Why a Utah campus teaches 63 languages to its students
At Brigham Young University in Provo, nearly half the students have lived outside the United States and about 65% speak a second language. Much of that comes from missionary service in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which runs the school, and the university teaches 63 languages to match.
The school's roots go back to 1862, when Warren Dusenberry opened a school in an adobe building in Provo. It struggled, reopened, briefly became a branch of the University of Deseret, and closed again for lack of money. On October 16, 1875, church president Brigham Young deeded the property to trustees to found Brigham Young Academy, and classes began on January 3, 1876. In April a German immigrant, Karl Maeser, arrived as Young's chosen principal.
The academy was supported privately until the church took it over in 1896, and it only became a university in 1903, when it split into a high school and BYU. The high school's class of 1907 left the giant Y still embedded on a mountain near campus. Franklin Harris, appointed in 1921 as the first president with a doctorate, found the school recognised by no accrediting body and left it accredited by all the major ones.
Later leaders kept building. Dallin Oaks added a law school in the 1970s and doubled library space, Jeffrey Holland opened a campus in Jerusalem in the 1980s, and a later president, Bateman, oversaw 36 new buildings. The Provo campus now covers about 560 acres at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains with 295 buildings. Its library, once ranked the best college library by The Princeton Review, holds about 8.5 million items on 98 miles of shelving.
Nearly all students are church members. They sign an honor code covering academic honesty, dress and grooming, and abstinence from alcohol, drugs and extramarital sex, and every undergraduate takes religious education courses. The Cougars play in the Big 12 and have won 14 NCAA championships. C. Shane Reese became the 14th president in 2023.
Source: Brigham Young University
