Marriott School announces changes to college name and departments

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BYU professor Mat Duerden lectures students in the experience design class under the new Department of Experience Design and Management. (Dani Jardine)

The Marriott School has undergone several changes starting this semester, including the college name, department names and addition of majors.

The college’s name changed from the BYU Marriott School of Management to the BYU Marriott School of Business. BYU Marriott School of Business Dean Lee Perry said they did not originally plan on changing from a school of management to a school of business.

The advice came from the branding firm, Lipman Hearne.

“(Lipman Hearne) showed us some pretty compelling data that suggested our externally-facing identity would be stronger as a school of business,” Perry said.

They ran the idea past stakeholders who clearly preferred the new name.

Perry also saw benefit from connecting “BYU” and “Marriott” more formally during his term as dean. They are focusing on rebranding as the BYU Marriott instead of the Marriott School.

This focus is an effort to strengthen the Marriott’s brand with BYU and create greater unity as a school.

It took about a year and a half for the school to get to this significant milestone in the re-branding process. However, the labor is not done yet, according to Perry.

“We also recognize there is a lot of work ahead of us around launching, messaging and continuously refining and refreshing the BYU Marriott School of Business brand,” Perry said.

Within the college, there were also name changes to the Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy and the Department of Recreation Management. The former changed simply to the Department of Management, and the latter changed to the Department of Experience Design and Management.

Department of Experience Design and Management Chair Neil Lundberg said the name alterations were made with the students in mind.

“We really did this for students. That’s the primary reason,” he said. “We wanted to help them better articulate the skill sets they were coming away with in our program.”

Lundberg said the name modifications will not affect courses, applications or requirements. It’s an ongoing process to make little tweaks to better courses so the curriculum naturally evolves over time, according to Lundberg.

The new department name actually came in part because of the evolution of the curriculum.

“The name change had to catch up to the curriculum,” Lundberg said. “We had to make sure the name accurately reflects what the curriculum is.”

In addition to the name changes to the college and departments, seven new majors were approved. These majors came from previous emphases within existing majors.

Five new additions from the management major emphases include entrepreneurial management, global supply chain management, human resource management, marketing and strategic management.

Previous recreation management emphases are now the experience design and management major, and the therapeutic recreation and management major.

Therapeutic recreation and management junior Shalie Taylor said these adjustments show the program is growing.

“The addition of these emphases as majors will also help build the program’s credibility and get them more pronounced,” Taylor said.

Students can visit BYU Marriott’s website for more information about these changes.

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