By LINDSAY LICHFIELD
The BYU community needs to be individually reconciled with God to serve more effectively and become a more united university, said Professor David A. Whetten at Tuesday's Devotional.
'I have concluded that the best thing I can do to edify my students is to sanctify their teacher,' Whetten said. 'The goal of unification with others is made possible through a combination of personal sanctification and interpersonal edification.'
To create a Zion university, he said, people in the BYU community need to serve with competency and love.
'We cannot become personally sanctified if we are not edifying others, and God's process of unification naturally emerges out of the edifying actions of sanctified individuals,' Whetten said.
'I now realize that having a Ph.D. or a faculty office is a difference that warrants no distinction on a campus that is dedicated to preparing its graduates for a life of continuous personal development through effective relationships, righteous living and dedicated service,' he said.
Whetten said an experience that embodies all three of these principles concerns a student who battled cancer for three years and finally had to be admitted to the hospital, only a few credits shy of graduating.
Dean of General Education and Honors Paul Cox arranged for Mary Marsden to graduate with honors just days before her death.
'This unusually caring response to an unusual set of circumstances should inspire us all to contribute more time and more thought to our common goal of becoming a sanctified, edified and unified academic community,' Whetten said.
'For BYU to be excellent, it must first be good,'Whetten said. 'I invite all of us to contemplate how we might 'enter to learn,' and how to 'go forth to serve.''