On a windy Friday morning, scores of people gathered at the site of the former Walmart Home Office in Bentonville. The lot on the corner of Southwest Eighth and Southwest E streets is a gravel lot now, with a half dozen cranes, some skid steers and a bulldozer. And come August 2029, leaders plan to welcome the first undergraduate class of students to the Bentonville Institute of Technology on this same plot of land.
David Mazyck is the president of the university. He previously served as the head of the School of Engineering, Design and Innovation at Penn State University. He says it's important at a moment like this to ask a fundamental question: Why should Bentonville Institute of Technology exist?
“I believe our purpose begins with a gap we see in STEM education. Universities can produce technically capable graduates, but technical capability alone is no longer enough. The people who create meaningful impact must also know how to identify the right problems, understand human needs, work across disciplines, exercise judgment, communicate complex ideas, understand how value is created and turn ideas into solutions that actually work in the world.
"Too often, those capabilities are developed years after graduation through experience, perhaps going to business school, entrepreneurial experiences or just trial and error. We have an unusual opportunity because we are starting with a blank canvas."
Mazyck says artificial intelligence will be built into the structure of the school from the beginning.
"And AI makes the opportunity even more important as knowledge and increasingly powerful technical capabilities become more accessible. What will distinguish people is not simply what they know, but what they can do with that and how they know. Identifying the right problem. Asking the right questions. Exercising judgment. Designing around human needs. Communicating a compelling story. Building solutions and creating value.
"So perhaps the simplest expression of our purpose is this: We exist to dramatically shorten the distance between learning and impact."
So what's in a name? Tom Walton and his brother Steuart are the primary backers of Bentonville Institute of Technology. Tom says the three words in the title are intentional.
"Bentonville is on its rise with national prominence over the last 10 years. We feel like it's a fitting name, but it's more than just a place. It really is an ecosystem of health care, of parks, of culture, of business that we believe is going to be prominent. And if we do our job, our ambition is that as Bentonville rises, the university will rise too and accelerate that rise. So that's why we think it's important for Bentonville to be in the name.
"The institute is relatively straightforward. It's seriousness, it's academic rigor, it is focus. And I think what David and Lee and others are going and what we're going to do to change the way the model can be for higher education is going to be outstanding. And you got my promise that we're going to make it happen.
"And then the third one, technology, is really the language that the university will use. So when you think about systems, capabilities and tools, those are the areas that our students will go out and lead with."
Steuart says back in 2011, when he was working at Walmart and sitting in the home office in a windowless cubicle on the ground he's actively standing on, he remembers a family meeting where he suggested that Walmart should invest in a new home office.
"Uncle Rob sort of let me finish and then said, 'We built the largest company in the world out of those offices. I'm not sure what your point is.' And of course he was right. It ain't the church, it's the people. And so what I think I took from that really is that it's the people that are going to make ... that made Walmart successful. It had nothing to do with our home office, maybe a little something actually, but it's going to be the people that make this university successful.
"And I think that there's obviously kind of a coda to this story, which is that Walmart did build a new office. And I do think it's had an enormously positive impact on the company. And I think that it's also given us the opportunity to bring this institute to the downtown of Bentonville. And I would also say, while 'it ain't the church, it's the people' is bedrock, it is truth and it is real, the church does matter."
To stretch Steuart's metaphor here, the church in this case will feature an academic building, student residence and a makerspace. Those three buildings will span more than 400,000 square feet. Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects is collaborating with Bjarke Ingels Group on the design of the campus. PSW describes the design as rooted in the Ozarks, with features like stacked forms, shaded breezeways and collaborative interior terraces.
David Mazyck, university president, says the first phase of the campus will include those three buildings, with a focus on the unique nature of the makerspace.
"I think of the makerspace as one of the clearest physical expressions of our educational philosophy at the Bentonville Institute of Technology. We want students to learn by building. An idea should not have to wait until a senior capstone project to become real. From the beginning, students should be designing, prototyping, testing, failing, learning, rebuilding and improving.
"The makerspace will be approximately 130,000 square feet and is envisioned as a flexible innovation hub at the center of the experience. It will not simply be a building students occasionally visit. Our aspiration is for making experimentation to become a part of the everyday rhythm of the Bentonville Institute of Technology student."
Mazyck says the three buildings will be connected by green spaces and pathways, with an emphasis on being connected to downtown Bentonville and its surrounding parks and green space.
"And that connection is important. We do not want the Bentonville Institute of Technology to be an island separated from Bentonville. We want our students to experience this community as an extension of their education, learning from its companies and entrepreneurs, its artists and health care organizations, its civic institutions and natural environment and, most importantly, you, its people."
Debbie Jones is the superintendent for Bentonville Schools. She says about a year ago, she received a call from the Walton brothers.
"And they said, 'Debbie, we have something big that we're going to announce tomorrow and we are going to build a STEM university that's unlike any other higher ed institution.' And they were excited and I was excited. And my only request was, 'When you build this, please remember our high school students, because we have high school students that could walk into MIT right now and achieve successfully really, really good things.' From the moment that Dr. David Mazyck has stepped into his role as founding president, he has made that promise come true."
Bentonville Institute of Technology plans to welcome its first class of approximately 300 students in 2029, with hopes of expanding to 1,500 undergrads and 500 working professionals. A press release says that tuition is expected to be fully covered during the initial years of operation.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
