About the President

Biography

Michael T. Benson, a veteran higher education administrator, became the 27th president of West Virginia University on July 15, 2025. He brings 3 decades of academic and administrative experience in higher education to his role leading West Virginia’s flagship, land-grant, R1 institution into a new era.

WVU is Benson’s 5th presidency. Prior to his arrival at Coastal Carolina in 2021, Benson led Snow College, Southern Utah University, and Eastern Kentucky University. During his tenure at Coastal Carolina, Benson secured a $10 million gift, the largest in the school’s history. He worked closely with community partners and policymakers to advance initiatives there, including the successful renewal of a local option penny sales tax to support public and higher education through the year 2039, the only tax of its kind in all of South Carolina.

In 2024, under his leadership, Coastal Carolina enrolled its largest number of students ever — 11,225 — while also setting a record retention rate.

As the 14th president of Snow College in Ephraim, Utah, he helped raise more private money for the institution during his tenure than had been secured in the previous 115 years of the college’s history combined. Appointed at age 36, Benson was the youngest college president in the history of the Utah System of Higher Education.

Benson has also held faculty appointments at the University of Utah, the University of Notre Dame, and Johns Hopkins University, and has taught at each institution where he served as president, including Coastal Carolina where he was a professor of history.

His scholarly work has focused on the development of the research university and its impact on society. Benson’s book, “Daniel Coit Gilman and the Birth of the American Research University,” was released by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2022. He was a visiting professor in the Department of the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins in 2020. Benson’s biography of Gilman was named to the list of Best Higher Education Books of 2023 by Forbes magazine.

Benson is also the author of “Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel,” and, with co-author Hal Boyd, published “College for the Commonwealth: A Case for Higher Education in American Democracy” with the University Press of Kentucky.

Nationally, Benson serves on the Council of Presidents of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. He also is the past board chair of Omicron Delta Kappa, the national leadership honor society and is the former chair of the NCAA Honors Committee.

Benson is sought after for public speeches and appearances. He was a featured contributor to the Huffington Post for 5 years; has written articles for The Jerusalem Post, Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville Courier Journal, The Kansas City Star, Deseret News, and The Salt Lake Tribune, among others; and appeared on ESPN’s The Paul Finebaum Show.

Born in Utah and raised in Texas and Indiana, Benson has worked and studied abroad for nearly 7 years in Italy, England, and Israel. He graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in political science and double minors in English and history from Brigham Young University in 1990. He completed his doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College) in 1995, where he was a Rotary Foundation Scholar and recipient of the Oxford Graduate Overseas Fellowship.

He also earned a master’s degree cum laude in nonprofit administration in 2011 from the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business, where he was the recipient of the prestigious Father Theodore Hesburgh Founder’s Award. Benson graduated with a Master of Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University in August 2021 and was elected to the Honor Society of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs.

An accomplished athlete, President Benson played basketball at both BYU and Oxford, and his best marathon time – 2 hours and 41 minutes – won his age division in the St. George (Utah) Marathon. He also finished among the top 25% of all runners in the 1984 Boston Marathon, one of only 19 teenagers from around the world to compete in the race.

An avid traveler, he has visited all 50 states and 5 of the 7 continents.

He and his wife Debi are the parents of 3 children – Truman, Tatum, and Talmage. He also has 2 older children from a previous marriage. Emma is a TV reporter for KSL in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Samuel writes for Politico in Washington, D.C. Sam’s wife, Keylla, is in her first year at Georgetown Law School.