Randy Lowry

In the spring of 1972, Randolph (Randy) Lowry was an undergraduate student at Pepperdine's Los Angeles campus. He was a member of the debate team.¹ In the fall, Lowry relocated to Malibu, where he served as the inaugural chair of the Associated Student Board, the new student government for the Malibu campus (a position for which he was handpicked by dean of student life Bob Thomas).² Lowry was a protégé of Malibu provost Jerry Hudson, who would take Lowry with him to his appointments as president of both Hamline University in St. Paul and Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.³

Lowry would go on to be a professor at the Pepperdine School of Law, where in 1986 he founded the alternate dispute resolution program that is now the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.³ In 1999, he was among five finalists in the search for Pepperdine's seventh president (ultimately, Andrew K. Benton was selected).⁴ Lowry would later be named the 18th president of sister-school Lipscomb University in Nashville.