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The Office of the President

President Michael T. Benson

Born: 
February 28, 1965, as the youngest of six, to Mark and Lela Benson in Salt Lake City, Utah

Education:
East High School, Salt Lake City, 1983
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with minors in English and History, Brigham Young University
Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) in Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Oxford (St. Antony's College)

Michael T. Benson was appointed 15th President of Southern Utah University by the Utah State Board of Regents on November 10, 2006.

In addition to serving as President, Dr. Benson holds the rank of full Professor within the Department of Political Science.   He has taught at Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, Snow College, and SUU in the following areas: international conflict, theories of international relations, American history, the U.S. Presidency, comparative politics, and public administration.  He has fifteen years of administrative experience in higher education with over half of those years serving as president.  Prior to his tenure at SUU, Michael was the 14th President of Snow College.  Age 36 at the time of his appointment, he is the youngest college or university president in the history of the Utah System of Higher Education.  Benson is former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Utah State Campus Compact, part of a national coalition of nearly 1,000 college and university presidents representing over five million students committed to fulfilling the civic purposes of higher education.  Before his service at Snow, Dr. Benson was special assistant to the president and secretary to the University of Utah, a cabinet-level position on that campus. 

A trained historian with a specialty in the modern Middle East, Benson authored Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (Praeger), which has received rave reviews and is considered a landmark work in the area of U.S. foreign policy and presidential history.  Dr. Benson’s expertise in Middle Eastern history has led to several consulting contracts, including work as an academic advisor and essayist for the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and as a consulting historian and essayist for the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.  He is regularly sought after for speaking engagements on the modern Middle East and is a frequent contributor to newspapers and other publications.  Given his acumen relative to the region, Dr. Benson leads regular tours to Israel and Egypt and has twice been invited to the United Arab Emirates as a guest of the Chancellor for Higher Education for global conferences and presentations in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Benson has extensive international experience having worked and studied for over six years in Italy, England, and Israel.

A committed fund raiser, Dr. Benson helped Snow College raise more money in his five year tenure as president than in the previous 117 years of the institution’s history combined. The highlight of these efforts was the 2003 dedication of the $19 million Eccles Center for the Performing Arts, the finest facility of its kind in all of central Utah.  For his commitment to fine arts generally and to music specifically, the Utah Music Educators Association named Dr. Benson the 2005 “Administrator of the Year.”  He holds the distinction as the only president ever to have made two different institutions “All Steinway Schools” by raising over $1 million to purchase brand-new instruments for each campus and their respective music departments.  A classically-trained pianist, Dr. Benson continues to practice and to perform in various venues.

Two weeks into his presidency at SUU, Benson announced the largest gift ever to a capital facility in the institution’s history, $3 million, earmarked for the College of Science.  During his first year at SUU, Benson helped the institution raise over $15 million in cash and pledges – nearly triple the previous annual high for the University.  He also directed the development and implementation of SUU’s largest and most ambitious comprehensive campaign ever, The Future is Rising, with a goal of over $100 million.

During the 2009 Utah legislative session, Benson was successful in securing state support for the Walter Maxwell Gibson Science Center – an expanded undergraduate science complex totaling over $20 million in new construction.  This project, coupled with a new student housing complex currently under construction and slated to open in July 2009, marks that under President Benson’s two-year tenure, nearly $30 million in state funds (including revenue bonds) have been directed to Southern Utah University for new infrastructure.  These state resources have been augmented with over $6 million in private dollars specifically for bricks and mortar and nearly $500,000 of federal funds. 

Michael is a past member of the Zions Bank Central Utah Board of Advisors and currently serves on the Wells Fargo Southwest Utah Board of Advisors in addition to being on the Board of Trustees for the Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDCU).  An avid patron of the arts, Dr. Benson serves on the Board of Governors of the Utah Shakespearean Festival.  He is also a newly-appointed member of the Advisory Council at the Center for Policy Analysis, a research component of the American Council on Education (ACE) based in Washington, D.C.  Governor Jon M. Huntsman recently named Benson to a four-year term as member of the Utah Appellate Courts Nominating Commission. 

Dr. Benson also serves as Chair of the President’s Council for the Summit League, SUU’s Division I athletic conference whose member institutions stretch from North Dakota to Michigan to Louisiana.  During his tenure, the League added an eleventh member institution – the University of South Dakota – further expanding its academic and athletic footprint.  An accomplished athlete himself, Michael has completed several marathons, including the Boston Marathon, with his fastest time (2 hours and 41 minutes) winning his age division in the St. George Marathon and finishing just minutes shy of the qualifying time for the 1984 U.S. Olympic Trials. As an undergraduate at Brigham Young, Michael was a member of the 1988 Junior Varsity Basketball Team.  He has also participated in the world’s oldest collegiate rivalry, leading the Oxford Blues Basketball Team as a player/coach over Cambridge University in the 1994 Varsity Match.  Michael currently maintains a 7 handicap in his favorite sport, golf.

Benson and his wife Debi (Woods) are the parents of a son, Truman Taft, and a daughter, Tatum Anne.  Michael is also the father of Emma, age 12, and Samuel, age 10.  He earned his B.A., cum laude, from Brigham Young University with a major in political science and double minor in English and history.  He earned a doctorate in modern Middle Eastern history from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College) where he was a Rotary Foundation Scholar and recipient of the Oxford Graduate Overseas Fellowship.  He is currently completing a master’s degree in non-profit administration at the Mendoza School of Business at the University of Notre Dame with an anticipated graduation date of May 2011.

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Last Update: Tuesday, May 26, 2009