Liberty University Names New President
Liberty University named Dondi E. Coston to be its new president on Friday, March 31.
Costin is a retired U.S. Air Force major general and the outgoing president at Charleston Southern University. He is also an alumnus of Liberty, having earned two master’s degrees there.
He replaces interim president Jerry Prevo, who was named to the post following the scandals that engulfed the school and its former president Jerry Falwell, Jr.
Jonathan Falwell—son of the late Jerry Falwell Sr. and brother to Jerry Falwell Jr.—has been appointed chancellor of the school founded by his father.
Costin is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and spent 32 years in the military. He retired as chief of chaplains. He then spent the past five years leading Charleston Southern, a Christian college of around 3,500 students in South Carolina.
“There are fewer differences than one might imagine between the processes and procedure of the military and higher education,” Costin told Christianity Today’s Creative Studio in 2019. “If you can survive and thrive in a complex bureaucracy like the Pentagon, then you can do it in a complex bureaucracy like higher education.”
Despite Liberty’s recent troubles, it remains one of the largest and most influential Christian colleges in the country. Liberty offers 700 programs of study, 600 online. In 2022, total enrollment exceeded a record 130,000 students. Many military personnel are Liberty students or alumni. The school reported that more than a third of its online students are military students.
