This fall, Mike Pence will bring both his experience in public office and his Christian faith into the university classroom. The former vice president, who served in President Donald Trump’s administration from 2017 to 2021, will join Colorado Christian University as a visiting faculty member.
Pence will teach constitutional government, public policy and leadership, according to a press release from Colorado Christian University, and will be on campus once a month.
“Throughout my years in public service, I have seen the importance of preparing leaders who understand that faith, freedom, character and constitutional government are inseparable from the future of America,” Pence said in a press release. “We are in a pivotal moment as a nation and it will be a privilege to join the ongoing work of Colorado Christian University in raising up the next generation of great American leaders.”
Colorado Christian University is a private evangelical Christian university in Lakewood, Colorado, and is known as one of the nation’s conservative evangelical universities. It was founded in 1914 and is one of the largest Christian universities in the Rocky Mountain region.
Its stated mission is to cultivate “knowledge and love of God in a Christ-centered community of learners and scholars, with an enduring commitment to the integration of exemplary academics, spiritual formation, and engagement with the world.”
Pence’s background and values align with the university’s mission, university officials said.
“Vice President Pence has demonstrated throughout his public life that Christian faith and principled leadership are not merely ideas to be discussed — they are convictions to be lived, particularly when doing so comes at a cost,” said CCU President Eric Hogue in a press release.
“I have great admiration for the stamina, conviction, and courage he has shown as a leader willing to stand in the arena, confront difficult challenges, and remain faithful to his principles.”
Pence’s appointment will “bring enduring ideas into rigorous conversation with the challenges of the present moment,” Hogue said. He added that the university tries to “engage difficult cultural and public-policy questions thoughtfully, civilly, and courageously — and to do so with both intellectual depth and unwavering Christian conviction.”
Pence has participated in an online summer course that he taught with other faculty on the principles, history and contemporary application of American conservatism.
Pence was raised in a large Irish Catholic family in Columbus, Indiana. He served as an altar boy and even considered becoming a priest. As a student in Hanover College, he attended a Christian music festival in Kentucky, where he experienced what he has described as a profound evangelical Christian conversion. “I gave my life to Jesus Christ and that’s changed everything,” he said of the experience.
After earning a law degree, Pence practiced law and worked as a conservative radio host before serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013. Pence explored many of these experiences in his 2022 memoir, “So Help Me God,” in which he also described the role faith played throughout his political career.
He was then elected governor of Indiana and, in 2017, became the 48th vice president of the United States under President Donald Trump, whom he had also described as a friend.
Pence’s relationship with Trump fractured after the 2020 election, when he refused Trump’s demands to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. The two have remained publicly at odds over Trump’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
In 2024, he mounted an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination, positioning himself as a traditional conservative who valued limited government, religious liberty and the Constitution.
Since leaving office, Pence has remained active in conservative political circles, commenting on public affairs and advocating for traditional Republican principles. He has also taught courses at George Mason University and last year was named distinguished professor of practice at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government.
Pence has described his life’s priorities with the phrase “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican — in that order.”
Looking ahead, David Corbin, provost of Colorado Christian University, said Pence will bring “the rare combination of serious intellectual engagement, extensive public service, and a deeply formed understanding of the relationship between faith, character and civic engagement,” per the press release.
“His presence will give our students an extraordinary opportunity to examine consequential questions alongside someone who has confronted them firsthand.”