Shaping Our Future

BYU is winding down its year of sesquicentennial celebrations, making it a natural time to look toward the university’s next 150 years.

BYU’s sesquicentennial has been monumental, says President C. Shane Reese. “As a community, let us look beyond this year’s events to year 151—less of a landmark number, perhaps, but we will still be here and building on incredible momentum. I promise you, the future is bright.”

For BYU Marriott, planning for the future means increasing enrollment capacity, leveraging AI for both students and faculty, and updating curriculum—as well as the Tanner Building. The developments will no doubt bring challenges, but the school has never shied away from efforts to provide top-notch education.

The good news: BYU Marriott programs have grown significantly. From 2019 to 2025, student admission rates for the school’s undergraduate majors increased by 59 percent. But even as more students are admitted, demand continues to exceed the space available. Rhonda Sandberg, BYU Marriott assistant dean of advisement, curriculum, and undergraduate admissions, knows there are a lot of talented applicants who would be terrific students, yet last year 26 percent of undergraduate major applications weren’t accepted.

“We literally do not have enough space or sufficient staffing, but we are desperately trying to figure out how to accept more people,” Sandberg says. “The overarching goal is to offer qualified-enrollment programs so every student who meets the criteria can be admitted to the major of his or her choice. Any new resources we receive are helping that effort.”

In the meantime, Sandberg continues, the school is getting creative. One of the thinking-outside-the-box moves is reviving the business management major, which was a staple at BYU Marriott until business management emphases were established as their own majors. “We have more flexibility in expanding business management because the program doesn’t assign the students into cohorts—there are fewer moving parts,” Sandberg explains.

During the winter 2026 semester, 15 students participated in a business management admissions pilot program, which is being evaluated for future expansion. The major appeals to students with different needs, such as students planning on attending graduate school or those who value a general business education rather than a discipline-specific skill set. “Business management is also a wonderful route for people who want to have their own small business or work in a family business where they need to know a little bit about everything,” Sandberg says. “Those students thrive in the major.”

Lydia Atkinson is one student who found business management to be a perfect fit. “One of my favorite parts is how customizable the major is,” says Atkinson, a senior from Austin, Texas. “It’s nice to balance my classes based on what I want for my career.” A master aesthetician, Atkinson chose business management to build a strong foundation for potentially opening her own med spa someday. “Even if I don’t start a business, I have skills that make me a better leader,” she adds. “I was a little nervous at first because the major doesn’t have cohorts, but at orientation I met a lot of people with similar career goals and realized, This is exactly where I need to be.”

James Gaskin compares the rise of artificial intelligence in academia to a tidal wave. “Professors are doing their best to get their heads above water, but the wave keeps shifting and curling in on itself, constantly getting bigger and morphing.”

Gaskin, a BYU Marriott information systems (IS) professor, says it’s hard to know what to teach, how to teach it, and how to evaluate students in this fast-moving environment. “We need to rethink how we’re teaching,” he says. “My concern is we won’t be able to keep up, or we’ll get burned out trying to stay on top.”

Jeff Wilks, BYU Marriott associate dean, says the school is only at the tip of the iceberg in understanding AI’s potential. But that uncertainty is not slowing down efforts to incorporate AI at BYU Marriott—and not just with students. This year, the school required all faculty and staff to take an AI course because, Wilks says, “As you get into it, your mindset changes and you start to realize all the things you can do.”

AI is part of every assignment in Gaskin’s Introduction to Information Systems course, and he sends students to AI to learn skills that he intentionally didn’t teach. “If students want to be competitive, they can’t use AI like a chatbot, because everyone can do that. They need to be using the latest features and building applications that their professors didn’t ask them to build,” Gaskin says. “That’s how students will learn all of AI’s limitations and all of its strengths.”

The IS introductory course has multiple sections with roughly 3,000 students each academic year, and Gaskin oversees the teaching assistants. He shares that until recently, “it took me more time to manage the TAs than it did to teach the course.”

That changed in 2022 when Gaskin built an AI teaching assistant that could answer any question from the 500-page textbook. Research showed that the virtual TA was effective and that students liked it because “it was not judgmental, had 24/7 availability, and had infinite patience.” Gaskin used to hire one human TA for every 40 students and now hires one for every 60 students.

Wilks points to two other tools that can have a big impact on students: AI Apprentice and CAiSEY. AI Apprentice is an intentionally dumbed-down chatbot that students can teach after learning a concept themselves. The chatbot—a brainchild of Professor David Wood from the School of Accountancy—then takes an exam, and students earn the grade it receives. CAiSEY, created at Columbia Business School, is a voice-based platform that converses with students about cases they’re studying. “Students who use CAiSEY come to class better prepared to discuss and defend their opinions,” Wilks shares.

Opportunities like these are just scratching the surface. “I’m a techno-optimist,” Gaskin says, “but learning and teaching in the age of AI is going to be a wild ride. It’s already been a wild ride the past few years.”

A Christlike leadership course developed in 2019 by Kim B. Clark,¹ who recently retired as the NAC Professor of Business, became a requirement this year in three undergraduate programs: strategy, human resources, and business management. The remaining undergraduate programs are planning to add it to their curriculum during the 2027–28 academic year.

The course, MSB 300: Leadership and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, focuses on helping students become disciple-leaders. Dean Brigitte Madrian says that BYU Marriott students understand gospel principles but need help learning how to apply those principles in the workplace. “Becoming a disciple-leader is a developmental experience,” explains Madrian, who coauthored the course textbook with Clark. “The hope is that students will engage in ways that leave them fundamentally different after completing the course.”

One student wrote in a course reflection: “I used to think of myself in terms of what I was doing—school, work, church calling, goals—but now I’ve started to view myself as a disciple who happens to do those things. That small shift has made a big difference. It’s changed how I think about my choices. I’ve started asking myself if what I’m doing brings me closer
to Christ.”

Shifts like these are central to the goals of MSB 300. “We want our students to see themselves as leaders, because that’s part of their identities as disciples of Jesus Christ,” Madrian says. “To be like Him is to lead as He leads.”

Management Professor John Bingham—who teaches MBA 535: Leadership and the Gospel, the graduate equivalent of MSB 300—says it was deeply rewarding to watch students make the content personal to their lives throughout the course. “The hope is that every student leaves BYU Marriott with a world-class business education and, most importantly, with the ability to serve as disciple-leaders who represent BYU, the Church, and the Savior in a purposeful way.”

While the Christlike leadership course focuses on improving the moral compass of BYU Marriott students, the school is also taking an opportunity to improve the Tanner Building’s physical appearance as the original structure approaches its 50th anniversary.

Construction began last April and is scheduled to run through 2031. The building will undergo improvements in its classrooms, offices, public spaces, and communication displays. The infrastructure will also be updated—atrium skylights, HVAC systems, lighting, technology, and bathroom accessibility—along with seismic upgrades and a new fire suppression system.

Summer Elrod, BYU Marriott operations administrator, says the project is more than just a remodel: “We hope that everyone who walks through the Tanner Building’s doors finds a welcoming space that meets the college’s dynamic needs while fostering learning, belonging, and growth.”

These improvements will help the Tanner Building remain a pillar of BYU’s campus—perhaps even for another 150 years.

______

Photo 1 by Nate Edwards / BYU Photo
Photo 2 by Alaura de Hoyos
______

Note

1. See Kim B. Clark, “Becoming a Disciple-Leader,” Marriott Alumni Magazine, Fall 2022, 10–16; marriott.byu.edu/magazine/feature/becoming-a-disciple-leader.