SPP Unveils New Davenport Institute

Pepperdine Magazine is the feature magazine for Pepperdine University and its growing community of alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends.

Summer 2010

Megan Huard

The Pepperdine School of Public Policy has partnered with Common Sense California to launch the newly renamed Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership. Public policy alumnus and faculty member Pete Peterson (MPP '07) has been named executive director.

The new Davenport Institute seeks to become the foremost training and educational resource for current and future civic and municipal leaders endeavoring to gain competencies in the essential leadership skill for the coming decades: engaging the public in order to solve increasingly difficult policy problems.

"We are extremely excited about the new public engagement training and consulting opportunities open to us through the creation of this new institute," says Peterson. "If these last few years have taught us anything, it is that local and regional leaders throughout California are confronting more and more difficult policy decisions in new and creative ways, reaching out to their residents for ideas and actual participation in ‘common sense' solutions. Through the new Davenport Institute we will continue to support them as they lead in the ‘new normal' of tight budgets and tough land-use decisions."

Through his work with Common Sense California, which was cofounded by former Pepperdine president David Davenport, Peterson has developed a highly successful series of training programs with city governments and regional governance associations throughout the entire state of California to support and promote legitimate civic involvement. Under the new arrangement, the activities of Common Sense California will be absorbed into the reorganized Davenport Institute.