A Major Merger

The Marriott School Acquires the Recreation Management and Youth Leadership Department

When BYU’s semester ended last April, Alexis Newby packed up her apartment, passed her cleaning check, and pulled out her passport. She joined a group of twenty-five BYU students at the Los Angeles International Airport to board a flight to New Zealand, the start of a study abroad program with the Recreation Management and Youth Leadership Department.

The five-week outing was spent learning, discovering, and camping, with time in Fiji and Australia as well. Some days group members explored native villages; other days they took six-hour hikes. Most days, though, were planned and executed by the students.

“It was a good experience because you were leading people in a place you weren’t familiar with; you did as much research as you could beforehand, but there still were on-the-spot decisions you made for the group,” Newby says. “You learned to balance between pleasing people and doing what needed to be done.”

While Newby was learning leadership and outdoor skills firsthand, back at BYU things were being put in motion for her major—leisure services management—and the rest of the Recreation Management and Youth Leadership Department to merge with the Marriott School.

The change comes as a result of the College of Health and Human Performance being dissolved and its departments being reassigned to other colleges across campus. “This proposal was a surprise to the RMYL faculty and completely unexpected by anyone in the Marriott School,” says Gary Cornia, dean. “But we are committed to welcoming our new colleagues and know they’ll contribute to the school and its reputation.”

While some RMYL students may be more interested in planning events than climbing the corporate ladder, a closer look shows there are some similarities and significant opportunities for the two entities to complement each other as they merge and move ahead.

A Mutually Beneficial Gain

Collaboration, entrepreneurship, leadership, international experience, nonprofit management, group work—all these terms are at home in the Marriott School, but they also come up when talking with Patti Freeman, chair of the RMYL Department.

“Philosophically we have more in common than might appear on the surface,” she says. “We are interested in developing individuals who are good leaders and managers. We operate in the public and nonprofit sectors and focus on providing high-quality services.”

The key difference though, Freeman says, is that the RMYL Department teaches leadership skills and management theories that will be applied in the recreation field or service sector.

Freeman was the faculty advisor for Newby’s study abroad last spring. One day half the group was sea kayaking in rough Fijian water and windy weather. “As I watched them I realized some of them were learning more about themselves, about coping, about dealing with difficulties, about overcoming challenges, and about their efficacy to perform than they would ever learn from reading a textbook,” she recalls. “Most of us learn best by doing, and I think that’s an area where we excel in our department.”

The fit between the two entities isn’t just theoretical. Some RMYL majors are required to take two information systems courses and a finance course, and they have the option of enrolling in a marketing course to earn elective credit. An emphasis within the major overlaps with Marriott School courses so much that declaring a business minor fills twelve credits of the eighteen needed. It’s not uncommon for RMYL grads to pursue MBAs or MPAs or become entrepreneurs.

Gary Palmer, a RMYL teaching professor, believes his department is one of the best kept secrets on campus because of its balance between scholarship and recreation. Palmer also oversees its internship program. Like the Marriott School, the department recognizes the value of students gaining on-the-job training. Students are required to intern for four months following the completion of course work.

The academic training RMYL students undergo may come as a surprise to some people. Even Newby acknowledges that her major is sometimes considered an easy choice.

“I don’t think that’s true at all,” she says. “There are lots of assignments, readings, and tests—just like any other major. The students are academic, and they need to be in order to do well. The major attracts hard workers—people who like helping and like making things fun.”

Newby is a good example of an RMYL academic. A high school valedictorian, she also has a full-tuition scholarship to BYU and was recently named the RMYL Department’s outstanding undergraduate student. Not the type to take the easy route.

Palmer, who has photo rosters of his classes taped to his wall, has long realized the overlap of the leisure industry and business. “It’s a great combination. I think we can learn from the Marriott School, and I think it can learn from us as well.”

RMYL Due Diligence

The Recreation Management and Youth Leadership Department offers two majors: therapeutic recreation and leisure services management. Therapeutic recreation students learn how to help the disabled or diseased in community and clinical settings. Leisure services management students learn key skills and theories necessary to provide recreation programs. Within the leisure services management major, there are four emphases: commercial, community, youth leadership, and outdoor recreation.

The department has evolved from the Department of Social and Recreational Leadership, which was created in 1921 with Eugene L. Roberts as the first director. In 1948 the Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Department offered a recreation minor, and two years later it offered a recreation major.

In 1956 Israel C. Heaton was appointed the first chair of the Recreation Education Department. That same year Vera L. Speights became the first BYU graduate ever to receive a degree with a major in recreation. There were six undergraduate students and one graduate student enrolled then.

RMYL’s programs—which at one point included a Scouting major—have developed during the last half-century. There are nearly four hundred students currently enrolled. “We’ve been growing pretty consistently and steadily the last few years,” Freeman says.

Fifteen of the four hundred students are earning their master’s in youth and family recreation. These students work with professors to research the impact of recreational leisure.

One graduate student is analyzing marital satisfaction among extreme video gamers, Freeman explains. “She found that if one spouse is a gamer and the other isn’t, marital satisfaction significantly declines,” she says. “Gaming is not the best use of time. We take very seriously the goal to strengthen individuals, families, and communities by helping people make appropriate and good choices in their leisure time.”

Housed in the Tanner Building Addition, the department will bring eleven professors to the Marriott School. The faculty, who last August moved into the Tanner Building from its campus neighbor, the Richards Building, are looking forward to the change—and not just because they’ll have window offices.

Cornia believes the new faculty members will add a strong dimension to the school and open the door for broader academic studies. “We’ve been extremely impressed with Patti and her group already,” he says. “We’re gaining faculty who are excellent teachers and who do interesting research. I look forward to getting to know them and their students better.”

Palmer, who has been at BYU forty-two years and is considered the patriarch of the RMYL Department, regards the faculty as his good friends. “I love my colleagues; they are great people to work with,” he says. “There’s a closeness and collegiality that’s as good as it gets.”

Future Yelds

Administrators acknowledge that even though this union is more of an arranged marriage, they are confident it will succeed. “It worked in Fiddler on the Roof,” Freeman quips.

Jokes aside, Freeman, who has been working in the RMYL Department for eleven years, says her department is excited about the merger.

“The charge has been set forth, and we are eager to make the most of it and welcome the opportunity to grow professionally and to contribute to the Marriott School,” she says. “We hope it becomes a symbiotic relationship. We are anxious to move ahead and do our best. Down the road we’ll both be better.”

Cornia says that change has and always will continue to add a valuable component to the Marriott School. “Like every organization, we can become a little complacent in the way we do things,” he says. “This change gives us the opportunity to rethink our strategy and to expand our research.”

As Newby looks toward graduation next year, she’ll be prepping her résumé with her skills learned in the classroom, her internship, and her study abroad—plus one more unexpected fact: her degree will be from the Marriott School. “Being part of the school adds credibility to my major because of its strong reputation,” she says. “I’m excited to be part of it.”

Historical information was procured from A History of the Recreation Education Department at Brigham Young University, a master’s thesis written by A. Robert Thomson in 1969, and from RMYL Department records.