Regarding the organization of the Church among the followers of Christ in the Book of Mormon, the prophet Moroni observed, “After they had been received unto baptism, and were wrought upon and cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost, they were numbered among the people of the church of Christ; and their names were taken, that they might be remembered and nourished by the good word of God” (Moroni 6:4). Following this scriptural pattern, in Religious Education we have been carefully considering the numbering, naming, and nourishing of our students, especially those in our largest classes.

Jenet Erickson teaches The Eternal Family. Photo by Richard B. Crookston.

In Religious Education we teach approximately 25,000 undergraduate students each fall and winter semester.[1] To do so, Brigham Young University has two long-established tracks for its faculty. The most common is the professorial track, in which “faculty members are expected to engage in high-quality teaching, scholarship, and citizenship, including mentoring of students.”[2] The professional track has similar expectations for high-quality teaching, citizenship, and student mentoring. However, in place of the expectation to produce scholarship, those in this track have a specialized assignment to carry larger class loads and to teach larger classes. As a result, professional track faculty members have taught as many as six sections each during fall and winter semesters, often with more than 200 students in each class, in auditorium-style rooms, for what was often a total of 1,200 students per teacher per semester. Under that configuration, seven faculty in this track had the potential to teach as many as 8,400 students in each semester, or more than 30 percent of our student enrollment.

Recently, when leaders from Religious Education counseled with BYU and Church Educational System leadership, the request was made to find ways to serve students in smaller class settings. In support of this directive, the university and the Commissioner’s office generously increased the number of professional track faculty within Religious Education while charging us to reduce the size of our largest classes—all with the desire that students would be blessed.

With the influx of additional professional track faculty, including three who transferred from BYU–Idaho, four hired in the past two years, and others who will be hired this year, the professional track in Religious Education will more than double in size from 7 to 16 full-time faculty by 2026.[3] This expansion has allowed us to allocate these teachers to smaller classrooms on a space-available basis. Beginning in fall 2024, each professional track teacher taught four classes averaging 200 students and two classes averaging 60 students. Student rating scores increased nearly 5 percent in the smaller classes, even for faculty who are among the highest-rated teachers in Religious Education. As space allows, we plan to continue to reduce the size of additional large classes so that students can be more directly numbered, named, and nourished by the good word of God.

Religious Education expects to continue to produce gospel scholarship for Latter-day Saints, academic research for academic audiences, and pedagogical scholarship aimed at improving gospel teaching and learning.[4] Describing the place of BYU within the Church Educational System, Elder Clark G. Gilbert, Commissioner of Church Education, emphasized that this university has a scholarship expectation: “BYU is the educational ambassador and represents the entire system and the Church in its scholarship, academic programs, and ability to be a light beyond the university.”[5] Given this scholarship expectation for BYU, we expect that the professional track will remain a minority among the nearly 80 faculty who teach full-time in Religious Education. Additionally, through these class-size reductions, we also hope to make it possible for our remarkable teachers to better number, name, and nourish our students.

Ministering to God’s children and ensuring that they have a personal experience with the divine is not without scriptural precedent. In his incomparable visit to his followers in the Book of Mormon, the Savior ministered to a multitude of 2,500 men, women, and children “one by one until they had all gone forth, and did see with their eyes and did feel with their hands, and did know of a surety and did bear record, that it was he, of whom it was written by the prophets, that should come” (3 Nephi 11:15; see 17:25). Ushering in this dispensation, both Heavenly Father and Moroni personalized their encounters with young Joseph Smith, calling him by name (see Joseph Smith—History 1:17, 33).

While the number of students we serve is daunting, we are hoping to also minister to the one and better call each by name in Religious Education to, in the words of Moroni, “keep [our students] in the right way, to keep them continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who [is] the author and the finisher of their faith” (Moroni 6:4).

Notes

[1] While BYU had a total of 32,823 undergraduate students in fall 2024, not every student takes a religion class every semester, accounting for the discrepancy in numbers between students taught and total enrolled students. Some students opt to take classes during spring or summer terms, double up on religion classes in other semesters, or are on campus longer than four years, thereby spreading out the time between when they take religion classes.

[2] “Rank and Status Policy,”§ 2.2, https://policy.byu.edu/view/rank-and-status-policy.

[3] In addition to these professional track faculty who have traditionally taught our largest classes, Religious Education is also well served by two professional track faculty with the specialized assignment to teach our smallest classes, those in the Master of Arts Chaplaincy program.

[4] “Strengthening Religious Education in Institutions of Higher Education,” Church Educational System, June 12, 2019.

[5] Clark G. Gilbert, Scott C. Esplin, and Jared W. Ludlow, “Reanchoring Our Purpose to Jesus Christ,” Religious Educator 23, no. 2 (2022): 13; emphasis in original.