Culture called a barrier

OREM — Utah County residents need to address some cultural issues in order to enhance economic development, Utah Valley State College President William Sederburg said Thursday.

Sederburg, pinch-hitting for scheduled speaker Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. at the Big Business and Technology Expo, told a crowd of about 80 during a question-and-answer period that a "similarity of thinking process" in the county needs to be addressed.

"I think the biggest difference in Utah County and the rest of the world, if you will, are cultural differences that we're not as up-front with talking about as probably we ought to be," Sederburg said. "And so we have found the cultural climate to be very friendly and very supportive, but a lot of people that are not (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) that move into the area would not agree with that. And I think that we need to somehow break down some of the barriers and find ways to help everybody understand . . . cultural differences."

Sederburg, a former 12-year Michigan state senator, said he was "struck" by the diversity of the population in Michigan during a recent trip there.

"You just have a huge diversity of different types of people and different philosophies. And we have in Utah, I think, a similarity-of-thinking-process that cuts down on some of that diversity. . . . I think that somehow we need to break down (that) so that for business to grow here, if it's going to be business that relies on non-LDS people, we really need to go to work on some of those cultural issues that are very much alive."

He noted that two "outstanding" faculty members left the county for that very reason. "They came into my office and said, 'We love working at UVSC, but we cannot live in Utah County, so good-bye.' "

A man in the audience described it as "closet prejudice, that we may profess a certain thing, but our actions and our expressions sometimes come out different than what we profess our values to be, so we do need to be more inclusive in this community."

While much of Sederburg's presentation echoed Huntsman's economic development philosophies, Sederburg was critical of the Legislature's failure to provide more funding for what he called "people power," which he said is an important variable in business success.