Pepperdine to Elevate Its Top V.P. to Presidency

Pepperdine University’s Board of Regents on Tuesday picked the school’s No. 2 executive, Andrew K. Benton, to become the next president of the scenic Malibu campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

“Andrew Benton,” said board Chairman Thomas G. Bost, is the “best equipped to lead Pepperdine University into the next millennium with academic excellence and Christian values.”

The incoming president, as is required by Pepperdine’s bylaws, is a member of the Churches of Christ. The university, though nonsectarian, has ties to the religiously conservative church.

Benton, 47, once a practicing lawyer in Oklahoma, said he has no plans to push the school in a different philosophical direction when he takes over July 1 from current President David Davenport. “Our church roots are deep and they are unchanging,” said Benton, who has been executive vice president since 1991. “But we welcome people of all faiths and backgrounds.”

He said he plans to focus on spreading the word about Pepperdine’s growing academic reputation and the rising caliber of its faculty and 8,000 students.

He also wants to clarify perceptions about Pepperdine’s political leanings. The university is often tagged as conservative because of some donors’ political views and because it asked former independent counsel Kenneth Starr to become law school dean--a job he ultimately declined.

“We have been fortunate to make strong political contacts, but from both sides of the aisle,” Benton said. “It’s a much more centrist place than people would like to acknowledge.”

Moreover, he said he looks forward to shepherding the construction of a 50-acre graduate campus behind the School of Law.

Benton estimates that he has spent 15 years nudging along permits needed to construct the five-building, $80-million project that will house the university’s graduate schools of business, public policy, education and psychology.

“Each one of these graduate schools,” he said, “should have a permanent facility on the Malibu campus. It will be a period of construction turmoil, but if we look beyond that, it will be worthwhile.”

Davenport said he was delighted that the regents picked Benton as his replacement.

“He’s been my right-hand person for the last 15 years,” Davenport said. “He’s a guy of tremendous integrity and leadership ability. Everybody from City Hall downtown to the Legislature, they go out of their way to say how much they respect Andy Benton.”

Davenport, 49, stunned Pepperdine’s faculty and staff this year with his decision to step down after 15 years as president so he could “open a new chapter” in his life.

He said Tuesday that he is interested in either leading a nonprofit Christian organization or joining a think tank as a scholar to write about education, public policy and religion.

Before becoming executive vice president, Benton had held other jobs at the campus since 1984.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma Christian College and a law degree from Oklahoma City University. Married to Deborah Benton for 25 years, he has two children: Hailey, a Pepperdine freshman, and Christopher, a ninth-grader.