Jim Gash's Intro

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Today on the servant leadership podcast, we hear from Jim Gash, president of Pepperdine University. From shaping the

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future of Christian higher education to leading justice reform efforts in Uganda, Jim shares how Pepperdine is

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raising up leaders rooted in purpose, service, and leadership. This episode dives into what it looks like to serve

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faithfully in positions of influence and how saying yes to hard things can open doors to unimaginable impact. If you're

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serious about servant leadership on a global scale, this one's for you. Well, President Gash, thank you for joining us

Welcome Jim Gash

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on the servant leadership podcast. Yeah, my pleasure, Chris. Thanks for having me on. I am so excited. We're sitting at

History of Pepperdine University

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arguably the most beautiful campus in all the world, uh, especially America.

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Yeah. How did Pepperdine come to be? Well, f first going back to your

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comment, uh, one of my predecessors, I'm number eight. Number four, Bill Bonowski

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used to say Pepperdine is the kind of campus that God himself would have built if only he could afford it. So, if if

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anybody any of your listeners have been to Pepperdine, they'll know exactly what we're talking about. If they haven't

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been, then uh just simply googling Pepperdine Malibu will give you a taste. But you need to come out and see it

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because it's something special. We're on about 900 acres in Malibu overlooking

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the Pacific, right uh right adjacent to the Pacific Coast Highway. So we're in the nestled in the Santa Monica

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Mountains across uh the you next to the the Pacific Coast Highway, which is next to the beach. And so how we came about

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was George Pepperdine, a businessman who was an auto parts supplier. He was the

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first auto parts supplier. He kind of created the business for um add-ons to the newly developed

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automobiles. This is again in the 1930s. He decided what he wanted to do with the money he made when he started Western

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Auto Supply was to create a a Christian university, one that would honor God and

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prepare young men and women to be servant leaders. That was his stated goal. So, he created something in

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downtown Los Angeles. back then, uh, downtown Los Angeles, uh, was was

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thought to be closer to the ocean than we think of it now because there wasn't a lot in between. And so, the Pepperdine

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University mascot in 1937 in downtown Los Angeles was the Waves.

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Like, how do they possibly know we were going to end up in Malibu? They didn't, but uh, God did. Uh, so we ended up as

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the Waves. And then as that grew and developed into kind of a regional uh

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Christian university with strong academics and a serious faith commitment and really increasingly good athletics,

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it had a pivot in the early 1970s when it moved to Malibu. And so that was as a

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result of what we believe is God's providence of opening up the opportunity for Pepperdine to acquire first portion

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by gift and then some some acquisitions thereafter. A campus that is unlike any

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other. And so we are now five schools within one university. A six school is

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being added in August. So we're the undergraduate which we call Siver College, the law school, the Caruso

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School of Law, the Graziodio Business School, the Graduate School of Education

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Psychology, the School of Public Policy, and we're starting in uh the fall of

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this year, August of 25, the College of Health Science, which will have several different programs underneath it,

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including nursing, speech, language pathology, physician assistant, physical therapy, etc. So that's kind of the the

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bird's eye view of who Pepper 9 is, how we came to be, and what we exist or what we consist of. Walking through campus,

What Is Pepperdine's Purpose And Why Is it Different?

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it feels different. And it it's not just that it's beautiful, but one of the things that you focus on is building uh

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and empowering servant leaders uh among your students. What do you think makes this different and why is that such a

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priority for you? Well, it's a combination of of why we exist and what the world needs. So why we exist is to

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prepare students to be kind of uh faithful

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servants of those around them, equipped to lead those around them and inspired

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by a group of men and women, faculty and administration that show them what it's like what it looks like to walk the path

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that they're trying to walk. So we got some people who have walked this journey. They're walking behind them. And so what does that look like? And so

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what we what we are are composed of on our leadership team is people who have

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demonstrated lives of what we say purpose, service, and leadership. That's kind of Pepperdine's mantra. Christian

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University dedicated to preparing students for lives of of purpose, service, and leadership. So you take the

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service and leadership together, right? Well, why why do you want to be a leader? Why do you want to serve? Well,

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there's a greater purpose. We believe that there is a greater purpose for uh

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for human existence for university um preparation of students to lead for uh

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every aspect of our lives. There's a greater purpose that's behind all of that. And we believe that if you're

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prepared in an environment where your mind is challenged and and uh fed and

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mentored along with your spirit being fed and challenged and mentored, you're going to

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be exactly the kind of person that this world needs, which is somebody who is capable and willing to lead, but someone

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who does so from a humility standpoint and saying, "I want to make you better. I love you enough to help make you

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better, and I want to make the world better." And I've been equipped by my education at Pepperdine and driven by

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the purpose that I'm standing on to do that. I love that. Well, a lot of people I know that are are close with you talk

Jim Gash's Personal and Career Journey

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about you being an amazing an amazing servant leader. Um, it's very kind. What was your journey like to Pepperdine and

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to become president of Pepperdine University? Yeah, it it was a surprising one for me. I I never set out to be to

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be president. You know, I I grew up in a in an awesome Christian family. uh where

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we were very involved in sports and I was from a young age drawn to the position I was I was in in kindergarten

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I was the pitcher on our T-ball team. So when you're a pitcher on a T-ball team

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like let that sink in. You don't actually throw the ball but you're the one who is right there in the center for

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you're the shortstop in a in a T-ball team. You're right there in the center directing traffic. You're the first

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person the ball comes to. In basketball, I was a point guard. In football, I was a quarterback. Like, I was drawn to

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like, "Give me the ball. I I I want to be involved in where the action is." And so, that continued up through through

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college. I was a college quarterback at Abalene Christian. And then, you know, when I went to law school, I became the

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editor-inchief of the law review. And and so there were just things that I was drawn to that I wanted to be um I wanted

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to be part of making the things I was involved

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in as good as I could possibly be to the greatest extent I was able to do so. Now

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there were a whole lot of people a whole lot better than me at a lot of things that we did. And so you know I I was not

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the best wide receiver. I don't have any wheels. You I wasn't I wasn't a blocker. I don't have the kind of girth, but I I

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I was willing to to invest in the analytical aspect of being a quarterback. So, I became a quarterback.

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So, when it when it came to like what was after law school,

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I fell in love with with law teaching while I was in law school. I had some incredible mentors, you know, Janet Kerr

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and Bob Brain and Ron Phillips, people who showed me what it looked like to be excellent in the classroom and to be

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engaged with students outside of the classroom and to be engaged with scholarship in the library or in your

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office. And it's like what I want to do with my life is I want to be a law professor. That's what I wanted to do. And so I met with the then dean and Ron

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Phillips and said, "What's the pathway to becoming a professor?" And he said, "Well, you know, there are five things. You need to do these five things to

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maximize your chances of being professor." And so, okay, you give you give me a task list. And so, I went off

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and did four of those five. Um, one of them I had gotten married and really

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wasn't uh in the life plan to be able to go back to get another advanced degree in law. And so, I did four of those,

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which included some of the things that I did in law school, how, you know, being editor-inchief and and how the grades

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went. And then the next steps practicing law at the highest level with a top firm to get experience and working for a

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judge, working for, you know, as a law clerk to a federal judge. And so I did those things and when the opportunity

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came to be a law professor, I thought I'm doing this for the rest of my life. I applied to one law school to go to law

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school, Pepperdine, because I saw what what it stood for and the experience I

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had was what I wanted to be a part of for other students. the kind of mentoring and the kind of leadership

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that I got to to watch, the kind of of excellence in the classroom that I got

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to experience, I wanted to be part of that. So, I thought I'd teach the rest of my life. And like I applied to one

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law school to teach. And when I got the offer to come to teach Pepperdine, I thought, I'm going to be here until God

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calls me home or uh somebody around me tells me it's time. It's time for you to step aside. And and so I got to do that

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for a number of years. I I I taught the law school for 20 years and during that time, you know, I was a law professor

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only and then I was a an associate dean for student life when Ken Star became dean, one of my life mentors. Uh and he

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invited me to become the inaugural associate dean for student life, academic, social, spiritual life of the

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law school. And we agreed to do that. I do it for two years. After the first year, he said, "It's working for me. Is

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it working for you?" Okay, I'll do this as long as you're dean. And so we did that for five more years. And then he

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went off to Baylor to become president. And I said, okay, let this cup pass. Let me go back to being a faculty member.

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During that time, I had started doing a bunch of stuff in in the developing world in prisons in in Uganda. Had moved

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there for 6 months. And then um so I was practic I was a law professor for the

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next call it seven years of just being a law professor I guess six years a and

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doing the global justice thing. And then when the next dean came after the one after Ken he invited me back into the

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dean suite u associate dean for strategic planning and external relations. So, strategic planning,

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self-evident, external relations, uh fundraising and alumni.

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Well, I did that for a year before my my immediate predecessor Andy announced his retirement. And when that happened,

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well, then there was a question of who Andy's successor would be. And the previous four presidents had been the

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executive vice president. So, it was, you know, we we knew who was going to be next president. It was the EVP. Well, he

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made pretty clear pretty early he was not going to be a candidate. So then the process unfolded with who and then you

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look back on it and say what was the board looking for in the next president and and I didn't apply. You could apply

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or you could be nominated. And I figured I don't want to apply because

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I if I apply and nobody nobody nominates me, well, I shouldn't be president if

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nobody's nominating me. And I've got a real self-awareness problem if I think I ought to be president and nobody else

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does. So, uh, when when Cornfairy, the search firm, called and says, "We have

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these nominations. Are you willing to proceed?" Then I I I've been praying about this with my wife for a while. And

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then we met with each of our three kids and said, "Individually, you have a veto power. If you decide individually, I

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don't want my dad to be the president of Pepper because of the way it affects my life." I would have stayed where I was and been happy. But they were all

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supportive and and when the process unfolded and they they uh handed me the baton, it was big job, bigger god, we're

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good. And uh so that's kind of how it unfolded is the various things that happened along the way. what they were

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looking for. They they're looking for someone who was who has demonstrated an ability to speak publicly. Well, that's

Characteristics For The President Position

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what a law professor does. Okay? I mean, that's what you're constantly in the classroom speaking. Someone who is

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entrepreneurial. Well, if you want to get stuff done in the developing world, you better be entrepreneurial. Someone

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with a global vision for Pepperdy. Well, not only had I taught abroad three different times in our programs uh our

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various programs, but I'd also um you know done quite a bit of work in the

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developing world on on multiple continents and they thought okay well check that box. someone who was very

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serious about the Christian mission of this place and demonstrated that and and um I I don't think that was ever a

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question about about me and and someone who was able to raise money and part of

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what I did for the law school and for the global justice program was was going

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telling stories about who we are and how people could use what God's given them

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to leave a legacy of of of uh service through equipping students students and

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so ultimately you know someone coming from associate dean to the president wasn't the normal pathway but it was

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almost like slum dog millionaire like all these things happened such you look back on it and say I didn't decide to go

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to Uganda 30 times so I could be president of Pepperdine that was not even part of the thought but uh the

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board the board saw fit um to make me the offer and it's been it's been a ride

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for now nearly six years five and three quarters years. A lot of people in in that position would focus just on the

Work In Uganda And The Developing World

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presidency at Pepperdine, you know, and just look inward at how do we make this place better, which I know you spend a

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ton of time doing. And my team, I got a great team that I get to work with on that. You also have mentioned the

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developing world, and I know you do a lot in Uganda. Share some of the story of how Uganda specifically even came

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about and uh in the journey there. Yeah. Yeah. So this is 2007 and I'm the dean

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of students, the associate dean for student life and our our students uh were were a chunk of them were very

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globally minded. You know I didn't grow up in an age where where we had internet. I didn't grow up in an age

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where people traveled to the developing world but the current students and the students 15 years ago like that was part

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of their world. they they knew the developing world and they were interested in going there. And so they

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had um a gathering, a oneweek gathering at the law school called um JM Week,

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International Justice Mission. They're phenomenal Christian organization that does justice work around the globe. And

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so they invited people to come speak during that week. And one of them they invited to speak was a guy that I'd

Bob Goff's Impact

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never heard of named Bob Goff. Now, Bob is is someone a lot of people have heard of since, but they invited Bob to speak

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and he spoke to about 200 students at at lunch, and I wasn't there because I was doing what what uh administrators do,

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having lunch at my desk and trying to get stuff done. And uh two students, Matt and Liz, came running up to my

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office after that was over and they said, "Uh, Dean Gash, we want to go to Uganda with Bob Goff." I'm like, "I got

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two questions for you. Who's Bob Goff? Where's Uganda? Now, I'd heard of

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Uganda, but you know, you showed me an African map, you know, the the the continent of Africa. I could tell you

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where South Africa was. Powers of deduction, and I could tell you where

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Egypt was because I grew up, you know, Bible stories of Moses and Egypt, right? And but I couldn't have told you where

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Uganda was on the map. So they walked me through, you know, Bob is putting together this judicial conference where

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where they're going to have all the judges in the country there and we want to go there and see if we can be helpful. So I ran next door to Ken

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Kenstar's office and said, "What do you think?" He said, "Let's send them." So they went, they came back after 10 days

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and said, "The justices in Uganda have no law clerks, no judicial clerks. They

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have no interns. U most of them don't have computers. They just have a pen and paper. We could be their interns. we

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could be their law clerks. Can we go for the summer? Okay. So, we sent three for the summer.

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They came back with these big ideas about how Pepperdine as an institution could engage with the with the judiciary

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of the country. So, we sent 10 the summer of '08 and in summer of09 we sent Ken our dean and our director of

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international programs, study programs and then another 10 students. And then I

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encountered Bob again. Bob Goff was the speaker at the Christian Legal Society National Conference in San Diego, his

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hometown. And this is in in '09, the the the fall of '09. And uh he's talking

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about love. He he's giving a speech called that he called Love Does. Before there was a book, Love Does that sold

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several million copies, there was a speech. And in that speech, he talked about this juvenile remand home, a

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juvenile prison in rural Uganda, where kids have been arrested and teenagers

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arrested and warehoused waiting for someone to do something to move their cases toward trial. And he said, "But

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I'll remember this as long as I can remember anything." He said, "Our God is a God of justice." And he's nuts about

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kids. So, this is one of those, "Okay, um the

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students have been like, "You're dean of students. You should come with this and I've been resisting and I I continued to

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resist until Baroness Carolyn Cox, member of the British House of Lords, came to Pepperdine for a talk. This time

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I went and she talked about using your your god-given

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uh education and your passion to serve those in greatest need. And she talked

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about going to war war torn areas and and trying to be helpful to them. And

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and one of our um one of the attendees asked a question at the end. He raised his hand and said, "Is it better to

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travel halfway across the world to visit somebody in their deepest, darkest hour

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and to try to be helpful to them? Or is it better to take the money you spent

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going over there and send it to them so they can use it?" And she said, she said, "Please go." And here's why. She

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said, "If you travel halfway across the world, then someone on will know that someone on the other side of the world

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knew about them and cared about them enough to come and you're going to be a great encouragement to them.

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And when you come home, you're going to have a massive ripple effect on those around you because you won't be able to

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unsee what you've seen. You won't be able to unlearn what you learn. And you're going to be inspired to go again

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and inspire them." And I thought, "What a great response. What a great reason for us to send more

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students. We should send more students because at that time my Bible was

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there they are Lord send them rather than here am I send me. But God worked on my heart and over the course of that

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fall semester um we put together a crew for lawyers for Pepperdine lawyers. two

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people who worked for Pepperdine, two people who were graduates to go to that juvenile remand home that Bob uh put on

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the screen and talked about to try to give them access to justice. We met with

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them for a week and as a result of that week preparing their cases for trial, moving them forward, making sure that

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the judiciary was equipped to move their cases forward, that changed my entire life forever for the better. Well, not

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always for the funner or the for the more fun. But then that led to me moving to Uganda in 2012 after several more

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trips to different juvenile remand homes and and uh to help the Ugandan judiciary

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and the prosecution rewrite their criminal justice procedures with respect

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to pre-trial detention remand. And so that then led to more and more trips.

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And so I've got my 31st trip to Uganda coming up in a couple months. Uh so it's

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been a life investment in a country. Now Rwanda said, "If Uganda can do it, then

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we can do it." And so now Pepperdine is in in Rwanda helping them in their judiciary. Ghana heard about it. Now

Working With 23 African Countries

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we're in Ghana. And now 23 African countries have said to Pepperdine, "Will you come? Will you come and help us? not

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do things for us, not tell us what to do, but we have ideas and what we want to do, but can you help give us the the

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the knowhow, give us the the best practices, help us ascertain what the

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next steps would be, help educate and train our lawyers on how to do these things. Uganda has been doing, Africa

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has been doing mediation and plea bargaining and negotiation way before there was a US, way before there was a

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western culture. It just isn't in their public justice system. And as a result, the public justice system is very

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inefficient. And as a result of that leads to some externalities that are really challenging, such as vigilante

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justice. If the public justice system isn't going to to uh make this wrong,

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right, then we're going to do it ourselves. And that leads to lawlessness. And so that that one that

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one simple yes from our students in 2007 saying we'll we'll we'll answer Bob's

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call to go to Uganda has led to a continent now uh with the relationship with Pepperdine and I have handed the

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baton off to others who are are leading that. I get to participate and be involved to some degree, but as you

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would imagine, the the life of a president doesn't allow for the kind of uh investment that I used to be able to

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make personally in the developing world. It's such a powerful story and you're getting to see servant leadership play

Servant Leadership At Pepperdine and Around The World

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out at a global scale. Uh when you think through maybe one or two examples of servant leadership, how you see it play

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out here and how you see it play out in Uganda and how those might be the same or different. Yeah. Yeah, one of the

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benefits of this job is getting a front row seat to so many good things that so many people are doing and and many

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perhaps most are our students driven by their faith, their training, their desire to be change makers themselves.

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And so they're leading a lot of these things. And so as I mentioned, we've had these two students who said, "I want to go to Uganda to do this." we've had

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professors or or um staff members who come alongside and say what about this

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you know our our Strauss Institute for Dispute Resolution which is centered in the law school but now is expanding to

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other areas that is is a um a mechanism for

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Pepperdine teaching the world how to be peacemakers and you know we haven't cornered the

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market on it but you know you ask around and you look at the rankings you we're in the top three in the country every

23:40
single year for the last call it 20 years often times number one number one more often than than not on how to go

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about doing this and so what we have is is people from our Strauss Institute taking you know we started with plea

23:54
bargaining because that's negotiation in the criminal realm negotiation in the

24:00
civil realm mediation um is something that our Strauss institute did very very well

24:07
domestically And so expanding that into other countries uh to where we have now

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13 14 chief justices from c from from uh countries in Africa have gone through a

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training program a six-month training program. They got a certificate in dispute resolution through our strauss

24:29
institute. We had about 15 or 17 Ugandan judic uh judicial officials who got a

24:36
master's degree which is a full uh year. They did it over two years uh remotely,

24:41
most of it remotely, some of it in person. and to watch them watch the Ugandan justices

24:48
teaching and training their counterparts in Kenya, in Rwanda, in Ghana, in

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Ethiopia, in Nigeria, uh in all of these other places to where they're saying we

25:00
have learned how to do this and we're again we don't come in there and say you need to do this. It's how can we be

25:06
helpful? What is it that what are the problems that you're looking for uh to be solved and how can we be helpful? So

25:13
how plea bargaining started in Yugan, it was two different students, Michelene and Greer were were interns in 2009

Establishing A Plea Bargaining Process In Uganda

25:21
for the for the head of the criminal division of the Ugandan uh high court,

25:27
which is their trial court. So each of their divisions, criminal division, ahead of that, they're interning for him

25:34
and they he takes them to the largest prison in the country, Lucer, and says,

25:40
you know, like they show them here's what's going on. And there's people in yellow shirts and there's people in

25:46
orange shirts. The orange shirts are the people who have been to trial and have had their sentences. The yellow shirts

25:53
are people who have been arrested and are waiting for trial. And the yellow shirts far outnumber the orange shirts.

25:58
And they're like, "Well, what's going on here?" Well, it takes 5 years from the time of arrest to get to trial. You're

26:03
arrested. You meet your lawyer one or two weeks before trial and you're waiting for 5 years. like that doesn't

26:11
happen in the developed world and and they didn't want it to be happening in the developing world but their the way

26:18
their system was set up the the way they they didn't have a public defender system where you get a lawyer as soon as

26:24
you're uh charged. They said you know we we we're looking to do this differently

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and they and these two students are like well have you have you thought of plea bargaining because you know 95% of cases

26:37
in the developed world are plea bargain negotiation before trial. Um and they

26:43
said we've heard of this we know a little bit about this but we don't know we would we wouldn't know where to start. So when I'm over there for my

26:51
first trip in Uganda in January 2010, but our students wrote wrote them a memo and said, "This is how you would go

26:57
about doing it." They did a PowerPoint presentation to the entire judiciary and said, "This is how it works. These are

27:02
students. These are not lawyers. These are students." So I get there in January of of 10 um for my first trip and we do

27:10
this kind of case preparation for the students for these sorry for the juveniles. And then I'm back there in in

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um in uh April after one of them was convicted and my life changed because

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I'd gotten close to this kid and I decided, you know, I I need to I need to come back and and figure out how to be

27:30
assistance to him. So while I'm there, the head of the the criminal division says, I hear you're in town through

27:35
somebody else. Can you come to my office? So I came to his office and how you doing, Justice Luga? How can I be

27:41
helpful to you? He said, uh, you know, Greer and Micheline prepared this memo for us and, um, then they did this

27:49
PowerPoint pres point presentation. We want to study plea bargaining and figure out how to do it in our country. Do you

27:55
have any ideas? And I said, well, why don't you come to Pepperdine? He said, I hope you would. I was hoping you'd say

28:01
that. I said, okay, great. Well, uh, let's try and set up a trip. He said, how's next month? Like, yes, next month.

28:09
Now, I am a tort professor. Tors professor, civil. I'm an evidence

28:15
professor. I have nothing to do with criminal law. I've never practiced in criminal law. I took criminal law in law

28:21
school like the students do. So, I have an idea. But, you know, we have criminal

28:27
law professors at Pepperdine. We have criminal procedures professors. I said, "Okay, come." So, I got uh professors,

28:34
prosecutors, public defenders, uh state and and uh federal uh FBI, LAPD,

28:42
uh federal judges, uh and state court judges. And we did a oneweek training

28:48
program and what's what's plea bargaining? How how does this work? And

28:53
and so as they were finishing this one week, they said, "Can we meet with you?"

28:59
I said because I was part of this like I wasn't the person teaching it because this wasn't my specialty but you know

29:05
when when you know people and they like yeah can and they're almost all of them had gone to Pepperdine so they're like

29:11
yeah we want to be helpful to you we want to be helpful to to the world and so um they said can we go somewhere to

29:17
talk about the next steps and said great so we went to the library at Pepperdine overlooking the Pacific Ocean and they

29:23
said um can you pray for us before we go back uh that we would be able to

29:30
implement, have the courage to implement what we've learned here to help our people get access to justice. I said, I

29:36
would love to pray for you. And they said, "We got one more request." They said, "Will you move to Uganda to help

Saying "Yes" To Hard Things

29:43
us implement this?" And you know, I swallowed hard and said to them, "What I say to anybody who asks me to do

29:50
something I don't want to do, I'll pray about it." And I did. and as a

29:57
result of of that uh moved to Uganda to help them now for 6 months. I I'm I'm

30:03
not someone who I didn't move there for for 6 years but 6 months my my wife and

30:08
kids kids were 16 13 and 11 when we moved there and it was a very different experience for them but that was kind of

30:16
to see the Ugandans say we want to lead our country out of this situation where

30:23
where we know we're not delivering the kind of justice to see their leadership because they don't have to do this they

30:30
don't have to take on hard things so to watch them and then to see that happen in in mediation and in uh they they

30:38
wanted to learn about cameras in the courtroom, how that works and how we could be helpful. There was just various

30:44
things one after the other. Can you help us with this? Can you help us with this? Can you help us with this? And the answer is I don't know Jack about human

30:50
trafficking cuz they wanted help with that. And I said, but I know John and John was the the ambassador at large to

30:56
the UN for human trafficking and John was a friend of mine. So, hey John, you want to go to Uganda? And there we go.

31:02
Now we're helping them human trafficking. So it's it's people who say yes to hard things, but knowing that

31:09
those are in service of of others and service of their calling to to

31:15
sacrificially be of of use to others. And that's kind of how uh my life has

31:21
been modeled by others who show me what that looks like and then trying to to to

31:28
u mirror what they do or follow what they do to be led by the mentors in my life who have done that. Wow, those are

Future Vision For Pepperdine - Resilience Training

31:35
amazing stories and I know that those are just scratching the surface. Uh, one of the things that's clear is that

31:40
there's visions of what do you think God might be calling you to and you kind of just praying about it and jumping in and

31:47
being fully present. Uh, what are some of the headlines when you think through Pepperdine? Uh, what what the vision

31:54
looks like for the future? Just the headlines. You don't have to Yeah. Well, um, what we're trying to do is be uh the

32:02
the leader among higher education in a handful of areas. One of those areas is

32:08
resilience training. So, Pepper University uh

32:13
like every other university in the country is inheriting incoming students who because of this

32:22
because of this uh have real challenges with with mental

32:28
health. It's not just that it's also the laptop. It's also the culture. It's also whatever but mental health challenges

32:36
people come here w with those with those you with the the biggest mental health

32:42
um crisis in the history of the world is happening right now and it's been happening for the last call it 12 to 14

32:50
years and this is this is demonstrated I've not done the research but I've read it Jonathan height h a dt the anxious

32:58
generation his book is is kind of the gold standard on this, but there's

33:03
plenty of other there, plenty of other books there and research. The the idea

33:09
is how do you become resilient when you're

33:15
faced with hard things and failure and Pepperdine has decided, we've decided we

33:21
are going to be a leader in faithinformed resilience training. So, every single

33:26
one of our students who comes through Pepperdine has to go through a resilience training program to ensure

33:32
that they're equipped or better equipped than they otherwise would be to deal with hard things, to deal with failure.

33:39
So, we have a uh a six-part

33:45
program that they have to do each semester to to learn how to do this, but it's grounded in faith. It's not just,

33:51
hey, buck up, try harder. you know, it it's what what are what are the foundations of of resilience? And you

34:00
know, it has to do, of course, with a lot of things, including, you know, spiritual practices, including cognitive

34:06
practices, including, you know, physical health. There's there's a whole series

34:11
of things. And so, so we have our our uh vice president for student affairs who

34:17
is is when's this going to air? We're launching very soon a resilience

34:22
institute where we've already started training K through2 schools, churches, businesses on how to help your

34:29
workforce, your your parish, your your congregation, your school kids be

34:35
resilient. And we had a big fire. We had multiple fires here in Southern California just u a couple months ago.

34:43
And several of those schools were hit particularly hard. And they invited us in. can you do resilience training for our students and for our faculty and for

34:50
our our staff as they try to rebound from their school burning down? And so that's one of the things that we're

34:56
going to be leading in. Another we launched this new school of of uh college of health science. We believe

College Of Health Science

35:03
that there is a an incredible opportunity and need right now in our

35:08
healthcare industry. Not just to have more workers. That is true. but to have the kind of workers that are informed by

35:15
faith and are are prepared to do hard things through this resilience training.

35:21
Um, we also believe that a vibrant spiritual life on campus contributes

A Hub For Spiritual Life - "The Mountain"

35:28
massively to the kind of growth that takes place during your college years. And so that's one of the things that

35:35
we're investing in heavily is a is what we call the hub for spiritual life where students are called into a community and

35:41
and um we worship together and we we do various teaching together and

35:50
we're building a massive village on campus to do life together because love

35:57
that because it's not just being friends online but it's being

36:03
people who sit across from each other and eat together, people who sit next to each other and root for the waves,

36:08
people who pray together, people who exercise together. So, we're building this massive development in the middle of campus that we're calling the

36:15
mountain. Wow. The mountain at Mullen Park. And the reason it's called the mountain is you look back in the biblical, you see the various

36:21
mountaintop experiences that happen. You see Mount Si, you see uh Mount Mariah,

36:26
you see the Mount of Olives, you see um the the the the

36:32
mount where Jesus was crucified, the the hill of Goltha having critically

36:38
important places in the biblical story about about uh going to the mountain,

36:44
looking to I look to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. like we want to have that

36:51
imagery um constantly surrounding our students as to what is it that you're

36:57
doing here? What what are you being called to? And if you walk around campus now, you'll see these freedom banners

37:03
everywhere. We we we got a theme for the year every year. This year is freedom. Last year was light. The prior year was

37:09
joy. We want to continually remind students that you are made for something bigger than yourself. You're the light

37:15
of the world. That you are the light of the world. that the where the spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. And so

37:22
trying to create a culture and an environment where people are are led by

37:27
people on the same path ahead of them, the faculty and staff and administration, that they're taught what

37:32
they need to learn about the various vocs that they're going into, but to do so in a context that says there's

37:39
something bigger. There's a greater purpose than simply learning accounting,

37:44
right? and and uh this is where you're going to be trained to do that. So it man, I just as you can tell I I love

37:50
what I get to do. It's it's amazing and and I just think what you have going on here is special. You can tell from the

37:56
second you walk on campus and just everyone you talk to. Yeah. One more headline. Yeah. We want our

Wanting Students To "See The World"

38:03
students to see the world. Like we're in Malibu. We're in the most beautiful place in the world. And uh there they're

38:10
the growth that comes on an individual level comes from stepping outside your comfort zone and learning about other

38:16
cultures. We're the leading school in the country in terms of the percentage of students who go abroad during their

38:22
time. And I'm not talking about a visit. I'm talking about a semester abroad or a year or a summer or or some combination

38:28
thereof. So we got campuses in London, England in South Kensington, just south

38:34
of Hide Park, 200 meters south of Hide Park. We're in in Vet, Switzerland, a castle that we have acquired, built in

38:41
1760 that we've restored to its original glory and modernized where students go

38:46
and spend a semester or a year. We're in in in H Highleberg, Germany, overlooking the the old city next to the castle up

38:54
there. We have our own campus. Each of these places, we have our own campus. It's our campus. We're in Florence,

38:59
Italy, right by the canal. Got our own campus there. We're in Buenesaris, Argentina, where students are immersed

39:06
there. there. They don't live in the facility. We have a campus, but they live in the surrounding area where they live in a family and they come back

39:12
fluent and they are immersed in the culture. We're of course in Washington DC. We're four blocks from the White House. Uh we're we're opening up again.

39:19
We were in Shanghai. Regulatory environment in China is not what it needs to be. And so we're we're opening

39:25
up in the Far East in the next year or two. And then we'll be in Africa. Yeah, you we want our students to see the

39:32
world and to come back because if if you go for a week, you're a tourist. If you go for a semester, you're a visitor. If

39:39
you go for a year, you're part of the culture. And you come back changed. Our students come back confident, resilient,

39:46
independent, uh adaptable to other cultures. Uh and so that's another

39:51
headline for who Pepperdine is. What we're doing is we're showing our students the world. 12% of our

39:57
undergraduate students are from abroad. And so you have an international experience while you're here in Malibu

40:02
because one out of every eight of your classmates didn't grow up in this culture and so you're learning all of

40:08
that. So it it's a special place as you said. I love it. Well, one tradition we have is for the last 60 seconds of the

Ten Rapid-Fire Questions

40:15
podcast we ask people 10 rapid fire questions. You just say the first thing that comes to mind. Okay. First person

40:21
you think of when I say servant leadership. I would say probably Ken Star. All right. Favorite movie or book?

40:27
FA favorite movie was the first Flatliners because it was all the entire

40:33
the entire movie was about the consequences of sin. Uh favorite book uh

40:39
probably uh Beautiful Ruins. All right. That was that that that inspired the book that I

40:45
wrote, Divine Collision. So, and we're going to link to your book, by the way, because it's a good book. Uh favorite

40:50
food, any sort of chocolate. Favorite thing to do in your free time. Spend time with my wife. Wow. What's a

40:56
surprising fact about you? I mean, I can throw a football a really long way. Favorite place you've been? Uh, favorite

41:03
place I've been, probably the Caribbean. Somewhere you want to go that you haven't been? Australia. All right. Best

41:10
advice you've ever received. That discipline is the price for excellence. Wow. Well, thank you, President Gash.

Closing

41:18
This has been a real honor, and I know people walk away inspired. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it.

41:23
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Servant Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, please give

41:29
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