PEPPERDINE UNIVERSTIY: A BRIEF INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY
THE FIRST 50 YEARS (1937 - 1987)
George Pepperdine College
On September 21, 1937,
the new campus of George Pepperdine College hosted 2,000 attendees
gathered to witness the opening of the school. Speakers that day
included California governor Frank Merriam, Los Angeles mayor Frank L.
Shaw, the college’s first president Batsell Baxter, and founder George
Pepperdine. Among the crowd were the college’s first students, 167 young
men and women from 22 states and two foreign countries. Mr. Pepperdine
clearly stated his intentions for the school on that day: “Our college
is dedicated to a twofold objective: First, academic training in the
liberal arts . . . Secondly, we are especially dedicated to a greater
goal—that of building in the student a Christ-like life, a love for the
church, and a passion for the souls of mankind.”
The Los Angeles CampusThe campus was located in
the Vermont Knolls area of Los Angeles, a few miles south of downtown;
formerly it had been a 34-acre estate with an 18-room mansion that had
now been converted into the president’s residence. Four buildings had
quickly risen that year: Baxter Hall, the men’s dormitory; Marilyn Hall,
the women’s residence; an administration building housing classrooms,
offices, a library, and an auditorium; and a dining hall. The campus
architecture was built in the Streamline Moderne style, and all of the
new buildings were painted a light blue which was later marketed in Los
Angeles paint stores as “Pepperdine Blue.”
Early Traditions
Pepperdine’s school colors were
adopted in 1937 after students voted to approve President Baxter’s
suggestion of blue and orange; blue representing the Pacific Ocean, and
orange representing California. Baxter also recommended “Waves” as the
name for Pepperdine athletic teams to differentiate from other schools’
penchant for animal names. Even though the school was then miles from
the ocean, it found approval and has characterized Pepperdine athletics
ever since. During that first year, two students proposed Graphic
as the name for the school newspaper as it contained the initials of
George Pepperdine College (GPC), a name also continuing to this day.
In 1937, tuition was low relative to other schools, thanks to Mr.
Pepperdine’s initial endowment, with room, board, tuition, and fees
amounting to $420. Those who today would be called “commuter” students
were charged $135 for the year. By contrast, a hamburger and soft drink
in the cafeteria cost 20 cents, a breakfast of eggs, hotcakes, and
coffee, 30 cents.
A Good StartThe Baxter presidency was short by
design, lasting only two years until his resignation in June 1939, but
his brief tenure which took advantage of his experience in presiding
over two other Christian colleges, David Lipscomb College and Abilene
Christian College, was characterized by creating sound academic and
administrative foundations and thoughtful traditions. During the
college’s first year of operation, only seven months after opening,
Pepperdine received full accreditation from the Northwest Association,
the regional accrediting authority. Baxter and dean Hugh Tiner, who
succeeded Baxter as president, recruited a faculty of 22, of whom three
held doctorates. And on June 6, 1938, after one year of operation,
Pepperdine celebrated its first commencement awarding diplomas to a
graduating class of four.
In Fall 1944, the college began offering its first graduate degree,
the master of arts in religion. Even before the offering of the MA
degree, Pepperdine had already served as a training ground for persons
entering the ministry. Sixty young ministers were listed as enrollees in
March 1944, and several alumni entered the foreign mission field
following WWII.
Post-WWII ExpansionIn 1944, the 78th Congress
passed the G.I. Bill subsidizing higher education and job training for
returning WWII veterans, producing a profound, expansionary effect on
higher education across America, in which Pepperdine College shared.
Enrollments climbed from 824 enrolled in 1946, peaking at 1,830 in 1949.
The following military conflict in Korea (which began in 1950) also
affected American college male enrollment patterns positively due to the
provision of college deferments in selective service. During this
period the faculty grew from 67 (regular and adjunct) in 1946 to 116 in
1947. Number of degrees awarded annually at this time also swelled, with
majors in business and education-psychology in the lead, topping out at
406 in 1950, eventually declining and stabilizing to approximately 200 a
year through the mid-50s.
President Tiner went on medical leave early in 1957 and shortly
thereafter resigned. That July, educator and pastor M. Norvel Young, who
had formerly served the college as a history professor from 1938 to
1941, was appointed third Pepperdine president. Young, in addition to an
agenda to raise the academic prestige of the college, was an
exceptionally gifted networker and fundraiser during whose tenure was
built an infrastructure of support that would enable the growing school
to move toward its developing concept of being a multi-school
university.
In the years from 1957 to 1966, enrollment at the college increased
from 1,084 to 1,502. In 1958 the college began an extension program with
course offerings at off-site centers which ranged geographically from
North Carolina to the Philippines and Okinawa. This program’s flexible
scheduling was designed to allow military personnel to complete academic
degrees heretofore impossible. Another Pepperdine innovation at this
time was to establish a year-in-Europe program for upper division
students in 1963. Thirty-six students were sent to the university in
Heidelberg, Germany, in September of that year, under the supervision of
then dean of graduate studies Howard A. White who would become
Pepperdine’s fifth president.
Growing Pains – Malibu BeckonsAs the Los Angeles
program continued to grow, the college proceeded to expand the campus
by acquiring neighboring or adjacent properties to build out, but this
process proved to be problematic and cost prohibitive, and the idea of
operating in multiple campuses was explored and a committee was formed
to investigate possible locations in Southern California. In October
1968, the college received a remarkable donation of 138 acres of
undeveloped ranch land in Malibu, given by Merritt H. Adamson, Sylvia
Rindge Adamson Neville, and Rhoda-May Adamson Dallas, for the
construction of a new campus. Pepperdine announced its expansion plans
at its celebrated “Birth of a College” dinner event on February 9, 1970,
headlined by then Governor Ronald Reagan, and subsequently dedicated
the Malibu property on May 23. Then Pepperdine vice president William S.
Banowsky (later to succeed President Young in 1971) was installed as
chancellor of the infant Malibu Campus.
The Multi-Campus ExperimentIn 1969 Pepperdine
College reorganized the department of business into its separate School
of Business and it accepted an offer to acquire the Orange University
College of Law. It had been the first law school located in Orange
County, and was operating as a for-profit night school in Santa Ana.
Pepperdine College also had future plans to develop the department of
education into a separate professional school (becoming so in 1971), and
the trustees repurposed the Pepperdine organization and announced it as
Pepperdine University on January 1, 1971. In October of that same year,
the University organization was ultimately refined into two colleges of
letters, arts, and sciences one located at the Los Angeles Campus and
the other at the Malibu Campus, the School of Law in Orange County, and
the School of Continuing Education, the School of Business and
Management, the School of Education, and the Graduate School all at the
Los Angeles Campus.
The First Wave at MalibuThe first students of
the Malibu Campus entered school on September 6, 1972. Of that entering
class of 867 were 475 freshmen, the largest beginning class at
Pepperdine up until that time. Prior to their arrival, the construction,
completion, and dedication of the Malibu campus buildings had proceeded
in rapid succession, just in time for the start of school. The next
year, 1973, saw the completion of two signature Malibu landmarks,
Phillips Theme Tower and Stauffer Chapel.
At the Malibu Campus commencement ceremony on December 15, 1974,
President William Banowsky announced that the liberal arts college at
the Malibu Campus would be named the Frank R. Seaver College of Letters,
Arts, and Science, after the memory of the husband of Blanche Ebert
Seaver, the Malibu Campus’ principal benefactor.
The Los Angeles Era ConcludesProceeding through
the 1970s on the Los Angeles Campus James R. Wilburn (current dean of
the School of Public Policy) assumed the post of provost, Donald Sime
became dean of the School of Business and Management, and Olaf Tegner
became dean of the School of Education. In 1976 the School of Education
became the home of the University’s first doctoral program offering the
Ed.D. During this time, the University attempted to maintain an active
undergraduate educational program and campus life on the Los Angeles
Campus, but enrollment nevertheless declined and many programs had been
dropped by 1976. The downward trend was inevitable and the Los Angeles
college of letters, arts, and sciences (reorganized as the School of
Professional Studies) was closed down after the 1980-1981 school year.
The Los Angeles Campus was sold in part for housing development but the
bulk of the property today serves sacred purposes as the campus of the
Crenshaw Christian Center church. The School of Business and Management
and the School of Education were relocated to a business park in West
Los Angeles which was named Pepperdine University Plaza.
Seaver College Ascendant – Recommitting to First CausesIn
the 1970s a spirit of optimism infused the Seaver College community as
it received an increasing number of student applications, the number of
faculty holding doctorates had risen to 85 percent, and the Graphic
garnered several statewide awards. One unique, but very prominent
source of national publicity began in 1976 when Seaver College became
the filming location of the television show Battle of the Network Stars.
It was estimated that 40 million viewers tuned in regularly and
witnessed the beautiful seaside campus.
Shortly after Seaver College was dedicated, the trustees approved the
relocation of the School of Law to the Malibu campus and groundbreaking
began on May 22, 1976, with a ceremony addressed by U.S. Supreme Court
associate justice Harry Blackmun. By August 1979, the three-story law
center, named for benefactor Odell McConnell, was completed and
occupied.
With the plant relocations to Malibu and West Los Angeles, Pepperdine
University had solved its institutional problem of securing the
physical space to fully realize its growth, and the principal project
which faced fifth president Howard A. White, who succeeded Banowsky in
1978, was to begin securing the means for the University to commence
building out to suit its academic purposes. White was a particularly
astute recruiter and assembled an impressive team of academics,
professional administrators, and fundraisers to accomplish this task. It
was under the White presidency that the University embarked on its
first nine-figure capital campaign, the “Wave of Excellence” campaign.
The Wave of Excellence ultimately raised $137.8 million (far exceeding
its $100 million goal) and its most visible benefit to the University
was the construction of the five-story Charles B. Thornton
Administration Center, the first building visitors encounter when
entering the campus from the main gate.
For a University to seriously ask itself what and how to build, and
to recruit the generosity of others to share in that program, as it did
in this period, presupposes the existence of a well-articulated vision
and a dream about the school’s first principles. It is no mere
coincidence that at this time President White deftly engaged the
Pepperdine community in reconsidering its academic and spiritual
purposes, which resulted in a formal reaffirmation of its connections to
the Christian faith tradition and a succinct statement of its mission.
In 1985 White effectively resigned from his appointment and worked with
the Pepperdine regents (formerly trustees) in the year prior to
eventually name successor David Davenport as sixth president of the
University.
Advancing Professional Specializations and Internationalist Stirrings
In
1981 the Psychology Division from the Los Angeles Campus was merged
into the School of Education now located at Pepperdine University Plaza,
and one year later the school was renamed the Graduate School of
Education and Psychology (“GSEP” as it is known for short in the
Pepperdine community).
In 1986 several major academic changes occurred: GSEP made its first
offering of the doctor of psychology (Psy.D.) degree; the School of
Business and Management initiated a residential MBA program on the
Malibu campus, and the School of Law inaugurated the Straus Institute
for Dispute Resolution. Within Pepperdine’s international programs,
experimental London study abroad programs at Seaver and at the law
school were proving successful, and the Florence summer study program
for Seaver was gearing up for full-year operation in Fall 1987.
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