Thinking critically about his own faith, his family, and his work helps Cameron Bale feel greater appreciation and fulfillment. As a BYU Marriott School of Business assistant professor of marketing, Bale hopes to help students go beyond what they see on the page and think critically to find deeper solutions to problems, both in their assignments and their lives.
These days, Bale deeply values his faith and membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but this wasn’t always the case. Bale even stopped attending church for a time.
“I didn’t really have my own testimony,” Bale says. “When I did decide to come back to church, I could see the difference that it made. Reading the Book of Mormon and going to church—I felt that my life was better.” The gospel itself hadn’t changed, but his approach to the gospel had. “I’d gained a testimony.”
During his early college years at BYU, Bale switched from studying life sciences to economics, and he began exploring the possibility of PhD programs with his wife, Morgan, who also studied economics. The two applied to several universities for graduate school and felt prompted to go to Drexel University, where Bale earned a PhD in business analytics.
Last year, he joined BYU Marriott to teach marketing analytics to students. “Analytics classes will typically give students a prescriptive task: You have this data set, and this model, please use it to get this sort of output,” Bale says. “Doing that is a good first step—you need to understand how that works—but that type of ability is kind of being encroached on by AI.” Bale believes that students need to look deeper into their own motivations and think critically to find greater success in their future careers.
So, Bale focuses on helping his students become critical thinkers rather than just completing assignments. He explains that it’s about “helping students find the problem a business is facing and then identify a source of data or a model they can use to address the problem.”
Bale and his wife, who also teaches at BYU Marriott, use this same method of critical thinking when making decisions together, especially in working together to both provide for and raise their two children. “If one of our kids is sick, we’ll trade off,” he explains.
“We’re not specializing, we’re kind of both doing everything—which sometimes feels a little bit hectic—but it means I get to be more present and available as a parent,” Bale says. “I feel less pressure to be the sole provider, so I can allocate more time to my family and their other needs.”
Learning to solve problems and finding the right motivations helped Bale find meaning in his life. As a father to his children, an instructor to his students at BYU Marriott, and leader to the young men in his ward, he hopes to pass on the lessons he learned about living with faith and intention. He says, “Receiving comments from students about how much they appreciated the spiritual thoughts in my lessons strengthened my belief conviction in the mission of BYU Marriott and what I'm doing here.”