In 1997 Richard L. Bushman organized a small group of advanced undergraduate and graduate students to look at "Joseph Smith and His Times." This first "Summer Seminar" helped Bushman, the Howard W. Hunter Visiting Professor in Mormon Studies from Claremont Graduate University (California), as he wrote "Rough Stone Rolling," his biography of Joseph Smith. Similar seminars continued through the years.

"When we began this whole operation it was simply to accumulate information to help first with my book and then to just contribute to Mormon history generally," Bushman said. "But as time went on we began to realize that we were creating a core of very powerful, competent young... scholars who will be the ones to write the books about Mormon history and culture from here on out. We were putting them into a network where they could be confident that there were other young scholars like themselves."

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