Jeff Bednar, an associate professor of organizational behavior and human resources at the BYU Marriott School of Business, has seen how focusing on relationships and telling his personal story have brought the most meaning to his professional life.

Going into academia was a natural career choice for Bednar. “I grew up in the home of a professor, so I always knew that was a really interesting and viable career path,” he says. He applied to BYU Marriott’s master of accountancy (MAcc) program to take advantage of its PhD prep track and fell in love with the organizational behavior classes he took alongside his accounting courses.
“I felt organizational behavior was something that I could wake up to every morning and get really excited about teaching,” Bednar relates. So after completing his MAcc, Bednar went to the University of Michigan and received his PhD in management and organizations in 2013.
Returning to BYU Marriott as a faculty member later that same year, Bednar began teaching undergraduate organizational behavior courses. Now he heads the strategic human resources track for the MBA program, where he works to grow the track as he teaches the program’s core human resource management class.
Bednar has cherished the people he has interacted with during his time at BYU Marriott. “I love my colleagues and have so much respect and admiration for every single member of my department,” he says. Bednar has similar praise for his students. “It’s really meaningful to interact with such high-caliber students who bring incredible experiences and insights into the classroom,” he explains. “It enables really powerful discussions about the topics we are focusing on.”

While he seeks to connect with his students in the classroom—such as by memorizing everyone’s names before classes begin or by implementing student feedback—Bednar also believes that connections formed outside of class are particularly impactful. “Some of my favorite teaching experiences happen in my office, when a student comes with a concern or a life decision that they’re wrestling with,” he says. “To me, chances to be a mentor, a sounding board, or a help to them are the most meaningful.”
Apart from advising students, Bednar also feels that off-campus learning opportunities offer unique chances to build relationships with students. In 2015 and 2016, Bednar helped organize a study abroad to Ghana for BYU Marriott graduate students; Bednar says the program was one of the most impactful experiences he’s had as a professor. “You can’t have the same types of experiences in the classroom that you can when you are in a place like Ghana, experiencing something totally different for the first time,” he says. The experience led to lifelong relationships: “It broke down those walls and barriers [between students and faculty] and really enabled us to have an impact on each other.”
Bednar also strives to connect with his students by being open about his personal experiences, particularly with the impostor phenomenon. During his time as a PhD student, he struggled with intense feelings of inadequacy that colored how he saw his dissertation and made him doubt the value of his research.
This experience led Bednar to study impostor syndrome extensively. His research found two particularly useful coping strategies for dealing with the phenomenon: recognizing that impostor syndrome is something that many people experience and finding mentorship from someone outside of the situation where impostor syndrome is experienced. (Bednar explains that, for first-year MBA students, this would be equivalent to approaching a second-year student for advice.)
Bednar explains that the recent publication of his dissertation was a meaningful full-circle moment in his journey. “When my dissertation got accepted, I thought of all the self-doubt I experienced along the way and all the mentors who never gave up on me,” he explains. “I’m grateful for the opportunities I have now to help students discover the capacity they have that they might struggle to see within themselves.”

As he’s taught at BYU Marriott for the past 11 years, Bednar appreciates how he’s been able to share his faith, as well as his personal and professional experience, with his students. Bednar points out that starting class with a prayer or including scriptures in his teaching material is a unique opportunity. “That ability to bring my whole spiritual self to work along with my whole professional self is a really special opportunity for me,” he says. “I’m grateful to be able to teach in ways at BYU that I couldn’t at any other institution.”
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Written by Katie Brimhall