DavesD's comments

Church Schools, Institute and Your College of Choice - Blog Entry

09 Aug 2009 02:17 PM

Some years ago, while I was attending Utah State University, Elder Brockbank came and spoke to us in the Spectrum, and made it very clear that we, as good members of the church, needed to look outside of BYU and Utah for our education. There were MANY other good colleges and Universities, and they all have an Institute program that serves them. We would be remiss in our education and in our responsibilities as members of the church to not attend other schools, share the Gospel, and cultivate the talents of many other great teachers, mentors, professors, and others with specialties not found within the walls of BYU.

I later served a mission in California (I was living in Colorado), and chose to attend a number of colleges in the San Diego area, ultimately completing my Bachelors degree at San Diego State University. It was the absolute best experience for me. With my initial University background at USU, my first major rival school was BYU. For that reason to start with, I was better suited for a different collegiate experience than BYU could offer.

The Institute program at SDSU, Mesa College, Palomar College, and Miramar College, was superb, better than I could have ever hoped for had I stayed in Utah. For me, I took Elder Brockbank's charge, and put it into practice. There just simply will not be enough room at ANY and ALL of the BYU Campuses to handle ALL the LDS students. Expand your horizon's and see what more is out there.