The BYU Division of Continuing Education (DCE) is a quasi-college at Brigham Young University that oversees continuing education programs.
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Attempts at BYU to offer continuing education programs date back to Karl G. Maeser's offering night classes to workers at the Provo Woolen Mills in 1876. However night classes and other attempts to reach out to non-matriculated students were haphazard through the next few decades.
On a slightly different front the Polysophical Society was organized in 1877 to give lectures open to the general public. At first most of the lectures were given by students. By 1903 the program was organized as the lyceum program with John C. Swensen as its director and most of the lectures were either by BYU faculty or professors and other prominent figures invited from elsewhere.
The true beganing of the Division of Continuing Education as an organization can be traced to 1921 when Franklin S. Harris, BYU's president, organized the Extension Division. Lowry Nelson served as the first director. Nelson was a firm believer that educational opportunity should not be limited to those who could formally attend colleges and universities in the standard campus format. In 1946 Harold Glen Clark was made director of the extension division. Clark oversaw a major expansion of the role of BYU and the expansion or creation of many of the programs that BYU still offers, staying at the head of the program until he became the first president of the Provo Utah Temple.[1]
Campus Education Week is an intense one-week time of lectures in August. Most of the participants are adults, significantly more females than males, who want to augment their education. However there are also teenaged youth participants with some lectures aimed specifically at teenagers and even dances for the youth. The minimum age for participation is 14. Over 1000 classes are offered.
The programs origins go back to 1922 when it began as leadership week.[2] It was originally held during the winter to allow for attendance by farmers. In 1950 it moved to the summer. In 1963 the name was changed to education week.[3]
In recent years attendance has been around 20,000.[4]
Some education week lectures are broadcast over the LDS Church satellite network.[5] while others are shown on BYU-TV.
BYU's Division of continuing education oversees a large range of conferences and workshops. Many of these are short summer programs aimed at improving the skills of specific professional groups.
These include summer workshops aimed at providing continuing education credits to teachers, but which are also open to interested parents of elementary and secondary students, which are co-sponsed with the David O. McKay School of Education.[6]
Another program is the summer InterMuse program that offers work in the methods pioneers by Zoltán Kodály. This program has been held annually at BYU since 1996.[7]
BYU's Native American Educational Outreach Program is also co-ordinated under the Conferences and Workshops section of the Division of Continuing Education.
Especially for Youth is a program run through BYU's division of Continuing Education for youth ages 14–18 with the goal of helping the central mission statement to "help them come unto Christ". It seeks to emphasize physical, spiritual, intellectual and social growth. Although run through BYU and with large numbers of participants at BYU it also occurs at various locations throughout the United States and in some foreign countries. Primarily the program is run on university campuses.[8]
The BYU Independent study program offers over 500 courses. They are grouped under four general headings, University Courses, High School Course, Middle School Courses and Free Courses. The program is headquartered in the George Q. Morris Center. BYU Independent Study began in 1921.
BYU's high school level independent study courses are accredited by both the Northwest Accreditation Commission and the Distance Education and Training Council.[9] The program has been praised as an option for home schooling parents.[10]
In May 2010 the NCAA banned the use of BYU Indepdentent Study high school courses as course credit for students bound for Division I schools. This apparently was done because Michael Oher had several years earlier used BYU Indepdent Study courses to boost his grades. However it was done without consulting BYU on the matter.[11][12] After the announcement of disallowance the NCAA said that they wanted courses to have mandated student/teacher interaction and to have a minimum course completion time. BYU's courses generally have maximum completion times but not minimum ones.[13]
BYU currently operates only one off-campus center, the Salt Lake Center, but it has in the past operated other off-campus centers.
The Salt Lake Center is one of two satellite campuses operated by BYU.
Beginning in 1952 lectures and classes were periodically offered by BYU faculty in Salt Lake City. In January 1959 the BYU Salt Lake Center was formally organized with Lynn M. Hilton as chairman. It was originally located in the Alfred McCune House, but this proved to be too small for the program. Other courses were offered at the Craft House, Barrett Hall, the Salt Lake Assembly Hall, the Institute of Religion adjacent to the University of Utah, and many other locations. In 1972 the Salt Lake Center was relocated to 401 Twelfth Avenue in the former Veteran's Hospital.[14]
Today the BYU Salt Lake Center is located in the former Triad Center.
The Ricks center was authorized in July 1956. It was created after Ricks College (now BYU-Idaho) went from being a 4-year college back to being a two-year college. It was formed largely to provide continuing education classes to teachers. J. Kenneth Thatcher, who was the superintendent of the Sugar-Salem School District in Idaho, was highered to organize the center. Besdies classes on the Ricks College campus the center alos offered classes through its sub-office in Idaho Falls, Idaho.[15]
The BYU-Ogden Center was located in the old LDS Institute of Religion building in Ogden, which was vacted when a new building was set up near the new Weber Junior College (now Weber State University) campus in 1957. In establishing the center, Ernest L. Wilkinson, president of BYU, and Joseph Fielding Smith, chairman of the executive committee of the BYU Board of Trustees, sent a letter in which they emphasized that the institution was geared toward adult continuing education programs and not meant at all to compete with Weber Junior College. Mark A. Benson, a son of Ezra Taft Benson, was appointed as the first director of the Ogden Center when it opened in August 1957.[16]
The BYU-California center was started in 1959, with central offices but most courses given in LDS Church buildings scattered throughout southern California. Until 1969 almost all the courses offered were non-credit classes. Starting in 1959 the center offered an Ed.D. program.[17]
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