On Tuesday, Sept. 19, C. Shane Reese was inaugurated as the new president of Brigham Young University, becoming the 14th president of the Church’s flagship university. President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency, and Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles officially installed President Reese, who Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles announced in March would lead the university. 

“The Lord has prepared him in profound ways,” said Elder Holland. “He has the confidence and trust of the Church Board of Education to lead BYU at this critical time.”

This episode of the Church News podcast features President Reese sharing his experiences, testimony and vision for BYU.

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Transcript:

C. Shane Reese: We talk about letting our light shine. And our students do that in everything they do, whether it’s research or whether it’s athletic performances or whether it’s dance performances, music. But I also get super excited about the stage that this provides for us as a university. It was probably no more apparent than when our football coach at the Big 12 media days, Kalani Sitake, led with, “I am so grateful for my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He’s who got us where we are today.” And all of a sudden, these media correspondents who were gathered there just stopped, looked up, and I heard them behind me saying, “I could play for that guy.” And I think that’s the kind of opportunities that we have.

0:59  

Sarah Jane Weaver: This is Sarah Jane Weaver, executive editor of the Church News, welcoming you to the Church News podcast. We are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

1:19

Sarah Jane Weaver: On March 21, 2023, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a new president for Brigham Young University, C. Shane Reese. On May 1, the former academic vice president at the university took on his new role. Of President Reese, Elder Holland said, quote, “The Lord has prepared him in profound ways. He has the confidence and trust of the Church Board of Education to lead BYU at this critical time.” On this episode of the Church News podcast, we are excited to get to know President Reese. He joins us to talk about his experiences, testimony and his vision as BYU’s 14th president. Welcome to the Church News podcast, president.

C. Shane Reese: No, thanks for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

2:07

Sarah Jane Weaver: Your appointment as the 14th president of BYU puts you in a pretty elite crowd of Church leaders and others who have also led this university. Can you share some of your feelings as you join this very elite club?

C. Shane Reese: Boy, it is not only an elite club, but this is a club of a cast of characters, if you will, of people who have, for me, been mentors, heroes, people that I have admired from the time I was a little kid. It really is humbling, and I feel completely and totally honored. But also, at the same time, I feel very intimidated by being a part of this club.

2:51

Sarah Jane Weaver: Are there things that you’ve learned from observing past presidents?

C. Shane Reese: Yeah, I have. And, you know, for so many people, the first names that come to mind are President [Dallin H.] Oaks and Elder Holland, two amazing individuals who have led lives of faith and have been just remarkable in the world of higher education. It starts there. Elder Holland has been such a mentor to me, personally. He’s — as the former chair of our executive committee, I had interactions with him, and he was always so encouraging, and he was helpful to me when I was trying to navigate my way as academic vice president. It’s kind of strange to have a first-generation college student who is the academic vice president, but Elder Holland provided just a tremendous amount of mentoring and encouragement and support. My first president that I was exposed to.

And so, I started attending BYU in 1989, and that was just in the transition from President Holland to President Lee. And Rex Lee, to see a former solicitor general of the United States stand up as the president of our university with his wife, Janet, as they stood up there together, I remember as an impressionable freshman gathered in the Marriott Center, thinking, “Wow.” I was starstruck by President and Sister Lee, just their grace and how amazing they were as leaders. They were incredible people to me. And I remember the first time I got to meet them, they were gathered with a bunch of freshmen students. And just as I shook his hand, I had this sense that this was a man of incredible wisdom but amazing kindness, and that is something that I’ve always admired about President and Sister Lee.

4:43

The next person I had was President [Merrill J.] Bateman, was the president when I was hired at BYU. Interestingly enough — I’ll go back to an interesting story — every faculty who is hired at BYU is interviewed by a general authority. It’s a choice opportunity for our faculty. And the person who interviewed me was then-Elder Cecil O. Samuelson, which was an amazing experience. And so, my exposure to President Bateman was remarkable. He’s the one who onboarded me as a new faculty member. I remember the first meeting he held with all the new faculty members and how encouraging he was not only in our academic careers — recognize that trying to get tenure at universities is a hard thing, but he was so encouraging and strengthening for me as a junior faculty member — but he was also regularly reminding our faculty, new faculty especially, of kind of the unique mission we had at BYU.

And then came along my general authority interview with President Cecil O. Samuelson, and he has long been a great friend. I think a lot of people when they think of President Samuelson, they think of someone who was a steward over the professionalization of BYU. We became, I think, a real university with an academic mission that was solidified under his leadership. But he was also an incredible disciple in his academic work. He gave a great talk on the disciple-scholar at BYU that I still regularly refer to. Love President Samuelson. And President Samuelson had this great sense of humor. You’d love to walk across campus — I somehow found myself as kind of a new faculty member walking across campus with President Samuelson — and he is an incredibly funny man who has a great sense of not only an academic institution, but also of the gospel. I love President Samuelson.

And then President Samuelson gave way to President [Kevin J] Worthen. President Worthen and I have a fairly long history that goes way back to when I was an undergraduate, and he has been a pivotal figure in my life. He’s wise. He’s humble. He has a deep love of BYU, of its students. And talk about someone who is a faithful follower of the Savior. President Worthen is exemplary in so many different respects. And so, when you look at that long list of people with whom I’ve just had personal experience with, you could see how this is quite a humbling appointment.

BYU President C. Shane Reese hugs his wife Wendy Reese after she placed the presidential medallion on him during his installation as BYU’s 14th president at the Marriott Center in Provo on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, looks on.

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

7:15

Sarah Jane Weaver: And you shared a story after you were announced as BYU president about President Worthen. I know it’s a long story, but can you summarize it for us?

C. Shane Reese: Yeah, it’s — I can summarize the story of when I first got to BYU. I’ll just say I was a bit lost. I was a first-generation college student. It felt like a big place, and I felt fairly overwhelmed. So much so that I was pretty inclined to go home. And I called my mom and said, “I’m ready to go home,” and she said, “Well, look, I’ll come pick you up.” And she was ready to pack up the car, and we were going to head back to New Mexico, which is where I was raised. And then she happened to visit with our bishop when I was growing up, who’s a close family friend, and his name was Clyde. We visited with Clyde, and Clyde said, “Well, before you decide to pack it up, Shane should just go talk to my brother, who’s a young law school faculty member.”

And I was pretty intimidated, but given that it was Clyde’s brother, I felt like it was someone I might be able to trust and might listen to me. Well, Clyde’s last name just happens to be Worthen, and his brother happens to be Kevin Worthen. And here was this law school faculty member who — they seem a little bit like they’re kind of up there in the hierarchy of the university — and he just spent time with me and reassured me that he thought that if I’d give BYU a chance, that I might actually find that I enjoyed the place.

And it was just the kindness to take time out of a busy day, to visit for a few minutes with a young student who was struggling, that began really what for me is a bit of “Kevin Worthen awestruckness” that I have. He from that day became a mentor, a friend, someone on whom I could rely for advice, encouragement and support. And when I joined the faculty, we had opportunities to interact, and he has continued to be, for me, just such a mentor, a friend and an example of someone who loves the students at BYU, and one whose example I hope to even come close to emulating.

9:18

Sarah Jane Weaver: As we look back on the influence of all these amazing leaders — which influenced your time at BYU and mine; we were there at the same time — I think it’s interesting to talk about something else. You know, we often remember that Elder Holland was leading the school when we won a national championship in football, and President Lee was leading when Ty Detmer won the Heisman, and you’re taking the helm just as we go to the Big 12. Let’s talk about that. What can we expect from football this year?

9:50

C. Shane Reese: Well, first of all, it’s an exciting time to be part of the Big 12. One of the things that I was super impressed with — this was my very first meeting as president with the Big 12 presidents — and we get together, and this is kind of an official board meeting kind of setting. And it looks very board-meeting-like; we’re mostly talking about business. And I wondered, “How are they going to receive this faith-based institution who is unapologetic about our spiritual mission? It’s something that we lead with.” And to walk into that room and have there be such an acceptance, such a welcoming arm around us from all of the Big 12 schools, was remarkable.

So, the first thing I would say is that we’re just thrilled to be a part of the Big 12. We felt nothing but being welcomed by the Big 12. It has been just an incredible thing thus far. So we’re certainly excited about what’s in store for football — that was, I think, your question — but we also recognize we’re playing a whole other level of competition in football. Basketball may even be a stiffer competition than it is with football. We have some sports where we think we’re going to enter right away and be super competitive. We’re fresh off an amazing victory over UCLA in women’s soccer. We just had a huge win in women’s volleyball against last year’s semifinal team in Pitt, and our cross-country teams are world class, so we expect to see great things out of them.

11:15

And we just know that all of our sports, it’s going to be an opportunity to compete against some new competition. So it’s an exciting time. I get really excited about the competition on the pitch, in the pool, on the field. But I also get super excited about the stage that this provides for us as a university. We talk about letting our light shine. And our students do that in everything they do, whether it’s research or whether it’s athletic performances or whether it’s dance performances, music. But this gives us a whole different stage with new people to interact with. And I think that’s maybe the more exciting thing for me as president, is to see the stage that this gives us.

It was probably no more apparent than when our football coach at the Big 12 media days stood up, and one of the new schools and sort of the big names in the Big 12 had already gone, and he stood up, and the media were all sitting there, and they kind of were rumbling about because it was kind of a lesser-known personality. And to have Kalani Sitake lead with, “I am so grateful for my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He’s who got us where we are today.” And all of a sudden, these media correspondents who were gathered there, who were really rummaging about, just stopped, looked up, and I heard them behind me saying, “I could play for that guy.” And I think that’s the kind of opportunities that we have with our entrance into the Big 12. And so we’re really excited.

BYU President C. Shane Reese talks with a young BYU fan at a pregame tailgate in Lawrence, Kansas, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023.

Nate Edwards, Brigham Young University

12:45

Sarah Jane Weaver: And you don’t just have great faculty, staff, coaches, but some unique students. I just watched Kenneth Rooks represent the United States at the world’s in steeplechase. And he came on the Church News podcast and said, “Every time before I race, I pray that I can be a tool in the Lord’s hand.” How do you get such great kids?

C. Shane Reese: Well, the truth is there’s great kids in the Church. And these kids, I think, want to come to a place where they can study in an atmosphere of faith and where academics is excellent. But that we don’t have to choose between those two things. Kenneth is an amazing example. If people haven’t heard it — and boy, I’d be amazed if there’s anyone left who hasn’t heard — but falling down in a 3,000-meter race, which is not a super long race, you’re done. That race is over at that point. But Kenneth saw an opportunity to sort of reach deep within inside himself. 

And I’m sure he will tell you that it’s some of the lessons he learned on his mission when he was knocked down as a missionary, to get back up and to not give up, to keep racing. And to hear the call of this race, it is an amazing experience. And you talk to Kenneth, he is emblematic of exactly the kinds of students that we’re blessed to have at BYU. He’s an amazing kid. Not only is he this incredible athlete, I mean, to get up from this fall. I mean, he fell all the way to the ground. He was at dead last by a longshot. And to come racing back and finish that race in first place was remarkable.

But the other thing about Kenneth is, he’s a mechanical engineering major. I mean, this is like one of our hardest majors on campus. And he is just an incredible kid. And there’s a hundred kids just like Kenneth who are in various different aspects. Some of them are in athletics, some of them are dance team members, some of them are performers in music, and they do it all so well. They’re intimidating. They’re amazing kids.

14:44

Sarah Jane Weaver: And I want to take a minute and actually talk about you and what brought you to this point. You mentioned Kenneth’s mission. You served in the Taiwan Taipei Mission. What kind of influence did that have on your life?

C. Shane Reese: So, I talk to young people all the time about my mission, in part because it was just such a transformative experience. It was — first of all, my testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ grew in ways that it couldn’t have happened without that experience. It’s true that, I think, everyone has their own path that gets them to where they are with their testimony. And I think that’s one of the wonderful things, is we’re not all going to have the exact same path to arrive where we are in life.

But my mission was transformative. I had to do hard things. I remember having concrete floors that we swept layers and layers of dust off and didn’t really make much progress in terms of the dirt levels of our apartments. We rode bikes through hot, sweltering heat every day. It was intense. But the joy that I felt in doing so was life-changing. Every day, I woke up with this sense of “It’s a new day, an exciting day, and I’m going to get to teach people the gospel of Jesus Christ. How could it get any better than this?” It really was, for me, life-changing and transformative. For everything that’s happened since, it really is the basis and the foundation for what my life has become.

And the other thing I would say is, I’m not sure my wife would have married me if I had not served a mission. So I’m grateful for that. That’s the single best decision I’ve made in my life, is to marry my wife. And I think for her, it was an important thing that she marry a returned missionary, so there’s that too.

16:31

Sarah Jane Weaver: So, a kid from New Mexico ends up at BYU then in Taiwan. Tell us about your youth.

C. Shane Reese: So, I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was born in Logan, Utah, and we lived there for just a few months, and then I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, with my mom. My mom raised me as a single mom. My folks were divorced when I was very young. My mom is an amazing human being. It was a difficult thing at that time trying to make a living without a college degree. But my mom worked her tail off and was able to support us. And for me, I always felt like I had this kind of fairytale existence. She always made it seem like things were great. And I’m certain that that wasn’t the case. I’m certain that times were tight, financially and otherwise. But my mom did amazing work to help me feel like things were wonderful.

And I just had a great existence growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was an area where we didn’t have a lot of members of the Church. That was part of why arriving at BYU my freshman year was somewhat challenging, because I wasn’t used to being surrounded by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And that was a challenge for me. It should have been a blessing, but it was just so different from what I was used to. But my mom was incredible. She taught me the value of hard work. My mom is an amazing, hard worker. Her work ethic exceeds mine by leaps and bounds. And she tried to instill in me a sense of hard work. So that’s sort of what my existence as growing up as an only child was like.

BYU President C. Shane Reese and his wife Wendy smile during his installation as BYU’s 14th president at the Marriott Center in Provo on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023.

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

18:07

Sarah Jane Weaver: And we talked before this podcast about the fact that we might have been in a few BYU classes together. But I can guarantee you they weren’t statistics. I did take one statistics class. I got a tutor to get me through. And so, tell us how you chose that path.

C. Shane Reese: Yeah, it’s kind of a roundabout path. It’s not like I woke up, you know, one day and decided statistics was the thing to do. In fact, BYU used to send letters to students who had taken the ACT and performed well in math, they would send them a letter saying, “Hey, do you want to major in statistics?” It was kind of an initiative by the Department of Statistics to recruit students. And they sent me one. And when we got it, my mom said, “Whatever you do, don’t study statistics. Those people are the most boring human beings on the planet.” I still remember her saying that.

So it wasn’t like that was my lifelong dream, but I would say that there’s two things. First, I’m kind of an avid sports fan and have been since I was a little kid. And so, reading box scores was always something that was fascinating to me, watching sort of what the statistics were for individual players and teams, that was exciting. I came into BYU thinking I was going to be an engineer. I took the “This is why you want to be an engineer” class, and I thought, “I don’t want to do that.” And that was supposed to be the class that convinced you to be an engineer. So I knew I wasn’t going to do engineering at that point. And then I thought maybe business, and one of the prerequisites for the business program at the time was introductory statistics. And I’d had the math, so I could jump right into that. I took that class, and I fell in love. I mean, it really was kind of a — from an academic perspective — a love at first sight.

Once I took that class, I was hooked. I got my undergraduate degree in statistics, I got my master’s degree in statistics and I got my PhD in statistics. And it really has been something I’ve been passionate about. I love that you can make decisions with data. I love that you can apply it to a wide variety of different applications. My friends sometimes tell me I have intellectual ADHD, because I can’t decide an area where to apply my statistical tools, everything from climate to sports to nuclear weapons. It’s just an amazing thing for me to be a statistician, and I love talking about it. I love teaching it.

20:31

Sarah Jane Weaver: And when we look at your career — you just mentioned some of it — your mom probably was a little off base by saying that it was boring, because you have developed models involving chemical weapons and climate change, as well as working with the U.S. Olympic team and the NFL. What have been some highlights?

C. Shane Reese: You just mentioned some of the highlights. A journey into sports really began with a faculty member in graduate school at Texas A&M. He and I used to argue about who was the greatest home-run hitter of all time. And he would always talk about these kind of older players, and I would talk about the younger players. And we would have just these debates about who it was. And it was really kind of two sports junkies talking over lunch. But at one point, we decided, “You know what, we should write a paper about this. We think we can go collect all the data that we need.” And then we ended up writing a paper about a home-run hitting and hitting for average and hockey players to identify the greatest athlete of all time in each of those four different areas.

And this was like my first big paper in statistics. It turned out to be something that people resonated with, they were interested in the topic, we appeared on a few radio shows, Canadians didn’t like what we said about the greatest hockey player of all time. Some people in Texas didn’t like what we said about the best home-run hitter of all time. And so that led to kind of a snowballing effect in terms of studying sports statistics. And so, all of my work with sports is something that I get really excited about, partially because that sort of marries my interest in statistics with my interest in sports.

I’ve done work for the U.S. Olympic Committee. One of the sort of really figureheads in all of volleyball coaching is a guy named Carl McGown, who used to be BYU’s head coach. And he is a guy who just believed you can coach based on what data tell you. And so he loved that we would be willing to help him analyze data and give him insights into his coaching. And so that developed a relationship with Coach McGown, who then had relationships with the U.S. Olympic Committee. And that’s how we got involved there. And interestingly enough, it was Carl McGown sitting on a plane next to someone who was a grad student at the time he was a young faculty member at BYU.

22:46

Carl was a young faculty member, and one of the grad assistants with the football team got to know Carl and loved his focus on data. Well, this grad assistant later on became the head coach of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles, a guy named Andy Reid. They were on a plane one day, and Carl McGown says, “You know, if you’re interested in sort of how to use data, you should talk to these guys in the stat department at BYU.” And that’s how Andy Reid got my name, and got a phone call from him one day and asked if we’d be willing to do some work to help them understand how to better use data in their coaching.

So, all of these things sort of built off of each other. And it’s been a great thing. I’ve done a lot of work in kind of environmental statistics as well. That’s one of the areas that I get really excited about. Studying glaciers in High Mountain Asia and in Antarctica. And those are some really interesting results that I’ve continued to work on till my new job, where I haven’t had time to work on anything but this.

And then the last thing is I spent kind of a little bit of a career at Los Alamos National Laboratory and doing work in nuclear weapons and, as you mentioned, chemical weapons as well. And, boy, for a kid growing up thinking of blowing stuff up, that sounds cool. And it really was exciting work, high-level science with big implications. So all of these areas I’d call kind of my highlights of my research that I still look back fondly on.

24:10

Sarah Jane Weaver: So, you hinted at my next question: But you gave all that up to go into university administration. Help us understand that.

C. Shane Reese: It’s probably not true to make this blanket statement, but I don’t think very many people who go into academics go into it thinking, “I want to be a university administrator when I grow up.” And I certainly did not ever think that. In fact, at one point, someone approached me about being the department chair in my home Department of Statistics, and I said, “Yeah, I’m not interested, really, in administrative works.” I said, “Maybe at some point in my career, that’ll be something I’d do, but I’m not going to do that.

And then, I guess one of the things that I realized — someone invited me to apply to be the dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, which is where statistics sits at BYU, and I just sort of took them up on the invitation and put my name in the hat, and my predecessor’s academic vice president was Elder Jim Rasband of the Seventy. And he was then the academic vice president. And he invited me to be the dean of that college. And one of the things I realized is that as an administrator at a university, you get to scale your impact in a different way than you do as a faculty member. I could facilitate for other faculty members the excitement that I got from being a faculty member. Whether it be teaching or research or kind of citizenship within the university, I could facilitate that and scale that effort. It is a different kind of excitement, but it has rewards. And I always felt like if I could help someone else, or hopefully a whole college full of faculty members, try to do their jobs better, then there was some reward in that.

But there’s no question: The thing I miss the most is being in the classroom. The reason I went from Los Alamos, which is primarily a research job, to being at BYU is being in the classroom, being with students, seeing their eyes light up when they figured out what a t-test really was doing, that moment where the light bulbs go on, and you see it go on in their eyes, there’s no replacement for that.

President C. Shane Reese greets students following a BYU campus devotional held in the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah, on Sept. 12, 2023.

Jaren Wilkey, BYU

26:22

Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, and I want to talk about your time in administration, because you’ve had some pretty hard assignments. In recent years, you directed the BYU Committee on Race, Equity & Belonging. Tell us what the purpose of the committee was and how its recommendations actually impacted the university.

C. Shane Reese: Yeah, the Committee on Race, Equity & Belonging was a committee formed by President Worthen. It was during the era where the George Floyd situation had unfolded. And there was a lot of unrest. And there was some concern that maybe the experience of students of color, faculty of color at BYU was not very positive. And so President Worthen formed the committee. And I will just say that we got a group of people together. He sort of invited me to be the chair of that committee, and we formed a committee from a wide variety of different experiences, a wide variety of different positions at the university; there were faculty, there were staff, there were administrative employees, and we sort of all got in a room. And the truth is that room was full of a bunch of different opinions on what the right strategy going forward was.

But what we did is being able to engage in discussions with one another, to council together, to hear one another’s perspective, even though we might not agree with everyone in the room, was such a valuable thing. And we formed some recommendations. And I would say that the single most important thing that came out of that was the establishment of the Office of Belonging at BYU. Our Office of Belonging is remarkable, in part because it’s based on what we call the Statement on Belonging. And it focuses first and foremost on our common shared identity as children of God.

Only at a place like BYU, that is built on the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, can we lead with that statement. You start there, and all of a sudden, the questions where we might have had disagreements become the secondary questions. We can talk about primary issues, we can resonate and unify around primary issues, and then we can talk about these secondary questions. And it’s not that those aren’t important; it’s just that we lead with the most important thing. And I think of that as the most amazing thing ever. We have a new vice president of belonging, Carl Hernandez, who’s doing remarkable things, and it changes the nature of the conversations we’ve had. We’ve had institutions from all over the country come and talk to us about our approach because they’ve heard it’s different. And so, that’s an exciting thing that came out of that work.

29:01

Sarah Jane Weaver: And I also want to talk to you about some changes recently announced throughout not just BYU but other Church schools — Ensign College, BYU–Hawaii, BYU–Idaho — and that is a revised student ecclesiastical endorsement questions, a revised Honor Code and then dressing grooming standards. So, how are these changes going to impact BYU students?

C. Shane Reese: That’s a great question, and boy, I could not be more excited about these — and I’m just going to call them changes, because in some respects, there’s not huge changes to our practices on campus. The first thing that I think I’m most excited about is that our ecclesiastical endorsement is now aligned with ecclesiastical responsibilities. In the past, there had been a little bit of confounding of our dress and grooming standards, of our Honor Code, with the ecclesiastical leaders and the ecclesiastical endorsement. So, we were asking ecclesiastical leaders to visit with one of the people that are in their congregation about something that wasn’t ecclesiastical at all.

And so, to align ecclesiastical leaders with ecclesiastical matters seems like an incredible innovation and one that’s probably past its time. We’re really excited about that. In visiting with ecclesiastical leaders, we hold an annual meeting. They were all thrilled with the idea that they were going to be able to focus their interviews on ecclesiastical matters. So, that’s the first change, and it is amazing.

Our Honor Code didn’t change substantively at all. In fact, there’s very little change to our Honor Code, except the preamble to our Honor Code is much more aspirational. Our previous Honor Code had language that almost looked like it was constructed by a lawyer. It had very legalese leading into it, which is fine as a policy.

Sarah Jane Weaver: It probably was constructed by a lawyer.

30:59

C. Shane Reese: It probably was. But, you know, it’s much more aspirational. I think a student would read that and feel inspired about then reading on to the principles, the concepts involved with the Honor Code down below. So, really excited about that change.

And then when we get to the dress and grooming standards, following the pattern that we see in the “For the Strength of Youth,” it’s principle based. And it has some standards, some expectations that are attached to that, but it’s principle based. If you look at the standards and expectations that are added to these principles, one of the things that you see is that they don’t represent a big change in our practice, certainly not at BYU. It turns out maybe the biggest change across CES is that students at BYU–Idaho are now allowed to wear shorts. I think that might have been the biggest statement in the dress and grooming standards.

But for me, the exciting part about this new announcement from the Church Educational System — and endorsed and approved by our Board of Education — is that we have principles to talk with our students about. In the past, we were talking about standards, and it felt very much like a checklist. We can now have meaningful discussions with our students that are principle based. And I think that, for me, is maybe the most exciting part of this announcement as it relates to dress and grooming standards.

32:32

Sarah Jane Weaver: And I’m a mother who has two daughters at BYU. 

C. Shane Reese: All right.

Sarah Jane Weaver: I actually like rules. I like saying, “Wow, this is what you can wear, this is what you can’t wear.” To me, it reflects a lot of trust in your students, just like the new “For the Strength of Youth” guide reflects a lot of trust in the youth of the Church. Because instead of saying, “This is what you will or won’t do,” you’re saying, “How do you represent the Savior? How do you represent BYU? And what does that look like for you personally?” I kind of liked to scapegoat the university administration and say, “Nope, you’re not wearing that. It doesn’t work in the dress and grooming standards for BYU.” And so, do you trust your students? Is this a reflection of that?

33:14

C. Shane Reese: It’s absolutely a representation of trust in our students. And we also recognize that our students are at various stages of their understanding, various stages of their commitment to the principles that we’re talking about here, and that that’s going to involve some education, some conversation. And I think that that will be some of the most incredible results of this new change, is that we’re going to be able to have different conversations.

When I talk to parents who have had conversations with their children about the “For the Strength of Youth” standards and principles, they say it changed the nature of the conversations. And while there might have been some change in behavior, some of it was temporary. When they’d had the meaningful conversations around the principles, they were deeper conversations. They were more impactful conversations. And we anticipate that that same thing is going to hold true on our campus.

We recognize that there may be a period of time that sort of feels like “Anything goes.” But that’s not at all the principle. The principle here is that we’re asking for you to read the principles and try to incorporate them in your lives. One of the phrases that I love is part of our dress and grooming standards is that we anticipate that our students are going to let these principles guide their choices about specific aspects of their dress and grooming. It’s really an invitation. So not only is it the principles, but it’s an invitation to our students. I think it’s phenomenal, and it shows trust. But as with parents when “For the Strength of Youth” came out, we trust and then we swallow and gulp and hope and pray for our children, and that’s the same thing we’re doing at BYU for our students.

BYU President Shane Reese speaks during an event for prospective college students and their families at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.

Ian Maule, for the Deseret News

35:05

Sarah Jane Weaver: Great. You know, after your position was announced, you gave remarks and referenced a speech by President Spencer W. Kimball in 1976. You said BYU can become “an educational Everest.” Tell us what you meant by that.

C. Shane Reese: Yeah. So, President Kimball’s talk at BYU is one that we read often. I think every employee at the university has read that talk, and many of them have read that multiple times. It is what we call the “Second Century Address.” It is because he described the next 100 years for BYU, and as Elder Holland pointed out, we’re approaching the end of the first half of that 100 years here in 2025. And it is an exciting time for us. We feel like we’ve had prophetic direction at BYU.

Starting with President Kimball’s talk, it actually started with President Kimball’s talk that he gave in [1967] called “Education for Eternity.” Follow that up with the Second Century Address, which is a remarkable address — really the seminal address for Brigham Young University and its history — that describes this educational Mount Everest. We’ve had President Oaks of the First Presidency talk to us about our prophetic destiny as a university. We had Elder [David A.] Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles come to BYU and talk about our prophetic destiny and how we could be unique in an educational landscape. We had Elder Holland come and talk to us about the second half of the second century in an amazing talk, where he reiterated the importance for us to become like the institution that prophets on our campus had foretold.

That’s what we mean by the “educational Mount Everest.” That’s what we mean when we say we want to become that university. We’ve had prophetic direction; we don’t have to invent a new direction. It is becoming what prophets, seers and revelators have foretold BYU could become. And so much of that is going to be us leaning into not only our academic mission, which is critical and important and something we have to pursue with vigor. But our spiritual mission has to be our anchor. We can’t abandon those spiritual roots, because otherwise we’re going to be just as President Kimball described, aping the world. And I love that we can lean into the spiritual mission, and it’s part of what makes us unique. I said before, and I’ll say again, I think we will not succeed in the educational hierarchy in spite of our spiritual mission, but because of our spiritual mission.

38:03 

Sarah Jane Weaver: Just a few weeks ago, Elder Quentin L. Cook came to campus. He praised the faculty for the path they were on and all the good that they were doing and then said we have a little ways to go because we’re not just educating for this world. We’re educating for eternity.

C. Shane Reese: It was an amazing talk. He also grounded all that we were doing in doctrine. He talked so doctrinally about what was the undergirding for everything that happened at BYU and in education. It was an amazing talk to add to the ones that we’ve just spoken about. I love that as well.

38:34

Sarah Jane Weaver: And I want to talk about another recent address you gave. You and members of the Church’s Executive Education Committee went to Las Vegas, the first of several series of devotionals and firesides. But you mentioned that there may be times when people tell young people that they have to choose between their faith and their professional success, and that those two things might be incompatible. And you reassured them that that is completely untrue.

C. Shane Reese: Yes. This is something that I try to talk to our students about, I try to talk to our faculty about, I try to talk to our employees about, that I just don’t believe we can subscribe to the false dichotomy that you have to choose between professional excellence and our spiritual mission. Those two things can happen simultaneously. Well, my predecessor as academic vice president was Jim Rasband — now Elder James Rasband of the Seventy — and he described them not as in competition with one another, but as paired aspirations, really a play-off of a false dichotomy; he called them “paired aspirations.” And for us at BYU, our spiritual mission and our academic mission are in fact just that: paired aspirations.

39:47

Sarah Jane Weaver: Now, so much of what we accomplish at universities comes with the support of other people, what we’ve just been talking about, all that BYU does with the support of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tell us about what and who have supported you in your life. You mentioned your wife earlier, and we’d love to hear about your family.

40:07

C. Shane Reese: So yeah, for sure, the support, it starts with my wife. I know I already mentioned her, but my wife is an incredible human being. She is an example to me in every way of a believer, of someone who practices what she preaches. She’s kind, she understands service in amazing ways. And I just — she makes me a better man. I’m grateful that I met her when I did. She changed the course of my life, and it’s because of the goodness of her soul. And so, she’s been amazing to me for the entire time we’ve — almost 30 years. This year is our 30-year anniversary, so that’s incredible.

My mom is also just such an important figure in my life. My mom had a difficult task, I think; I was not an easy child to raise, I’ll just say that. But she was loving and patient and kind and supportive and encouraging through thick and thin, and doing it all single-handedly is remarkable. And so she, my mom, has been amazing. My mother-in-law is an incredible person as well. She has always been — my wife calls her a “pillar of positivity,” and I think it’s absolutely true. She is just always upbeat and encouraging as well. And I’m grateful for her.

I have three children. My oldest daughter is Maddie. I remember when we brought her from the hospital, she lit up our lives. And she’s an amazing kid. And I’ve always been grateful for her. She sends me just kind, supportive texts and just uplifting things, and days when I may have had a tough day with an issue, she’s always got something positive to say. My daughter Brittany just recently got married; we’ve welcomed a son-in-law into our home. That’s exciting. Brittany is also — she’s our sensitive kid. She’s always got an eye on where people are struggling, and we know that Brittany is going to always look out for the ones that are struggling in our family. We’re grateful for her.

And my son just got back from the mission last summer. And he’s a student at BYU as well; Brittany and Bryon are at school. And he is the other man of the house. And he’s taller than me. He’s not afraid to remind me he’s taller than me. And he is someone that I consider a friend, a best friend in a lot of ways. Luckily, he’s not exactly like his father; he got the best parts of his mom. But I hope he’s got something from his dad too. So, my family is my biggest support for sure.

C. Shane Reese talks with media after being announced as BYU’s new president at the Marriott Center in Provo on Tuesday, March 21, 2023.

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

42:27

Sarah Jane Weaver: And I want to talk a little bit about the influence of education. You come from a family — you’re the first generation of your family to go to college, and you end up with a doctorate. How does education change lives?

C. Shane Reese: Well, it’s hard for me to describe how it’s changed my life. It’s — I can’t even imagine what my life would have been if I hadn’t had education. And despite not having graduated from college, my mom was always a staunch supporter of me going to college. I mean that in word, in deed and in dollars; she was always willing to support me and sustain me throughout my education. And I’m grateful for her. I’m not sure I would have been as committed to education if it wasn’t for her support and encouragement.

I think it improves our ability to communicate with other people. When we’re educated, we can carry on conversations about a broad set of topics. That’s where a broad general education does wonders for people. I think we get specialty in important ways that allow us to be employed and conversant in more deep ways in specific topics. I think it improves our earning potential. There’s no question; you can’t ignore that piece of the puzzle. But education for me has been life-changing. And each time I finished a degree, I thought, “I’m probably done there. That’s enough education.” And luckily, I had mentors along the way, whether they be employees at BYU, whether they be faculty members of BYU, who I think saw more in me than I saw in myself, and they encouraged me to get more education.

And for me, it’s just been life-changing. I also believe the doctrine we teach, that we will take our intelligences with us. And so that’s part of, I think, the spiritual and eternal importance of education. It has value above and beyond what we might think of from just a secular perspective.

44:35

Sarah Jane Weaver: Now, I want you to look forward. In addition to us all hoping that we have a winning football season this year, what is your hope for BYU?

C. Shane Reese: Certainly have exciting ideas for what we might do in sports. But that’s not my hope and aspiration for BYU. I’d love for that to happen, and I’m as big a BYU fan as you’re going to find on the planet, so those things are exciting to me. But my hope for BYU is that students who walk through our doors see their divine potential, and that that divine potential includes a study in an area that they find exciting, and that they finish their degrees, and that they walk out of the university, and they have a firmer commitment to making and keeping sacred covenants, to embracing their divine identity as children of heavenly parents who love them, and that they go out, and that they become the light that I know that they can all be.

I was just with 7,000 new freshmen in the Marriott Center. And as I looked up on their faces, it was magical. It was one of those moments where I looked at them and I saw the light in their eyes. And I saw the excitement and enthusiasm for what they are about to undertake, which is their college education. It is hard to describe the energy and excitement and the spirit that was in that room. It was amazing.

46:05

Sarah Jane Weaver: And we have a tradition at the Church News podcast: We always end with the same question. We always give our guests the last word. And so, as we conclude today, what do you know now that you didn’t know before your time on BYU’s campus? And then I’m hoping you can also share your testimony of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

C. Shane Reese: I guess I didn’t know the prophetic destiny for a university in Provo, Utah. I didn’t know what BYU could become and what its students could become if they invest themselves in the experiment that we’re really in right now, which is the experiment that I would call “becoming BYU.” And so, I’ve learned what that means. And that’s what I’m trying to communicate to our campus community, because I know that I’ve felt what it can become. My task is to figure out how to describe it and have everybody feel within the depths of their soul that same thing that I feel about our prophetic destiny at BYU.

And I’m just humbled by your invitation for me to bear my testimony. I know that Jesus is the Christ. I’ve felt His love in deep and powerful ways in my life. I’ve felt His love in deep and powerful ways for my family. I’ve felt His love in deep and powerful ways for members of my ward. When He says that He can make all that is unfair in this world right through His atoning sacrifice, I know He means that. I know it’s real. And I know that that can be an incredible source of strength when we’ve got difficult trials that we’re going through. And there are people who have difficult things going on in their lives. But I know that He can change that experience and provide the peace and the comfort and the knowledge that we have a divine destiny as children of heavenly parents.

48:24

I know that we’re led by prophets, seers and revelators. And as the president of Brigham Young University, I have the distinct privilege and honor to sit with them as they counsel with us as Board of Trustees. And I’m humbled and awed by their wisdom, by the revelation that I see happening, sometimes in real time. And I know that President Russell M. Nelson is a Prophet of God. I know that because I’ve tried, imperfectly as it might be, to live by the words that he teaches, and I have felt the difference in my life. And I know that he’s a Prophet of God, and I know that he’s God’s mouthpiece on the earth at this time.

I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I have read it, and as I’ve read it, I’ve felt the truthfulness of its words. I’ve found answers to questions that I didn’t even imagine finding within its pages. And I’ve read it in pages that I’ve read time after time again and never read it the same way. And I know that that’s how God uses this as an instrument to teach us His will. And I know that the Prophet of the Restoration, Joseph Smith, saw what he said he saw that day in the grove. I know that he saw God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. And that event changed the course of this world. And that the priesthood has been restored to the earth. And I know those things because I’ve felt them deeply in my soul. And I share that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

BYU President C. Shane Reese participates in tailgate activities before the BYU vs. University of Arkansas game in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023.

Nate Edwards/Brigham Young University

50:21 

Sarah Jane Weaver: You have been listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News executive editor Sarah Jane Weaver. I hope you have learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by peering with me through the Church News window. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please make sure you share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates on the Church on TheChurchNews.com.