By Brittany Rogers
Above image by Bradley Slade
Institute provides connections with heaven and with fellow strivers.
If there were a record for most institute courses taken, Dylan Shaw would almost certainly be a contender.
“My goodness, Dylan took a lot of classes from us,” says Janene Williams, the administrative assistant at the Chandler-Gilbert Institute of Religion, pulling up Shaw’s transcript.
Understandably, Shaw was well-known: he’s the 6'4" guy with a full beard who knows how to sport a doublet—people at institute still talk about his Halloween costume as Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. Shaw is a Renaissance man, as in the kind who goes to Renaissance fairs.
But he was also known for his earnest desire to develop as a disciple. Not to mention his affability. Williams recalls Shaw’s “willingness to talk to, to bring a smile to anybody,” no matter the age gap between them.
Many of the students at the Chandler-Gilbert institute attend the adjacent Chandler-Gilbert Community College; according to Williams, young single adults often think of institute as something reserved for college students.
Not so, says Steve Andersen, the institute’s director. “Anyone 18 through 35 can benefit from institute,” he says.
And there’s something for everyone across the age range. While most students at the Chandler-Gilbert institute are 18 to 22, older students not only benefit, he insists, they add. Take Shaw, 29: “Dylan brought a gospel maturity and life experience,” says Andersen. “When you’re 18, 19, just trying to figure things out, it matters, seeing somebody years ahead of you who is still invested in the gospel, still invested in serving and learning.”
Age 30 is no longer the cap. “I was worried I might age out,” says Shaw, grateful that the Church—just last year—extended the institute-eligible age to 35. Though he got married last summer (he and his Comic-Con-loving bride, Katie, posed for wedding pictures wielding a sword and bow and arrow), the newlyweds are hoping to find an institute class that works with both of their schedules. Married young adults are welcome.
Shaw’s institute career may have begun as a requirement of the BYU–Pathway program he began following his mission. But his motivation to attend quickly became intrinsic.
“Seminary is every weekday, and in the mission field you’re constantly being nourished,” he says. “Then you get home and it’s on you.” At institute he realized how much he missed those extra touchpoints.
As his path wended through stops and starts in his education, relationships, and employment, Shaw took a break from attending institute at one point. “I felt the difference,” he says. Whenever Shaw hit a dead end in his life, institute was where he regrouped. “It’s a place where I could walk in and feel known,” he says. And for a generation of young people struggling with higher rates of loneliness, adds Andersen, institute can be an antidote.
In a sweeping effort to reenergize institute, the Church is remodeling and rebranding institute buildings as “gathering places.” Think fewer desks and more couches, Ping-Pong tables, and the like. Institutes, like young single adult wards, also now have activity budgets managed by the students themselves on institute councils.
Of course Shaw joined the Chandler-Gilbert institute council, helping plan social, service, and instructional activities. At one activity he taught his peers how to make bread (he bakes loaves weekly for his ward sacrament meeting). But nothing, he says, can beat the Chandler-Gilbert institute’s dollar lunches.
“Food is the way to a young adult’s heart,” says Williams—or “Mama Williams” as the students affectionately call her. Her Crock-Pot chicken cordon bleu has “a bit of a cult following,” she says, Shaw among its many fans. Made fresh on site four days a week, the dollar meals were often his square meal of the day while he struggled to build his business as an insurance agent. Institute, he says, has fed him spiritually, socially, and literally.
“If you don’t find ways to connect with heaven, you’re going to get lost in the mess of things,” says Shaw. “Institute is just a really good way to do that, to connect with heaven and connect with each other.”
