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When President Andrew K. Benton first stepped onto the Malibu Campus in 1984, the future of the university hung in the balance, but not in the way one might think. “We didn’t have enough wastewater treatment for the future of the university,” Benton said. Benton began at Pepperdine working on university regulatory matters, specifically the development of the Drescher campus. Thirty-four years later, Benton not only addressed these issues, but brought the university into a new millennium as president. President Benton turned down an opportunity in Dallas in favor of representing Pepperdine in their expansion efforts. He’d only planned on it taking two years, but before he knew it, that two-year adventure turned into 15 years and then 34. “Pepperdine offered something that Dallas didn’t,” Benton said. “Along comes Pepperdine and they offer me a legal challenge [and] a spiritual opportunity in a very different place. I thought I would come out here with my wife and our daughter and solve this little problem in two years and then go back to America. So that’s how I used to say it. Took me 15 years to solve that little problem … by that time, you know, we’d fallen in love and I’d been given greater responsibility.” Benton said he knew the Pepperdine community was unique from the beginning. “I knew that it was a special community because it was definitely a community predicated on faith [and] a lot of different faiths, which I liked,” Benton said. “I saw faculty who were really determined to achieve excellence in the classroom and that’s not always true at a college or university. So the both put together were perfect.” Before he was president, Benton acted as executive vice president of the university. “When I was executive vice president for nine years, I thought I had the best job at Pepperdine,” Benton said. “Then I became president, and I think that’s the best job here.” Benton said he started his presidency with five goals: expand university scholarship, increase diversity, hold on to Pepperdine’s heritage, improve the university’s resources and develop the community to create stronger relationships between students and faculty.
“I remember in my inaugural address talking about my desire that Pepperdine would have a billion dollar endowment,” Benton said. “I could hardly say that – a billion dollar endowment. It seemed so far out there. But today we do have a billion dollar endowment.” He’s worked on each of these points throughout his presidency, Benton said. However, this does not mean he has finished working on these areas of the university. “Those are the five points and I’ve stuck with them,” Benton said. “There’s hardly a day that I don’t pray about some aspect of that. Have we accomplished everything? No. Have we made progress in all five areas? Yes.” Progress toward these goals hasn’t been without struggle, Benton said. “I second guess myself all the time,” Benton said. “I think my worst decisions have been when I didn’t trust my instincts. Because I am conservative and not in a political sense, but just kind of conservative in my approach to life, I think I was slow to respond to social issues.” During Benton’s 18-year presidency, Pepperdine has faced many social issues such as increased LGBT awareness, Benton said. With each new generation of students, Pepperdine has adapted to support students of all views and backgrounds. “I would rather hold to our values, being ever thoughtful about the need for awareness and change,” Benton said. “With every generation of student that comes to us, they’re different. They have different needs, different expectations. Trying to respond to those while remaining Pepperdine – that probably takes as much wisdom as anything that I do.” Benton, known as the “Students’ President,” works to understand these new generations by reading to understand their perspective, he said. “It is difficult, but very, very important and the last thing that I want to do is be thought of as an out-of-touch president, somebody who’s not paying attention, who’s resting on his laurels,” Benton said. “I’m not much of a laurel-rester.” For Benton, one of his major challenges during his time as president was personal, not professional. In 2012, police arrested Benton’s adult son, Chris Benton, after he made threats toward his own family. The incident occurred in the midst of New Student Orientation activities and attracted attention from beyond campus. Around that time, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges had an accreditation visit
Womens’ Volleyball vs. LMU
Courtesy of University Archives
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Benton Back Then | President Andrew K. Benton introduces a colleague at a university fundraiser decades ago. at Pepperdine and brought up the arrest in their review of the university, Benton said. That week’s issue of the Graphic included an editorial cartoon that said, “AKB’s had our back for a decade … now will we have his?” “That incident should have had no part of their inquiry in my humble opinion, but it did and I was able to point to the Graphic and said, ‘That’s really what I want to say about that, that this community is going to let me work through that with dignity and I am going to work through it,’” Benton said. Benton said the difficult experience helped him be more understanding to the plights of individuals and other families. “It was a chance to be embraced or rejected and we were embraced,” Benton said. “I don’t know very many families that are perfect and some imperfections are louder and noisier than others, but all families have struggles. If there’s a silver lining in that incident, it is that I really softened at that point and when students would find themselves in difficulty or when parents knew of their son or daughter being in
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THE MAN OF FEW WORDS AND MANY RESPONSIBILITIES: ANDREW K. BENTON
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Pepp debuts STAPLES Center Classroom c hanna st einmetz soci al medi a man age r Pepperdine University partnered with Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) to unveil the first-of-its-kind educational programming and classroom at the Staples Center. AEG and Pepperdine communities celebrated the grand opening of the branded classroom through brief speeches and a ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of the classroom Thursday, Oct. 18. Before the event, Pepperdine President Andrew K. Benton shared his excitement of the classroom’s potential. “I love the return vibrancy of downtown Los Angeles,” Benton said. “And I am so grateful that Pepperdine is going to have a chance to be able to be a part of that as a consequence of having real estate at Staples. We are going to be in the middle of what I think is going to very, very bright future.”
In an area like downtown LA that has a multitude of surrounding universities, President and Chief Executive Officer of AEG Dan Beckerman said the initiative to work with Pepperdine specifically came from their ambition to do something new and innovative. “I think what stood out [about Pepperdine] was their desire and commitment to really be engaged and to try to do something unique,” Beckerman said. “They collaborated with us to find a way to reach students and educate them in a way that really no one else in the market was doing.” Along with the Staples Center being located in the heart of downtown LA, it is home to four professional sport franchises and the four million spectators who come to watch, President of the Staples Center Lee Zeidman said. The Staples Center has hosted notable performers such as The Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift, Prince
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Courtesy of Ron Hall Grand Opening | Pepperdine’s classroom at the Staples Center is intended for students pursuing degrees in sports, media and entertainment. The university partnered with Anschutz Entertainment Group to launch the classroom in downtown Los Angeles.
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