Coastal Carolina University President Michael Benson has been extended an offer to become West Virginia University’s next president, where he would be tasked with reversing decade-long declining enrollment at the state’s flagship university.
Coastal Carolina made the announcement in a message to its campus community on Friday night, a day after West Virginia University announced that its Board of Governors had approved its next president but would not disclose a name until after a contract was signed.
Officials at either school haven't said whether Benson accepted the offer, although Coastal Carolina said its board has called a committee to initiate a search for Benson's replacement.
“While we will certainly miss President Benson, I believe that his work, along with the work of the board and the University faculty and staff, has positioned us for tremendous opportunities in the days ahead,†Coastal Carolina board Chairman H. Delan Stevens said.
Benson would replace E. Gordon Gee, the Morgantown school’s longest-serving president who announced in August 2023 that he would retire when his contract expires in June 2025.
Benson, who turns 60 next Friday, has been Coastal Carolina’s president for four years in Conway, South Carolina. He previously served as president at Eastern Kentucky University, Southern Utah University and Snow College in Ephraim, Utah, where at 36 he became the youngest college president in the history of the Utah System of Higher Education. A history professor, Benson has taught at each institution where he’s served as president.
Known as a deft fundraiser, Benson helped Snow became the first junior college athletic program in the country to be sponsored by Nike, and Benson raised more money in five years than the school had in its previous 115-year history, according to . In 2022, Coastal Carolina received its largest-ever gift, $10 million from Conway Medical Center.
Benson also has prioritized civic engagement with a long history of serving on committees and boards, including the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.
Ten years ago at Eastern Kentucky, a student who was frustrated that school had not been called off after a snowstorm joked on the social platform X that he wouldn’t attend class until Benson shoveled his driveway. Benson showed up less than a hour later, cleared the driveway and shared a meal with the student and his family.
Benson has degrees from Brigham Young University, Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins and the University of Oxford in England. Benson played varsity basketball at Oxford, where he and current U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey were teammates.
Like Gee, Benson was born in Utah and is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Gee, 81, is in his second stint at West Virginia that began in 2014.
When Gee announced his retirement, the university addressed a $45 million budget shortfall by raising tuition, dropping about 8% of its majors and cutting about 5% of faculty positions. The as “draconian and catastrophic†by the American Federation of Teachers,
WVU announced it was in a more stable financial position last summer, when additional bachelor’s degree program cuts were made at satellite campuses in Beckley and Keyser.
The 26,000-student university’s enrollment across all campuses has fallen 17.5% since 2015. The university also had been weighed down by revenue lost during the pandemic and an increasing debt load for new building projects.
Under Benson, Coastal Carolina's enrollment reached 11,000 last fall for the first time in school history.
