move on things. There are going to be things, as you look back, that you may say we probably would have done that different. But you know what? It was still the right thing to go and do this.

Linford: We give just one example. We started with small departments. We just started saying, let's look at small departments that have gone down in enrollments. As we looked at a lot of those departments, we found that those departments didn't need to be terminated; they needed resources to help them grow, because they were really doing a good job of getting students jobs. There were just little problems here and there that were standing in the way. Maybe it was a placement of where the department was or something like that. In the process of picking on the little departments we got, we got kind of taken to the taking to task for picking on the little departments. Why did you pick on the little department? Why didn't you review the big part departments first? Well, that might have been the right order, I don't know, but the truth of the matter is, by going after the little departments, we learned a lot.

It's just that I don't know how else we would have learned it. There are no books written about this. We look around at the other universities, and they just tend to sit down and have a few meetings, then tell a bunch of departments, they're they're out. I think that, if anything, we tried to communicate that we were going to always communicate, and that the data wasn't driving things, but it's hard to hear that in the sort of thing. So I think that we count on the Lord to consecrate our afflictions to our gain is what it really comes down to it and we made it work. And I think, as the truth of the matter is, I think overall, the relationship between the administration and the faculty is better than it's ever been.

President Meredith: Yeah, I would also add that when, when I got here and would meet with the faculty and asked them for counsel in my new role, they pleaded for transparency, which is a very fair ask. When you are transparent about a process that takes months of collaboration and analysis, it naturally comes with a lot of anxiety, and it was painful for me that we had a lot of faculty that were anxious and uncertain during that time. I hope that they recognize that it was all that happened with good intent.

We just wanted to be transparent, as Jon said, we wanted to let people know up front what we were going to look at. We even wanted them to know what some of our hypotheses were. And then we wanted to collaborate and work with them, and then make tough decisions. But there was a period of time there, and there might be some faculty who still feel this way, that they're just they're still wrestling with that uncertainty, and that's hard for all of us. If we've lost sleep over anything, it's been that, but we did, and we want to continue to be transparent, and we also want to take the right amount of time to get to the
to get to the best decisions.

Garrett: I think Jon made your point too, that we've learned along a lot of things on the way, and we're using what we've learned instead of looking back and saying what mistakes we've made. I think that's a good exercise to do, but I think it becomes more powerful than when you say, 'Okay, what have we learned that we can use going forward that's going to help us with this?' And you heard him say, how helpful that's been.

Linford: Because the truth is, you can't go back under any circumstances. You can only go forward. And I think the test of a successful enterprise is if you learn from your mistakes or learn from your experiences, and use them as you go forward that's what we're trying to do.

President Meredith: Our theme going forward is "future ready, student centered." And I feel that this whole process that we're going through is driven by those two principles of getting ready for the future, while keeping the student at the center of all of our decisions.

Q: What has been one of the most gratifying things about starting the restructuring, and is there anything else that you would like people to know?

President Meredith: I think one of the most gratifying things has been seeing the faculty's passion for what they do. They love the students. They love our mission. They love their jobs. We want the faculty to know that we that we love them, we need them, and we're grateful for them.