On Monday, March 4, 2019, former Caruso associate dean Jim Gash stepped into a crowded Elkins Auditorium, a room full of expectancy and standards, and officially commenced his time as President.
Gash is now wrapping up his fifth year as President of Pepperdine University. Throughout his tenure, he has faced the global pandemic, multiple wildfires, tragedy and victories.
“My goal in taking the baton was doing what my predecessors had done,” Gash said. “And the idea is each time a president gets the baton from his, or her someday, a predecessor, then the goal is to continue to climb the mountain.”
As a young kid, Gash said he was constantly around Pepperdine because not only did both of his parents attend and meet at Pepperdine, but it was also where his dad became a Christian. Gash wanted to go to Pepperdine, but chose to attend Abilene Christian University (ACU) to continue playing football.
After Gash received his bachelor’s degree in Finance from ACU, he enrolled in Pepperdine’s law school, where he graduated in 1993, Gash said. It was his experience at the law school that he said made him want to remain a part of this community.
“My goal was to continue to climb that mountain so that students like you and like my kids and like the ones that are here — you know my three kids who went to Pepperdine — the ones that are here just feel like, well, this place is everything I want for a university. It inspired me spiritually,” Gash said.
What were Gash’s promises?
Gash entered his term with three main promises: to propel Pepperdine’s faith, fundraising and footprint, according to his speech given to the Pepperdine community in March 2019.
Gash’s first promise was faith. One of his major faith-based initiatives was launching the Hub for Spiritual Life, which connects the Pepperdine community through “worship and spiritual care,” according to its website.
Gash said his goal for the Hub was to magnify the students’ interaction with spiritual leaders, worship and more.
“We launched the Hub for Spiritual Life maybe a year or so into my presidency to focus intentionally on enhancing the student experience in addition to what the students are receiving in the classroom,” Gash said.
The Hub then introduced several new programs, such as Student-Led Ministries. It also created the Office for Community Belonging, which was a needed new addition to the university’s spiritual framework, Gash said.
“Everything that we do there is grounded in who we are as a Christian institution,” Gash said.
The Worship Summit — an annual event that began during Gash’s inauguration week — has since become a fixture of Pepperdine’s spiritual life. In addition, Gash introduced the new position of Vice President for Spiritual Life, which is held by Tim Spivey, to ensure that faith remains central to the student experience.
“The idea of having a group of leaders on campus who were dedicated to ensuring that students had every opportunity to experience what it looked like to be part of a faith community and calling them into that faith community,” Gash said. “Someone who every day woke up with the goal of ‘how do I help our community be a more vibrant spiritual life or have a more vibrant spiritual life at Pepperdine?’”
Gash’s second promise was fundraising. He said he set a bold goal of doubling the university’s annual donations by the end of the decade, aiming to increase contributions from $34.8 million per year to $70 million per year.
“Our donors have stepped up and we are now averaging more than $70 million per year from the beginning as opposed to at the end of the decade,” Gash said. “This is a tribute to our team. Every part of the steering team, the leadership team, they’ve accepted my challenge of ‘you are all fundraisers.’”
Fundraising, he said, is not just about money but about sharing Pepperdine’s vision in a way that inspires donors to contribute to the university’s future.
“We don’t just have a team of fundraisers,” Gash said. “We’ve got a team of storytellers who say, ‘this is who we are’ and a team of people who inspire donors who have resources and say, ‘I want to leave behind a legacy. I want to make the world better than before I got here.’”
Lastly, Gash promised both an academic and international footprint. This past February, Pepperdine graduated from an R3 Carnegie standing to an R2 research institution, which stamps the exponential growth Pepperdine has made on the academic front, according to the University.
While there is a level above R2 — that being R1 — Gash said R1 schools are typically much larger universities like UCLA or the University of Michigan, and Pepperdine is not looking to become an R1 school because it would not allow for professors here to personally engage with students.
“[R2 is] an objective set of criteria that says you’re academically excelling, not just in the classroom, but in producing important scholarship that influences academics, influences the world,” Gash said.
The progression of Gash’s goals
As mentioned previously, one of Gash’s major goals when he first came into Pepperdine was increasing its fundraising, which Executive Vice President Phil Phillips said the University has excelled at during Gash’s tenure.
What Gash has accomplished in terms of fundraising is important for the University because it allows Pepperdine to expand, said multiple sources.
Another initiative from Pepperdine’s administration during Gash’s tenure has been the creation of The Mountain at Mullin Park, which will include a new athletic arena, headquarters for Resilience-Informed Skills Education (RISE) and many places for student recreation, according to Pepperdine’s website. The Mountain is set to be completed by late 2026.
Phillips said Pepperdine would not have been able to accomplish creating The Mountain had it not been for Gash’s excellence in financial planning.
“The ability to have these capital improvements that we’re trying to make that are going to make campus better and richer and more meaningful for students is all the things we’re trying to do, it takes money,” said Tim Perrin, senior vice president of strategic implementation.
Gash said he views the creation of The Mountain as fulfilling his goals for fostering a tight-knit community, encouraging school spirit and providing more-than-adequate facilities for Pepperdine’s athletics.
“We aspire to be outstanding in everything we do,” Gash said.
Furthering Pepperdine student community life has been another area Perrin said Gash has succeeded in, even with the difficulties the communities have faced in recent those, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the crash in fall 2023 and most recently, the Franklin and Palisades fires.
Specifically, Perrin said it’s been a goal through the creation of the RISE program and Gash’s presence on campus to combat mental health challenges for young adults.
“President Gash’s commitment to being accessible, to being available,” Perrin said. “He answers every email. He’s happy to be with students. He wants to be present. He wants to get to know the student, and his openness and transparency and willingness to engage in these hard moments.”
As a result of Gash’s commitment to raising money and furthering spiritual life, Political Science Professor Robert Williams said Gash has taken a step back in some areas where previous presidents were more involved.
“He’s delegated a good bit of the day-to-day operations of the University to other people, particularly on the academic side and in the general administration of the university,” Williams said.
During his speech to the Pepperdine community in 2019, Gash said one of his goals for Pepperdine was to grow with connections and in the standings in the higher education realm. One place Perrin said this was accomplished was by the creation of the College of Health Science, which will start accepting students in fall 2025.
The College of Health Science will offer a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, entry-level Master in Nursing and Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology, according to the College of Health Science website.
“Our new college — the College of Health Science — which is so missional, so central to the university’s efforts, and that is only going to expand our opportunities to serve in the kingdom and to be of influence, and to grow our reputation as we fill those important needs and health care in Southern California and beyond,” Perrin said.
Despite this milestone, the opening of a new school was not part of the University’s main plans at the start of Gash’s tenure, Gash said.
“When the pandemic came, it became clear, first, that there was a need in, not just in California, but around the country,” Gash said. “And second, there was an opportunity for Pepperdine to step forward in mission-centric ways to prepare our students to be mission-centric healthcare professionals.”
Phillips has been a member of the Pepperdine community in some capacity since 1984 and he said what the University has achieved during Gash’s tenure is the most he’s seen done in this short of a window.
“I’m in my 31st year working here, and I went to law school here, and I went to undergrad before that,” Phillips said. “So I’ve seen really great work done at Pepperdine in the administration for decades — we’ve never been doing this much that I remember, at least in my career.”
With all that has been achieved, Williams — who has also been at Pepperdine for over 30 years — said he’s noticed Pepperdine has been more clear with its political standings since Gash took over.
“The university has definitely taken a turn to the right politically under President Gash,” Williams said. “We see this in the speakers that he brings to campus, and we see this in the kinds of issues that he’s chosen to talk about publicly.”
Despite the advancements made in Pepperdine’s education, the University has found itself falling ranks every year since 2021, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Future plans for Gash’s tenure
Pepperdine has six different locations for students to study abroad — Buenos Aires, Florence, Heidelberg, Switzerland, London and Washington, D.C. — and 95% of Pepperdine students study abroad, according to the International Programs website.
Despite the already high volume of students who study abroad, Gash and Perrin both said expanding the International Programs is one of the University’s main priorities for the coming years.
“God willing, we’re going to be expanding into Asia very soon on a permanent basis, expanding into Africa for study abroad, on a permanent basis,” Gash said. “I’ll be with students this summer in Africa on a study abroad trip there in Uganda.”
As of the 2023-24 academic year, Pepperdine was ranked No. 12 in the study abroad category of “Academic Programs to Look For” by U.S. News, according to Pepperdine’s website.
“Continuing attention to the international experience and opportunities for students to study abroad, making sure that we have campuses in the right places where students want to study is really important to us,” Perrin said.
The acquisition of the Château d’Hauteville in Switzerland officially began before Gash’s presidency but was finalized under his tenure, and he said he and his administration are continuing to work to develop new study abroad opportunities for future students.
The university’s international expansion also extends to Pepperdine’s legal and humanitarian work. Through the Sudreau Global Justice Institute, the school has worked to improve legal access and justice systems in Uganda and East Africa, according to its website.
“We started off helping one country, Uganda, starting with one group of kids and one prison,” Gash said. “And now it’s the entire country, and then it was East Africa, and now the entire continent. 23 African countries have said, ‘Can you help us expand access to justice for our people?’”
Looking ahead, Pepperdine will co-sponsor the first-ever International Religious Freedom Summit throughout Africa, a partnership between the university and the Kenyan government set to launch in June, according to Gash. He said this event is part of a broader effort to establish Pepperdine as a leader in global Christian education.
“I want every kid like you who grows up in Atlanta or anywhere else who says, ‘You know what? I want an excellent education in a beautiful part of the world that will inspire me academically, that will encourage me and inspire me spiritually,’” Gash said. “I want every kid to say, ‘Well, my first choice, of course, is Pepperdine.’”
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Contact Tony Gleason on Twitter (@tony__gleason) or via email: anthony.gleason@pepperdine.edu
Contact Shalom Montgomery via email: shalom.montgomery@pepperdine.edu
