Give to Veteran Services
Support the men and women who serve our country.
"Pepperdine Student Veteran Affairs provides direct support and assistance to our military-connected students throughout their Pepperdine journey. We're so proud of our expanding resources and services that are strengthening our military-connected community and supporting those who freely served our great nation."
—Eric Leshinsky, Colonel, USAF (Ret), Director, Student Veteran Affairs
Pepperdine has been serving military-connected students for over 75 years and is extremely proud of the thousands of veterans and family members that have transitioned from military to civilian life while attending our five schools.
Today, Pepperdine is home to almost 500 enrolled veterans, active service members, and their dependents. Pepperdine is highly ranked for its service to veterans (#45 among national universities in U.S. News & World Report for 2024). Through the Post 9/11 GI Bill®'s Yellow Ribbon Program, Pepperdine invests almost $3M annually to help cover 100% tuition costs for eligible students. We are deeply committed to providing new resources and support that build veteran community, engage alumni, and foster mentorship, community service, and employment opportunities for all our military-connected students.
Through donations, Pepperdine hosts veteran-focused events, awards tuition stipends to students that exhaust their military education benefits while attending school, helps veterans’ study abroad by covering some of their out-of-pocket expenses, and provides small financial stipends to help students attend veteran-focused conferences and participate in unpaid career internships to name a few.
Moving Forward
In 2023, Pepperdine opened its first on-campus resource center (the PeppVet Center) dedicated to providing community and personalized support to undergraduate and graduate military-connected students on the Malibu campus. The PeppVet Center helps military-connected students transition to Pepperdine and civilian life by providing a welcoming space, benefits, guidance, peer-support and leadership opportunities, resiliency programs, events, and an array of internal and external resources to facilitate academic and personal success.
PeppVet Testimonial
Discover Dave Montoya's path to Pepperdine and join us as we celebrate the impact, warmth, and valuable support to military veterans Pepperdine is known for.
Funding Opportunities
Pepperdine Veteran Affairs Excellence Fund
The fund is used to advance strategic priorities of the Director of Student Veteran Affairs, including the new PeppVet Center. Provides direct funding support for programming and services offered at the PeppVet Center to veterans and military-connected students throughout their Pepperdine journey. Specific annual funding opportunities include:
PeppVet Center: Provides support for departmental programming events, activities, and supplies.
Tutition support: Provides financial support to military-connected students that have no military education benefits or have exhausted their military benefits while at Pepperdine—Up to $5,000 per student
Student stipends: Provides financial support to help military-connected students study abroad, attend veteran-focused career conferences, and participate in low/unpaid community-interest and public service internships
- Support study abroad opportunities—Up to $5,000 per student veteran
- Support attendance to career-focused conference—Up to $2,000 per student
- Support career-focused veteran internships—Up to $1,500 per student
Scholarships: Provides annual merit-based scholarships to military-connected students who do not have or exhausted their military education benefits.
- $5,000-25,000 (per scholarship): Awarded to a student veteran annually
- $5,000-25,000 (per scholarship): Awarded to a military family member annually
PeppVet Center ($2M endowment opportunity): Supports sustainment of the resource center (PeppVet Center) at Pepperdine with staffing support and departmental programming for military-connected events, marketing, and supplies.
Director, Student Veteran Affairs ($3M endowment opportunity): Provides permanent funding for the director's position. Initial 3-year funding was provided by the Anschutz Foundation in 2019.
Please make a gift today to our PeppVets!
GI Bill® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). More information about education benefits offered by VA is available at the official U.S. government Web site at https://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill.