Highlights from BYU colleges

College of Family, Life and Social Sciences

• A recent study from BYU researcher Jeff Hill and Kansas State University researchers found a husband’s negative perception of his wife’s spending habits has a greater impact on financial conflict in relationships than her actual spending habits. In the study, husbands who viewed their wives as spenders were the highest contributor to financial conflict. The researchers studied high- and low-income couples, some who spent a lot and some who did not spend much at all. Men also viewed having more children as impacting financial conflict, whereas women saw lack of communication as impacting financial conflict. The data suggests perception is a bigger issue than actual financial circumstances when it comes to financial conflict.

  

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology

• Piero, a company created by a team of six BYU undergraduates who are part of the Crocker Innovation Fellowship program, won $10,000 in the CommonBond Social Impact Award competition. Piero is a startup that helps make the world more accessible to disabled people. Sam Lew, an industrial design student, gained the inspiration for the company after a woman in a wheelchair asked for his help opening a door. The team developed a device that retrofits to the motor of an automatic door and opens the door once it detects bluetooth signals from the user’s phone.

  

David O. McKay School of Education

•  The Educational Leadership and Foundations program provided four students with the opportunity to intern in Guangzhou, China for the first time. During their time there, students shadowed principals at Clifford International Schools, took on administrative assignments, observed classrooms and attended school meetings. The internship program allows students to broaden their cultural awareness and professional skills.

  

• The David O. McKay School of Education announced it will resume the Education Policy and Social Foundations program, which has not been available to students since 2009. The program, a two-year emphasis in the Educational Leadership and Foundations master’s degree in education, addresses social, political and cultural factors of school operations and educational policies. Classes for the program will begin Fall 2017 and admissions for the program will continue thereafter.

College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences

• Researchers at BYU found users of popular messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Viber are vulnerable to fraud and hacking because they do not use security options. Study participants exchanged credit card information through the messaging app, and only 14 percent of participants were successful in authenticating their recipient. During the next round, all participants were urged to use the authentication ceremonies. As a result, 79 percent were able to authenticate their recipient; however, it took an average of 11 minutes in order to do so, leaving many participants frustrated. The researchers’ goal from this study is to design technology that is easy and fast for everyone to securely use.

College of Nursing

• BYU assistant teaching professor and family nurse practitioner Lacey Eden created an app called “Best for Baby” that educates parents on immunizations and their child’s general health. Immunization exemption rates have increased in Utah over the past few years. With this, there have been several outbreaks of diseases that could have been avoided through vaccines. As Eden researched immunization exemptions, she discovered Utah is one of 18 states that allows medical, religious and philosophical exemptions. Her app not only has modules that teach about vaccines, but also sends users weekly push notifications that update parents on their child’s development, when to see their doctor, what to expect at those appointments and which immunizations the child needs.

  

J. Reuben Clark Law School

• Law students Emily Lund, Malea Moody and Nathaniel Johnson just completed their summer externship in Spain. The students worked on religious freedom for the Spanish Ministry of Justice, a rather new concept that was only added to the Spanish Constitution in 1978. Some of their responsibilities included reviewing and organizing legal documents between state and religious organizations, attending meetings with the ministry’s international affairs office and learning how EU members work with EU candidate states in order to find potential improvements to the legal system. The students said one of the biggest impacts that they left with from the externship was learning of the country’s history, culture and development of law.