He has examined the economic and technical significance of modular design on such things as computers and cars. He's documented how industries evolve through implementing technology and competition. Now he's poised to apply those concepts to enhance the school as a "new model for education.

"That's not just a slogan. That's a description of what we're doing here," due in part to the "spirit of consecration among the faculty and staff. Once we figure out where it is we need to be and what we need to do, we go there, and we go there fast."

The philosophy was made-to-order for Clark, whose Harvard colleagues knew him as someone who was always pushing to have things done faster and better. "At one point, some senior colleagues made me pledge there would be no new initiatives for a while."

Meanwhile, former President Bednar was meeting with faculty at BYU-I to determine what information would help Clark when he arrived.

A transcript of that meeting shows one faculty member said, "We've got to tell him this place isn't used to the normal academic mode. We move and take action here." Clark was elated. "We need a lot of debate and discussion as we innovate and change. . . . We need more ideas, more creativity, more stuff bubbling from the faculty. We want to get staff and students engaged in that as well."

The statement isn't mere lip service, he said, noting a young woman recently approached him after a speech where he encouraged students to share their best ideas for how to improve the university. "My roommates and I have been talking about all these ideas of how to move the university forward. How do I communicate them to you?" she asked. "I told her to send me an e-mail."

The student body has also become more academically focused and mature in the past few years, Clark said, and now includes more married students — 25 percent — than ever before. New family housing and a new LDS chapel to house married student wards speak to the draw the school has become for those focused on serious life and career preparation.

Even so, Clark said no one in Rexburg seeks to grow the school into a younger sibling for Brigham Young University in Provo. The focus for Rexburg is different, and he anticipates it always will be.

In fact, many who have been drawn to the school have come because they "are not interested in the way the world values and calibrates and rewards its institutions." Instead, they come "because they believe in its mission. They believe in what it's doing and they want to be part of it."