My experience at BYU was a positive one, and I never had reason to think the school wasn't open-minded. But that's probably because I majored in civil engineering and rarely ventured outside of the Clyde Building. There are lots of good people in that building, and I could care less about the anal pricks anywhere else.

So I studied structural design, soil mechanics, hydrology and traffic flow. My days were filled with math and rulers and calculators.

And so it always came as sort of a laugh when, at the end of each semester, the professors would encourage us to fill out reviews about them, and the reviews would be riddled with questions like "did your professor bring you closer to the Savior" and "was the professor effective at incorporating gospel principles into the curriculum." It was kind of a running joke among us students that "yes, I really felt the spirit while calculating the moment of inertia of an I-beam" or "deriving the time to peak flow volume of a river reminded me of Lehi's dream."

We often didn't know how in the hell to answer those questions, and they seemed to dominate the questionaire. But most of the time our professors had used some contrived story of something they did in scouting or a ward activity on the first day of class to help us get to know them. So we gave them the highest rating on the list and moved on to the next ridiculous question.

Haha. I remember those questions. Easy to answer for religious professors, not so easy for everyone else, especially in the science department. However, in regular classes it was common to start and end with a prayer. I wonder if the professors who did not were reprimanded? Hmmm.

Outside religion classes, I don't remember classes starting with prayers. I also remember Mormonism being tangential to every class other than religion, and I thought the religion classes were a joke. Most professors on campus would secretly agree with that.

Yeah they were a joke! The worst thing was, since everyone knew the religion so well, the professors often had to come up with really hard and tricky test questions in order to prevent everyone from getting an A. Like: Which ONE of the following will increase your faith of ____ particular subject?
a) reading you scriptures
b) praying
c) going to church
d) none of the above
Of course they had mentioned the answer in one of their lectures, if you were listening.

Kimball: did they do those in engineering classes also?

Typically no, but I do remember one or two professors that did.

The civil engineering department at BYU is really quite good, as I've learned from comparing my college experience with non-mo engineers who went to other schools. In some ways it's better than most. Some of the world's best water modeling software was developed there (now private, called Aquaveo), and I was able to have a hand in that.

It's kind of an academic sub-culture that doesn't receive much attention from the uppety-ups, and can stay that way because there is little-to-no overlap with religious topics. I'm sure the fact that civil engineers build all those lovely chapels and temples probably plays a role too. So long as the students feel spiritually uplifted according to the teacher reviews, they're happy to keep the engineering department around. And as a result the department hardly ever receives any flack. In fact, I doubt that the school president knows the names of most of my professors.

I wish I could say the same about my BIL who decided to persue a Master's Degree in genetics. If I had chosen a major like that I probably wouldn't have stayed in the church as long as I did.