Growing Brighter & Brighter

On a mountainside near the city of Capernaum, Jesus sat before a group of His disciples. “Ye are the light of the world,” He told them. And then He admonished, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”¹

This charge to illuminate the world through good works is foundational to the BYU George W. Romney Institute of Public Service and Ethics, where students, faculty, and staff strive to cultivate Christlike attributes through public service. Consequently, Christ’s legacy of service is now at the heart of a new vision, mission, and values (VMV) statement for BYU Marriott’s MPA program.

“We are clearly centered in using the Savior as the model to teach,” says MPA director Rob Christensen. “In the statement, we tried to capture the values that He lived and embodied,” thereby reinforcing the program’s longtime commitment to Christlike service. The new VMV empowers students, alumni, faculty, and staff to bring more light to the world.

A New Guiding Star

At BYU’s centennial celebration in 1975, President Spencer W. Kimball instructed the campus community to shine a “unique light . . . into the educational world.”² It’s one of many BYU-specific injunctions from that address that have motivated the university to move to higher ground over the past half century.

As part of those efforts, BYU began honing its brand to focus more intently on its mission “to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life.”³ Recognizing the power of this mission, BYU Marriott dean Brigitte Madrian saw a need within the college to have a similar guiding light. In 2021 she led a team in creating a vision, mission, and values statement, pointing BYU Marriott to the bigger why of its purpose.

The college’s new VMV stirred something in Christensen. He saw the impact it was having and wanted something similar to delineate the core values and aspirations of the MPA program, including how the program aligned with the college.

Using the BYU Marriott VMV as a foundation and a road map, Christensen began involving stakeholders. During one MPA Executive Advisory Board (EAB) meeting, the room buzzed with energy as groups of three or four members huddled together, pouring over assigned sections of the BYU Marriott VMV. They examined each word. They dissected the phrasing. And they discussed ideas borne of their own professional and student experiences.

“We were intentional in how we tried to craft supportive but distinctive language,” recalls Laura Kaloi (MPA ’97), who chairs the EAB and is a copartner at the Washington, DC, consultancy firm Stride Policy Solutions. Kaloi continues, “We wanted to make sure it would appeal to everybody and that no matter your age, your gender, or your career path, you would see yourself in the statement.”

That was only the beginning. The Alumni Advisory Board also added their suggestions. Dean Madrian offered her thoughts, and faculty, staff, and students gave their feedback in turn. “It would be difficult to tell you exactly who added what,” Christensen recalls. It was a collaborative and evolutionary process.

In November 2023, after nearly two years, the MPA’s VMV was finalized and implemented. The completed document sharpens and highlights how the MPA program is both reinforcing and making a distinct contribution to the missions of the university and BYU Marriott.

Reflecting on her own work experience in California’s Department of Finance, Koreen van Ravenhorst, a 2002 MPA grad and EAB member, foresees the VMV’s benefits: “When people have these core values, over time they embody those things; they become what they strive for.” And she can see those transformations happening in the program as students and personnel take the new vision, mission, and values to heart.

Increasing in Light

At the beginning of summer 2024, Christensen sat down with a prospective MPA student and handed him a copy of the program’s new VMV. “This is what sets a BYU MPA apart,” Christensen said. “We don’t think there’s a better example in the world of a public servant than the Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the kind of education you’ll get here.” The young man immediately understood what BYU Marriott’s MPA was about.

“This document allows us to be really clear and intentional about how we are different from other universities and programs,” Christensen says.

The MPA program is discovering additional ways to follow its new guiding star. The VMV guides administrators as they make admission and scholarship decisions. And in their spring 2024 meeting, the EAB reexamined the statement, this time discussing how to apply it in the upcoming accreditation process and how to “show the world that the VMV can absolutely be connected to our curriculum and how we prepare MPA students,” Kaloi says.

The values are also the foundation of a new set of student awards, presented in spring 2024 to six students nominated by their peers. Christensen says, “These awards go beyond GPA to how the students embody the values of the MPA program.”

For example, the MPA student who won the award for Excellence and Generosity (Max Moore), was nominated not only for his diligence in the classroom but also for reaching out to those who were struggling in the program, helping them achieve the same excellence. The nomination stated: “His generosity never belittles or diminishes; it always encourages and empowers.” Christensen says this is “the kind of person who we want to say is a BYU Marriott MPA student.”

Countless similar stories confirm the caliber of MPA students. In his role heading up the program’s accreditation self-study during the past year, MPA professor David Matkin has seen how the program cultivates individuals of exceptional character and integrity.

As part of the self-study, Matkin brought paper and pencils to a faculty meeting and asked the professors to enumerate how they knew whether the MPA program was successful. The student team helping him with the analysis was surprised that faculty responses didn’t focus on job titles, professional status, or salaries. “That wasn’t what drew our imaginations,” Matkin says. “Most of the comments were in line with building leaders of faith, integrity, and charity. Life happiness and strength in the gospel are the foundation on which the technical and managerial skills are placed.” All of which is reflected in the new vision, mission, and values.

Brightening a Legacy

As the BYU MPA program embraces the values in its new VMV, its light is sure to grow “brighter and brighter.”⁴ By anchoring its identity and aspirations in Christlike service, the Romney Institute ensures that its graduates are not only skilled professionals but also compassionate disciple-leaders dedicated to lifting and serving their communities, following the Savior’s directive to illuminate the world. Ultimately, the VMV is a testament to the program’s enduring legacy. “We are standing on the shoulders of giants,” Matkin says. It’s a legacy of light.

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What’s New?

Shedding Light on the MPA and BYU Marriott VMVs

The MPA’s vision, mission, and values (VMV) statement draws extensively from BYU Marriott’s VMV; it also differs in important ways. Here’s a look at the changes.

Vision

Christ is at the forefront of the BYU Marriott vision, and that’s right where MPA stakeholders felt He should be in the MPA vision. “The Savior is an integral part of who we are and what we want to become,” says MPA director Robert Christensen. “Jesus is the answer to everything, including how we do a better MPA program.” Consequently, the vision stayed the same—with two important modifications. Public service was added to connect it specifically to the program, and the word transform was changed to lift. “We want to be part of the transformation that Christ can do, and we’ll do so by lifting,” Christensen says about the change. “We go forth to lift and to serve, often helping those who are in greatest need.”

Mission

Along with adding public service, the MPA mission replaced character with integrity and added the word charity. “We felt like integrity better captures the idea of wholeness and the ethics aspect of our department,” says Christensen. And although the word charity isn’t common in the business world, “our alumni work in jobs serving God’s children who are among the most vulnerable,” he says. “Charity—‘the pure love of Christ’—captures that.”⁵

Values

Three of the BYU Marriott values—Faith in Christ, Respect for All, and Integrity in Action—remained the same. Two values were added, and one was modified.

• Service to Community. Since service is integral to the MPA program and the work Eva Witesman and other MPA professors are doing in BYU Marriott’s Ballard Center for Social Impact, stakeholders felt strongly about including this value.
• Love, Agency, and Accountability. This value was inspired by the BYU Sorensen Center for Moral and Ethical Leadership and its Christlike leadership model. Run by Jeffery Thompson, a professor in the MPA program, the center has a mission to “lead others through expressing love, honoring agency, and inviting accountability.”
• Excellence and Generosity. Modifying the BYU Marriott value of excellence to add generosity was important. “We can only excel to the extent to which we are generous to others,” Christensen says. “The addition of generosity brings this value back to the Divine.”

Guiding Principle

The MPA guiding principle—Enter to Learn; Go Forth to Serve—is an MPA-specific iteration of the college’s guiding principle, Centered on Students. While the well-known phrase is also used by the university, “it has its home in our department,” Christensen says, recounting the slogan’s genesis story.

When BYU created a new entrance to campus in the 1960s, faculty and others submitted ideas for a motto to be displayed there. The winning phrase was presented by Stewart L. Grow, who only a few years earlier (1961) had become head of BYU’s first graduate program in public administration.

Grow wrote: “Enter to Learn; Go Forth to Serve is . . . a distillation of my life’s philosophy. We are born to gain experience in learning and [we] have both the obligation and the reward of serving. . . . I know of no better way to expand the joy which man should have than to create a world in which all men will be motivated to learn and to serve each other.”⁶

The MPA is, at its core, a degree in service. Christensen adds, “This phrase is part of our DNA and has been for 60 years.”

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Notes

1. Matthew 5:14, 16.
2. Spencer W. Kimball, “The Second Century of Brigham Young University,” BYU devotional address, 10 October 1975.
3. BYU Mission Statement (4 November 1981).
4. Doctrine and Covenants 50:24.
5. See Moroni 7:47.
6. Stewart L. Grow, My Autobiography (1986), L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, 129; see also Kevin J Worthen, “Enter to Learn; Go Forth to Serve,” BYU commencement address, 16 August 2018.

This article was originally published in the MPA 2023–24 annual report, pages 4–9.