Pepperdine People Podcast

Pete Peterson is executive director of Common Sense California, an organization that promotes and supports citizen engagement as a way of producing more creative policy decisions and better citizens. He sat down with Steve Zikman, organizer of Taking it Upstream: A Green Leadership (Un)Conference, to discuss the potential topics at this highly participatory symposium sponsored by the Straus Insititute for Dispute Resolution and the Palmer Center for Entrepreneurship & the Law at Pepperdine University.

Pepperdine celebrates the 21st annual Step Forward Day on September 12, 2009. What began as a single service project by two students has grown to engage generations of alumni, parents, and friends spanning the globe to live the mission of the University: Freely ye receive; freely give. Alumnus Scott Pitts ('89), one of the student founders, joins Vice Chancellor Sara Jackson, former director of the Pepperdine Volunteer Center, to remember the first day of service in 1989 and discuss why the tradition continues to thrive after two decades.

Michael L. Williams, assistant professor of information systems at the Graziadio School of Business and Management, will take the helm of the Pepperdine Center for Faith and Learning during the 2009-10 academic year. In this episode, Wiliams discusses the center's ongoing work to unite Pepperdine's passion for teaching and scholarship with its identity as a place of faith.

On occasion of the first Nonprofit Summer Institute at Pepperdine University, held in the summer of 2009, Regan Schaffer, associate professor of organizational behavior and management, welcomed to campus Doug Green, a consulting, strategic planning and organizational development professional to nonprofit organizations and local government. Green offered his insights into the current trends in nonprofit management, and the two discuss the challenges and rewards of the field.

Kenneth W. Starr, the Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean and Professor of Law, and Thomas J. Stipanowich, the William H. Webster Chair in Dispute Resolution and Professor of Law sat down with Timothy Perrin, Vice Dean and Professor of Law to discuss their recent trip and participation in the Qatar Law Forum in Doha Qatar regarding Global Commitment to the Rule of Law.

Christopher Parkening, artistic director of the Parkening International Guitar Competition, is a distinguished professor of music at Pepperdine University's Seaver College Fine Arts Division, where he holds the Christopher Parkening Chair in Classical Guitar. Media Relations Manager Molly Drobnick sat down the guitar virtuoso to find out what's in store for the second triennial competition, in which 15 of the best young classical guitarists from around the world will vie for $65,000 in prize money.

Poet C.K. Williams is the author of 10 books of poetry, including Repair, which was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. In 2005 he won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which is given to a poet "whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition." In this episode, Williams, who teaches creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, speaks with Pepperdine creative writing professor John Struloeff about the writing process and the significance of National Poetry Month.

Michael Zakian, director of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art on the Malibu campus, dedicates himself to bringing the highest quality of art to the museum, engaging with the Pepperdine and local communities, and building a permanent collection for the museum. From January to April 2009, Zakian had the opportunity to display the works of Robert Dowd, whose contemporary art he says "has been unjustly overlooked in recent years." Molly Drobnick, public relations manager, speaks with Zakian about the American artist, best known for his imaginative, whimsical paintings of money and stamps.

As an assistant professor of economics at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, Luisa Blanco specializes in economic development and international economics. In this episode, Ted Garcia, director of media relations at Pepperdine, picks her brain about her research on the issues of policy-making in Latin American countries, and specifically the rise in Leftist politics that she has observed. In January 2009, Blanco presented research at the American Economic Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California. She will also present in June 2009 at the Latin American Studies Association international conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Prolific author and scholar John Stackhouse comes to Pepperdine as the featured lecturer of the fifth annual Frank Pack Distinguished Christian Scholar Lecture Program. In this episode, Jerry Rushford, director of church relations at Pepperdine University, speaks with Stackhouse about his talk, "Can God be Trusted? Faith and the Challenge of Evil." The title of the lecture comes from Stackhouse's book of the same name, in which he critically examines the doubts about a loving God that arise out of difficult situations.