Chapter 8 " Staying the Course"

“Staying the Course”

President Howard W. Hunter presided at Shumway’s inauguration November 18, 1994, accompanied by Elders Neal A. Maxwell and Henry B. Eyring of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Rex Lee, president of BYU in Provo. In his charge to Shumway, President Hunter sounded a familiar theme that resonated with the counsel to previous presidents and with David O. McKay’s first address at the ground breaking, February 12, 1955. President Hunter reminded Shumway “to use what he had learned throughout his lifetime … to help every student, faculty, and employee become a part of a loving, productive, and honest community,” learning the lessons “of respect and tolerance, of hard work, and of integrity, which will make them leaders in a world that will come to value those qualities as they become more rare.”²

Elder Maxwell declared that the influence of the campus would continue to expand and that “tens of thousands in the world who will never set foot on this campus will be blessed and served by the thousands who have been blessed to be here.” Shumway’s challenge would not be the kind of drastic internal change that tried and tested earlier presidents. Rather, with a cap on enrollment, an assigned target area, a clear statement of purpose and mission, and a multitude of support systems in place, Elder Maxwell saw the need for Shumway to be a “helmsman who can lead and guide amid opportunities and challenges, and stay the course.” He added prophetically:

“Staying the course” … sounds easier than it really will be, because this institution will function in the context of radical change on this planet. The drift away from traditional and religious moorings and toward secularism is real and relentless. One has only to “call the roll” of institutions which once had strong religious identities to sense how profound change has been. Christianity has great relevancy for education and vice versa, but there are not many places left where such can be demonstrated. Significant large-scale encounters between nations are occurring and will occur along cultural and religious fault lines.³

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the

Pentagon were only conspicuous and close-to home manifestations of religious hatred and consuming ethnic malignancies that would inject strong poisons into a world that needed to learn BYU-Hawaii’s lessons of unity within diversity.

In August 1966 when Eric Shumway arrived in Laie to teach English literature and composition just eleven years after the college first opened its doors, there was a sense of homecoming. Eric and Carolyn were suited constitutionally for life in rural Oahu. They had both served missions, he in Tonga (1959-62), she in Georgia and Alabama (1961-62). He had grown up in tiny St. John’s Arizona, she in Salt Lake City. He excelled in sports and academics, she in music. Gregarious and friendly, they were embraced by the local people. Merrilli and Angela, the first of their seven children, assimilated comfortably into Hau‘ula.

Shumway’s professional career path to the presidency of BYU-Hawaii actually began in Tonga where, as a missionary, he learned not only the Tongan language, but also the art of leadership anchored in love, patience, prayer, conciliation, and the priceless worth of a soul.⁴

Tonga (the “Friendly Islands”) is a 288-square mile kingdom of about 150 islands. When Shumway arrived there at age twenty in the fall of 1959, he had never seen a Tongan nor heard a word spoken in that language. He describes it as a “swim or sink” situation, of being “born again” in a new language. He was driven to a fervent dependence on God. He rapidly assimilated the language, created strong bonds of trust with these island people, and was intellectually and socially fascinated by the language, oratory, customs, and intricate culture of the small communities.

In 1961 the paramount chief, the honorable Nuku (Fe`ao) bestowed upon him in a kava ceremony the chiefly title of Faivaola (“one who succeeds in performance”). This title allowed him to function in ceremonial contexts, moving easily within the circle of chiefs and nobles. He was officially acknowledged as a matapule or chiefly attendant to paramount chiefs, nobles, and to Queen Salote herself (r. 1918-65).

After joining the English faculty at the Church College of Hawaii (1966), Shumway was given a brief leave of absence to the island of Molokai to write Tongan language materials and train Peace Corps volunteers. The result was his publication of Intensive Course in Tongan, later cited by the University of Hawaii as a model for similar texts.⁵ The revised Intensive Course in Tongan published in 1988 is still a standard Tongan text.

Opportunities to grow intellectually and spiritually came in rapid succession both in Tonga and in rural Oahu. In January 1968, Shumway was called to be the first bishop of the newly established Hauula Second Ward. After two years, he took an early sabbatical leave and went to the University of Virginia where he received his Ph.D. in English literature (1973). The Shumways returned to Laie in the fall of 1972 where Shumway’s faculty associates elected him chair of the newly organized Faculty Advisory Council.

This assignment came at a time of considerable campus turmoil, low faculty and student morale, and mutual distrust between the administration and faculty. President Stephen Brower had dismantled the Faculty Association, the only organized voice of the faculty, and put all of the departments on hold as part of his “unfreezing” strategy. Made up of Shumway, Ken Baldridge, Ron Jackson, Jayne Garside, Dale Hammond, and Mark Clarke, the new Faculty Advisory Council (FAC) was able to establish a working relationship with the president, win the confidence of the students, represent the faculty fairly, and play an important role in the college’s transition to a new relationship with BYU in Provo. “I remember we took a good, hard look at what was going on,” Shumway told historian Kenneth Baldridge, “…and we were able, I think, to put things on an even keel.”⁶

In 1975, Shumway was named chair of the Division of Communications and Language Arts with oversight of the English and Teaching English as a Second Language majors, the English Language Institute, modern languages, and speech communication. This division also had the responsibility for publishing the professional journal The TESL Reporter and the college’s literary magazine, Kula Manu. In 1977, Shumway was called to be the stake president of the newly organized BYU-Hawaii Stake with Kamaka Sproat and Wes White as his counselors. The new campus stake created a strong spiritual environment with greater opportunities for student leadership and spirituality.

In 1980 Shumway became Dan Andersen’s vice president for academics, an appointment that the new president, J. Elliot Cameron (1980-86) continued. In 1986 Shumway was released as stake president to preside over the Tongan Mission. When he returned in 1989, he served as associate vice president for one year with the vice president, R. Lanier Britsch, then became vice president when Britsch returned to Provo. The president, Alton L. Wade, had his hands full with a community controversy involving Zion’s Securities, environmental issues, and a stalled proposal for a sewage treatment plant that was blocking university growth. In this explosive situation, Shumway was elected to the Laie Community Association, eventually becoming its president. Although he was able to help calm feelings and assure the community that the problems would be resolved, the bad feelings subsided only slowly, the reconciliation being signaled only when a state-of-the-art ultraviolet treatment plant was dedicated in 1997.

In June 1991, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Polynesian Cultural Center, invited Shumway to serve as the Center’s interim president while they searched for a new permanent president, an additional duty on top of being the university’s Academic Vice President. In the four months it took before Lester Moore was hired, Shumway underwent what he described as a “life-changing experience.”⁷ He had always admired the Polynesian Cultural Center’s stature as the major commercial tourist attraction in Hawaii, but this new exposure revealed to him “the immense spiritual value” of the Center and its relationship to the BYU-Hawaii campus. Across the fence separating campus from the PCC, thousands of students had learned and were learning the “life skills of communications, leadership, and hard work within an ‘aloha’ environment.”

That experience also revealed the disturbing environment of distrust, misunderstanding, and rumor that fomented contentious differences between PCC employees and the administration. The previous PCC president had commissioned a study that pinpointed serious breakdowns in communication, asked for a “top-down, inside-out analysis” of gaps between the status quo and a more effective organization, and recommended an accountability model like that of the “balanced scorecard” system being taught at the Harvard School of Business.⁸

Shumway had no quarrel with the Harvard Business School, but he was most keenly aware of the soul-searching consequences of such hostility among fellow believers in the gospel. To put things “on an even keel” at the Polynesian Cultural Center, Shumway called upon the model he felt the most comfortable with: the gospel principles of teaching, listening, and persuasion by love unfeigned. “I had no mandate to do anything but help create a better environment,” he said, but he felt compelled to try it, not simply to fold his hands and wait for the new president to take over.⁹ When the new president, Lester Moore (1991-2000), was appointed, Shumway went out of his way to share with him the saga and vision of the BYU-Hawaii campus. The two men formed a harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship, one that not only created a stronger bond between the two men and the two institutions, but also a deeper and wider vision of what President McKay foresaw in his dedicatory prayer: “…that this college, and the temple, and the town of Laie may become a missionary factor, influencing not thousands, not tens of thousands, but millions of people who will come seeking to know what this town and its significance are.”¹⁰

A major event symbolizing the increased cooperation and unity of the Polynesian Cultural Center and BYU-Hawaii was the visit of His Majesty Taufa`ahau Tupou IV, King of Tonga, to the campus and the Polynesian Cultural Center. As a strong validation of the Polynesian Cultural Center and its value in preserving and portraying the cultures of Polynesia, His Majesty was pleased to preside over a royal ceremony in which he bestowed the chiefly title Mafi Fakapotu (“Strong One in the Distant Place”) on Lester Moore.

The ceremony was conducted in the circle adjacent to the David O. McKay building foyer entrance. Tongan students performed the ceremonial tasks within the royal circle; and Shumway, at the king’s request, gave the formal acceptance speech in behalf of the newly invested matapule. In 1994 Malietoa, Head of State of Samoa, bestowed a Samoan title, Galumalemana (“Ocean Wave with Power”) upon Lester Moore as another affirmation of the importance of these companion institutions to the people of the Pacific.
Healing the Polynesian Way

Shumway’s knowledge and respect for Polynesian cultures continually proved invaluable over nearly four decades of service at BYU-Hawaii in keeping things on an even keel. For example, one aspect of Polynesian culture involves traditional ways of reconciliation among the people, including formal apologies, an exchange of gifts, communal prayer, and expressions of gratitude and forgiveness. He was grateful for a cultural system in which some types of reconciliation can occur without having to involve the police and the courts under circumstances which make a “very, very bad situation even worse.”¹¹ At times, feelings are so volatile there simply needs to be “a method that everyone can accept and feel good about in order to bring feelings down to logic and reason and [in which] the gospel of Jesus Christ can be invited in.”¹²

Shumway remembers one serious conflict in 1977 where certain members of the community were involved in a beating following a student body election. Because emotions ran so high, the facts of the case so elusive, and so many people were involved in a situation so volatile, Shumway encouraged an appeal to the Samoan traditional method of reconciliation and forgiveness, the Ifoga. In a solemn ceremony on campus, all parties involved came together in the spirit of forgiveness. In the presence of President Dan W. Anderson, chiefs, and Church leaders, the parties involved exchanged beautiful mats, `ie Tonga, as emblems of good faith and as a promise that all conflicts were over. As one of the speakers, Shumway, then president of BYU-Hawaii Stake, praised the system of reconciliation but declared that if the peace trust were broken by any party there would be Church disciplinary action as well as an appeal to the police.

Barely six months later, another outbreak of violence erupted between some Polynesian students. As promised, Shumway, now acting as Stake President, held a Church disciplinary council resulting in the excommunication of the ringleader and disfellowshipment of two accomplices. Despite some threats from a tiny minority in the community, this action delivered a strong message that violence would not be tolerated.

When J. Elliot Cameron became president, he instituted a zero tolerance policy on violence. In the wake of the assault on Larry Oler, dean of students, by an intoxicated non-student, this policy would involve the police and the courts to bring assailants to justice. The penalties of immediate suspension were invoked against students for violence that included angry gestures and verbal threats. This culture-changing policy, which remains in force, has preserved a pervasive peacefulness and harmony on campus ever since.

Shumway has kept the sanctity of a Zion community at the forefront of his spiritual goals for the campus. While praising BYU-Hawaii’s “widely peaceful atmosphere” in a pre-Jubilee address in 2004, he warned of “pockets of violence that have affected BYUH students as well as our children.” He asked every member of the campus and community to do their part to enhance respect for the law. A more subtle form of violence was the erosion of standards of chastity and honesty. Among the forms dishonesty could take were cheating, lying, stealing, and violating dress and grooming standards. He passed on the concerned comment of one faculty member who felt that “the sacredness of the campus environment is dealt a blow by standards violations.”¹³

Shumway asked the university family to “optimize [your] professional courtesy, kindness and patience. If we ever needed to follow the prophet Alma’s admonition—let there be no contention with one another, but … look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having our hearts knit together in unity and love towards another (Mosiah 18:21)—it should be now as we celebrate Heavenly Father’s goodness in preserving and causing this place to flourish.”¹⁴

Shumway acknowledged that “tension is what good universities are made of, where there is stretching, discussing, achieving, exploring and learning with all the attendant pressures of work and deadlines.” But in keeping with his continuing theme of helping keep things on an even keel, he added that contention was poison even when we think we are justified in retaliation. “Let us make sure that our directions are laced with respect and encouragement.”¹⁵

Shumway began his tenure as the eighth president of BYU-Hawaii with a strong faculty, a strong legacy of academic excellence, a competent President’s Council, and a strong endorsement of the campus by the presiding Brethren of the Church. Olani Durrant, an engineering professor from BYU and former missionary to Hawaii, became his first academic vice president (1994-2000), followed by Keith Roberts (2000-2007). Serving as vice president for student affairs and dean of students were Nolan Reed, then Isileli Kongaika (1995-2007). Kirk Evans, then Michael Bliss, filled the slot of vice president for administrative services. Other positions on the President’s Council were the chief information officer (Brett Ellis, then Jim Nilson), William Neal, assistant for planning and research, and Napua Baker, vice president for institutional advancement.¹⁶

In addition to the president’s council, Shumway also received “counsel, inspiration, and grace” from his wife Carolyn. A former member of the Tabernacle Choir, a long-time member of the Laie Choral Union, and director of a children’s choir, Carolyn was presented with The Gift of Song Award in recognition of “her lifetime achievement in music.” From 1989 to 1994 she taught music part-time at the five elementary schools along the North Shore. A close friend said that Carolyn also “worked quietly caring for those on the edge of the community: women struggling in domestic situations or trying to reenter the church community after long absences. These connections with needy individuals in the community go far beyond her hugely complex role as the wife and mother of a university president.”¹⁷ In March 1996 she was named Mother of the Year for Hawaii. Two months later she received the national title: Mother of the Year for the United States.

After a thirty-year leave from her own academic studies to concentrate on their children, Carolyn returned to the classroom and, by taking one course a semester, completed her bachelor’s degree in elementary education in June 1994. “Her unfailing love has been the wind beneath my wings, her counsel like the words of the Lord,” Eric said at his inauguration.¹⁸ She received a standing ovation when she walked across the stage to receive her diploma from his hand.

Ever since the mid-point of Alton Wade’s administration, new construction and major repairs to campus buildings had been halted because the City and County of Honolulu would not approve the campus master plan until the Laie community and the Church had fully complied with the conditions of the consent decree of the Ninth Federal Circuit Court. This consent decree was in lieu of judgments against Zion’s Securities and BYU-Hawaii for violations of EPA statutes.¹⁹ But after years of negotiations, community meetings, and settling lawsuits, BYU-Hawaii and Hawaii Reserves received permission in the spring of 1996 to expand the sewer treatment plant. Simultaneously, Shumway and his team decided to reinitiate efforts to get approval for the master plan.

Hundreds of local citizens supported the plan with letters and testimony before the city council. With strong support from council member Mufi Hanneman, Shumway visited each council person to explain the goals of the master plan, the role it would play in BYU-Hawaii’s future, and to answer questions each representative might have before the final hearings. Pivotal on the council was Donna Mercado Kim, the councilwoman who had held the school hostage to get Church action under Alton Wade’s administration. Shumway confessed to mixed feelings as he went to his appointment with her. Obviously the good faith efforts of the Church, Hawaii Reserves, the Polynesian Cultural Center, and BYU-Hawaii had changed Kim’s mind about whether they were good neighbors; and she greeted Shumway with friendly congratulations. Their warm conversation went beyond business, and Kim teased Shumway that he should drop basketball and take up golf as the “more presidential” sport. The Master Plan was formally approved in May 1997.²⁰

The Hawaiian Studies Program

A second “good neighbor” problem was the perception in the larger community that BYU-Hawaii was not really shouldering its responsible role among the long-repressed but newly proud Hawaiian population. In February 1996, Shumway willingly attended a three-day “future search” conference sponsored by the Queen Emma Foundation. More than eighty people representing Hawaii’s international cultures assembled to discuss issues critical to the North Shore community. Although Shumway had gone, braced fro criticism, he was amazed to find “wide unanimity about the importance of spirituality, inner harmony, and a sense of reverence for life, God, and fellow human beings. There was a longing for stronger families, greater fidelity, happier marriages, better parenting, more accessible education, a stronger economy and more jobs and more ways and means to help people help themselves.” It could have been a checklist of the problems that gospel principles could solve. During this conference Shumway had a sense that BYU-Hawaii should sponsor a strong Hawaiian Studies program that would focus on the Hawaiian values of language, aloha, family, strength, and lokahi (unity). He resolved that BYU-Hawaii would, from that point on, become a “greater source of strength and opportunity” for the community at large.²¹

That dream became a reality on February 12, 1998, with the appointment of William Kauiwiulaokalani Wallace III as program director. It met its initial fund-raising goal of $2.5 million in 1999. In January 2000, BYU-Hawaii received approval to raise a $5 million endowment, which it achieved, and with Board approval established the Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian Language and Cultural Studies.

Thanks to a $619,000 grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Center quickly established a three-part program: a language and cultural curriculum leading to a bachelor’s degree, and agricultural or Malama Aina (“care of the land”) component; and a Malama Kai (“care of the sea”) program. One generous donor contributed funds to underwrite the expansion of the Hawaiian Village in the Polynesian Cultural Center, including a massive canoe house. It will house and display the Iosepa, a double-hulled, fifty-seven-foot Hawaiian voyaging canoe, built entirely by native craftsmen using traditional methods and materials.

“Iosepa” (Joseph) honors Hawaiian missionary and Church President Joseph F. Smith and the other Josephs in scripture and Church history; and not at all to Shumway’s surprise, the creation of the Iosepa had a powerful symbolic and emotional effect on the university family and the community at large. The project “softened hearts and unified factions.” Significantly, Shumway drew yet another meaning from the name: “[As] the Iosepa colony attracted Polynesians to [Skull] Valley in Utah’s west desert] … in 1989 to be nearer to the Salt Lake Temple, so the canoe brought together many cultures. What the canoe helped to achieve was the newest of many meldings of the community.”²² Elder M. Russell Ballard, a descendant of Joseph F. Smith, dedicated the canoe on November 3, 2002.²³

The Iosepa made its maiden voyage to the Big Island of Hawaii and back in 2002. Speaking to the crew at a fireside in July 2004, President Shumway drew out of the canoe a full range of meanings and new understandings. He quoted Elder Henry B. Eyring, apostle and Church Commissioner of Education, who said that the Iosepa was “bigger” than they had imagined. “It was more than just a voyaging canoe. It was the very, very best of what Laie. It was both the secular and the spiritual. It was the history of Polynesia,” Shumway said. It had received outstanding support from top government officials throughout the community and state, turning its voyage into a remarkable experience of “inclusion. It was not only Hawaii, it was all of Polynesia,…“a symbol of oneness, … a modern Liahona.” Reverently, he testified that it had also brought them into union with those from “the other side of the veil, an unseen audience.”

Part of keeping BYU-Hawaii on an even keel was to assure that the financial component was commensurate to the university’s aspiration of improvement. When Shumway assumed the presidential post, BYU in Provo was conducting a capital campaign, called “Lighting the Way into the 21^st Century.” Invited by President Rex Lee to join the volunteer leadership group in 1994, Shumway embraced fully a fund-raising effort that would expand the horizons and increase the friends and supporters of BYU-Hawaii. The Board of Education approved BYUH’s goal of $15 million and its ear-marking for campus priorities.

Shumway learned that the best fund-raising tool his team had was simply telling the BYU-Hawaii story and the university’s commitment to educate the young men and women who would help build Zion across the world. This narrative was “profoundly moving to many people,” he relates. “Another key was simply to allow people to see the campus and to interact with students.” In turn, Shumway was deeply moved as he met “people who had immense wealth,” but who also had a “deep commitment to the Lord and who saw their entire assets as simply a stewardship before the Lord.” In 1999, BYU-Hawaii celebrated the completion of its 15 million dollar goal, but the volunteer organization and the fund-raising successes have only increased dramatically since then.²⁴

As an icon for the fund-raising effort and to distinguish it from the icon of the Provo torch, the administration selected the symbol of the breadfruit tree, Polynesia’s “giving tree.” Shumway suggested it, relating that when he was building his home on Naniloa Loop in Laie, Sepi Fonoimoana, an elderly Samoan, observed his efforts and asked smiling, “Is this going to be a palagi (white man’s) or a Polynesian home?” Shumway answered, “I hope a Polynesian home.” Sepi returned the next day with a breadfruit sapling which he planted in the back yard with the promise that if the fruit were shared with community families without charge, the tree would bear abundantly. The more the fruit was shared the more the tree would produce. The Shumway family has shared its tree ever since.²⁵

In the three fundraising campaigns over 13 years since 1994 (“Lighting the Way in the 21^st Century,” “Light of Hope,” and “Voyage of Faith: Fulfilling the Prophetic Promise”), BYU-Hawaii would rise and shine forth even more from its relative obscurity of the past. Enthusiastic donors who came to believe in its mission championed the Board approved priorities that would build large scholarship endowments, upgrade facilities, establish three major academic centers (The Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian Language and Cultural Studies, The Mark and Laura Center for International Entrepreneurship, and The David O. McKay enter for International Understanding), construct and maintain the double hulled canoe Iosepa and its canoe house of Halau Wa‘a at the PCC; fund returnability internships for international students, provide mentored learning opportunities and curriculum upgrade initiatives, endow programs in English as an International Language and the International Teacher Education Programs.

Dick and Mimi Peery were the first to offer a major gift and many subsequent gifts which have endowed scholarships and helped upgrade physical facilities. Their endowment has grown into a multimillion dollar gift. Keith and Carol Jenkins were among the first major donors who accepted the responsibility of serving as the chairs of the volunteer fundraising organization known as the President’s Leadership Council (PLC). Their ideas and energy inspired the growth of the council to over 250 members. Other high profile and very generous persons who embraced BYU-Hawaii fundraising initiatives were Mark and Laura Willes, Ira and Mary Lou Fulton, Al and Kathleen Gardner, Ed and Shauna Smith, Gene and Allyson Yamagata, Ryan and Shauna Ockey, and Teifu and Oi Lin Chen.

In 1997, BYU-Hawaii hosted a “Pioneers in the Pacific Conference” to which were invited men and women who bore the pioneering burden of the Church in their various Pacific nations. President Hinckley presided over the festivities, which included the dedication of a sculpture by Tongan artist and faculty member Viliami Toluta`u. The statue depicts that “sacred moment” when George Q. Cannon and new Hawaiian convert Jonathan Napela, who worked side by side in translating the Book of Mormon into the Hawaiian language, celebrate the first printed volume. Now, as one of BYUH’s signature pieces of art, like the McKay mural, it captures the “pure joy of the revealed gospel of Jesus Christ.” In it, Shumway sees the “mighty collaboration of the Saints of all races, so that every nation, kindred, and people may hear the word of God in their own tongue; that the gospel may go forth as prophesied boldly until it has swept every continent, visited every clime, and sounded in every ear.”²⁶
Removing Roadblocks to Graduation

In the fall of 1998, Elder L. Tom Perry, chair of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees and Elder Henry B. Eyring, Commissioner of Church Education, invited President Shumway and Vice President Olani Durrant to a special meeting in Salt Lake City where they discussed budget and efficiency issues relative to BYU-Hawaii. Among the concerns raised by Elder Perry was the cost per student, the time-to-graduation statistics, and the relatively small number of international graduates who returned to their homelands. The Board wanted the university to revisit its mission and challenge all assumptions, and recommend the best academic model and delivery system that would better use existing resources to extend Church Education System opportunities worldwide. Might BYU-Hawaii not wish to return to its very beginnings as a two-year college, like Ricks College in Idaho?

With serious soul searching, the two BYU-Hawaii administrators returned to Laie to engage the faculty in what was to be the most comprehensive evaluation and refinement of university academic policy and curriculum in the history of the school. Upon careful evaluation, it was soon clear that the four-year bachelor’s degree program was still the best educational model for the university’s mission, but that the general education and major program requirements were too heavy, the admissions and transfer credit policies too rigid. Even though 128 credit hours were required for graduation, students were averaging more than 155 hours to finish their programs, and BYUH was further handicapping transfer students by accepting too few transfer credits.

In February 1999 Shumway issued a fourteen-point “charge to university personnel” with a wide-ranging list of objectives to focus academic planning on academic efficiency, student achievement, and graduation requirements. Efficiency, he said, did not mean just living within budgets “but doing just as well or even better with less resources.” In academics, the guidelines should concentrate on trimming and streamlining general education and major programs, finding maximum efficiencies for class size and faculty loads, eliminating weak programs, and finding the best use for special instructors. “We must focus on graduating students, not just teaching classes,” he urged.²⁷

The faculty took this charge seriously with each academic division launching its own self-study and with the Faculty Advisory Council acting as both conscience and enforcer. “The charge came first,” commented Dale Robertson of the Political Science faculty and chair of the Faculty Advisory Council. “Elder ­Eyring had asked for a ‘collective revelation’” and had specified that “such a revelation should not be from the administration.”²⁸

Hours of faculty meetings and committee work, plus the vigilance of the Faculty Advisory Council, trimmed down and streamlined academic requirements to 120 credit hours for graduation. Within those 120 hours, students could complete their religion, general education, and major requirements and still take between ten and twenty hours of electives. Transfer credit from accredited schools and colleges would be more widely accepted. Although teaching loads and class size did not change, traditional roadblocks to graduation were eliminated. The result was a tighter, stronger and more efficient curriculum. Students were happier and more empowered. Graduation rates shot up from just over 350 in 1998-99 to nearly 550 in 2002-03, a 60 percent increase.

Since turf battles of academe are known for both their entrenchment and their viciousness, BYUH administrators and faculty count it as something of a miracle that these adjustments could be made across the university without turmoil and dispute. Shumway reported that Elder Eyring had complimented the university on its academic streamlining efforts. As a former university president himself, he could measure the magnitude of the achievement. He told Shumway, “with a twinkle in his eye, ‘when you leave BYU-Hawaii I don’t know if anyone will thank you for your work. But if they do, they will very likely point to this remarkable achievement as a high point of your administration.’”²⁹
BYU-Hawaii Futures Committee

In March 2001, the Executive Committee of the Board of Education, chaired by Elder M. Russell Ballard, visited the campus. In response to questions about BYU-Hawaii’s future, the Executive Committee authorized a special task force made up of key people on both the Provo campus (Gerret Gong, Russ Osgathorpe, Henry Eyring Jr., and Lee Perry) and the Hawaii campus (Keith Roberts, Diane Mahoney, and Bill Neal) to identify areas of emphasis and improvement that would help chart BYU-Hawaii’s course in the future. The Futures Committee recommendations, largely influenced by BYU-Hawaii input, were approved by the Board of Education in December 2001.

The principal thrust of thee recommendations was to cap enrollment at 2,350 students, but to increase the ratio of international students by decreasing U.S. mainland freshmen. The optimum ratio of U.S. (including Hawaii) and international students should be closer to fifty-fifty. This recommendation included the charge to increase Asian students, particularly from Japan and Korea, without backing away from the university’s commitment to the Pacific nations. Another recommendation was to recognize and strengthen the School of Business, to add resources, create a strong entrepreneurship program within the curriculum, seek AACSB accreditation, and explore the possibility of an integrated five-year MBA degree.³⁰

Other initiatives included strengthening the English as an International Language (EIL) offering and creating an English language fluency expectation for the international students that would help BYU-Hawaii become a premier English language learning environment. The Futures Committee also recommended an international teacher education emphasis that would provide trained teachers for the target area. Also high on the list of recommendations was nurturing a “culture of returnability” among international students, with an emphasis on in-country internships and placement.³¹

Computer-assisted learning would also receive more attention. One result of this particular recommendation was the creation of a new professional School of Computing which combined mathematics, computer science, and information systems.³² Progress in these areas has been substantial. In 2003 a new Placement Office was established under director Kim Austin. Meli Lesuma assumed responsibility for international internships and placement, all of which have enhanced returnability.³³ Improvements in the economies of many students’ homelands also show substantial promise for increased returnability.

Another major milestone for the campus came in May 2003 when the Board of Education altered the reporting structure so that the president of BYU-Hawaii reported directly to the Commissioner of Education and the Board of Education. Since CCH became BYU-Hawaii in 1974, the president had reported through the president of BYU in Provo.

Thanks in part to the school’s fund-raising success, BYU-Hawaii has experienced a number of additional improvements to its physical plant, a major renovation of the auditorium (2002), landscape upgrades in the McKay Building’s courtyards and walkways, a new placement center created out of the old Banyan Room and a new double-chapel stake center (2003). Another apartment complex for married students was completed in 2004. Generous donors provided funds for a significant upgrade and expansion of the swimming pool (2002) and a stunning refurbishing of the front entrance that matches the new Hale La’a Boulevard.

In June 2004, Consumer’s Digest identified BYU-Hawaii as the “best educational value” in the United States. Also, as Academic Vice President Keith Roberts explained, U.S. News and World Report surveyed more than 3,500 colleges and universities in the United States, narrowed the fields of public and private universities, and identified the top 125 public and 132 private colleges. After applying a formula that “balanced academic excellence with the educational quality offered by each institution, BYUH had a value index score of 95.1.” This was value only. Price had not been factored into the formula. He stressed: “We would still have been in the top 25 if our tuition, room, and board had been four times what they are. We are a top value, not because we are low priced, but because we are high quality.”³⁴

In August 2004, BYU-Hawaii was ranked again in the top tier of the best schools of its category in the western United States.³⁵ Its preparation for the next accreditation, coming up in 2008, has become a high-profile model for other accreditation-seeking universities, thanks to the leadership of Keith Roberts, William Neal, Jeffrey Burroughs, and Michael Allen.³⁶

In the April 2004 general conference, President Shumway was sustained as an Area Seventy in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While retaining his position as university president, he spent two weekends or more each month traveling in the North America West Area where he had training responsibilities as a member of the Fifth Quorum of Seventy. His assignments were largely within the 172 stakes and 18 missions in California and Hawaii, including his home town of Laie.³⁷ Bishops and stake presidents over whom he had responsibility quip that, when Shumway comes to visit, they need to know whether he is visiting as “President” Shumway, representing the university, or as “Elder” Shumway, the Church leader.

There is no confusion between the two roles in the minds of associates like Vernice Wineera, director of the Pacific Institute. “President Shumway the man is Elder Shumway the Area Seventy—who also happens to serve as president of the University,” she explains. “It doesn’t work the other way around.”³⁸

Wineera, who also had responsibilities in the advancement office, co-chaired the Jubilee Committee which coordinated a number of events and projects to celebrate the university’s fiftieth birthday. The celebration coincided with the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Smith on December 23, 1905, and 175^th anniversary of the founding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 6, 1830. During the year-long Jubilee celebration, BYUH was honored by the State Legislature and by the City and County of Honolulu. The university honored labor missionaries and prominent alumni in “Genuine Gold” displays in the aloha Center and the McKay Foyer, and set up web pages where alumni could record memories of their favorite faculty and other episodes from BYUH’s saga.

The university also published a Jubilee calendar, issued an alumni directory, created a commemorative DVD, held gospel forums, and heard from devotional speakers and Church leaders including Boyd K. Packer, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, and the newest member of the Quorum, Elder David A. Bednar. Other General Authority visitors included President Gordon B. Hinckley (three times in 2004), and Jubilee visitors Elder W. Rolfe Kerr, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and Church commissioner of Education, and Elder Donald L. Hallstrom, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and the third General Authority born and raised in Hawaii.³⁹

In a devotional address fifty years minus one day from the date President McKay dedicated a sugarcane field as the future site of a university and a community that would attract millions, Elder Hallstrom repeated the observation made by President Gordon B. Hinckley and other Church leaders: There was no place in the Church that demonstrates the “spiritual synergism” comprised in the community of Laie, the Hawaii Temple at Laie, BYU-Hawaii, and the Polynesian Cultural Center. He encouraged his audience to feel the experiences that others endured to make the college a reality. He also encouraged those in the audience to learn the heritage of the LDS Church and of their earthly and heavenly parents. That learning should be more than intellectual; it should be “inspiring and intrusive.”⁴⁰

The high point of the Jubilee Year was a seven day series of remarkable, high quality events (October 15-23, 2005), beginning with a Saturday evening Motown Concert by Gladys Knight and her band from Las Vegas. On Sunday afternoon and evening Gladys put on two firesides featuring the Unified Saints Choir and the rich sermons and testimonies of both her and her husband. The fireside was attended by over 8,000 people.

Other Jubilee events included a devotional honoring all the CCH and BYU-Hawaii presidents, a meeting with 4,000 alumni, an evening with Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle, the reenactment of the 1921 flag raising ceremony in which David O. McKay envisioned an institution of higher learning in Laie; a Jubilee Ball, a special devotional with President Thomas S. Monson followed by a luncheon honoring Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann. On Saturday the Jubilee parade throughout Laie included President Monson, Elder Robert D. Hales, and Bishop Keith B. McMullin.

The Saturday evening finale was an unprecedented Jubilee concert, featuring the BYU-Hawaii music faculty and concert choir with members of the Honolulu Symphony. This concert was both astonishing and inspiring. In the words of former president Alton Wade “From the beginning to the last event we were entertained, inspired, informed and uplifted far beyond our highest expectations…the growth and development of the school toward its prophetic destiny were clearly evident to all of us who were privileged to be a part of that great institution in years past.”⁴¹

In his annual “state of the university” address in 2005, Shumway spoke as a helmsman, keeping things on an even keel and staying the course. He told faculty members and others that he “starts work early and goes home late to deal with the combination of assignments as Area Seventy, university president, Jubilee activities, fund-raising, board meetings, travel, and family responsibilities. Some have wondered about retirement. The sixty-five-year-old Shumway responds, “I am making no immediate plans. I am here for the duration.” He spells out what should be obvious: “I serve at the pleasure of the Board. I have no personal agenda for anything specific beyond BYU-Hawaii. In the meantime I am too engaged to even think about retiring.”⁴²

In his report, Shumway noted recent and imminent construction projects such as the new front entrance of the campus, the first phase of refurbishing the McKay Building foyer, the new Career Center, new Alumni Office, study rooms in the library, and renovations to the Center for Instructional Technology and Outreach. Also in the planning stages were a new School of Business, schematics for a new upper-class students’ dormitory, an addition to the Joseph F. Smith Library, a refurbishing of the Aloha Center, and additional married student housing.⁴³

Among the university’s top priorities were the ongoing issues of returnabilty, reaccreditation, and fund raising. “Upgrades” were planned in the area of financial aid, registrar, management information systems, and university advancement. If anyone wondered whether the Jubilee year would be a time for resting on their laurels, this vibrant and energized agenda was their answer.

Seldom at a loss of words, Shumway struggled to express what BYU-Hawaii means to him:

If I have ever given a spirited or enthusiastic presentation about BYU-Hawaii in any setting, either here or in the South Pacific, Asia, or the mainland, I have not yet been able to utter language as powerfully as I feel about BYU-Hawaii, or about you who are here, or what I am sure the Lord has in store for you and for this place. I know without any doubt or equivocation that BYU-Hawaii was founded because of direct revelation to a Prophet at a time the Church was preparing for the internationalization of its organizations throughout the world. This campus was shaped and nurtured through times of great difficulty. It went through several refiners’ fires. But it has been guided by the prophetic statement of President David O. McKay and other Church leaders, by devoted, competent faculty and administrators who believe in the prophecies and have worked diligently to fulfill them. It is true that the purposes and value to the kingdom of this place have been called into question and discussion from time to time. But, each time, BYU-Hawaii has been given a new affirmation and has been recognized as one of the valuable educational treasures in Zion and the world.⁴⁴