Kenneth W. Starr, the former independent counsel whose work led to the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton, was named president of Baylor University this morning, sources said.

The 63-year-old Starr, who has been dean of Pepperdine University’s School of Law in Malibu, Calif. since April, 2004 will become Baylor’s 14^th president.

Starr’s appointment as president of Baylor brings a nationally known, but highly controversial figure to the Waco campus at a time of prolonged and occasionally tumultuous transition from a teaching school to one focused on research and the pursuit of a top-tier ranking among colleges nationally. It ends a nearly 20-month-long search that began when former Baylor President John M. Lilley was fired in July of 2008.

Starr will always be recognized as the dogged independent prosecutor who relentlessly pursued Clinton’s role in a land deal called Whitewater and the president’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. But he brings to Baylor a deep resume filled with roles in public service that go back three decades, as well as a Rolodex filled with national contacts that may serve him well in the key areas of academia and fund-raising.

As dean of Pepperdine’s law school, for example, Starr had the drawing power to convince several U.S. Supreme Court justices to visit that California campus to speak with students.

His appointment also represents a homecoming, of sorts, to Starr, who was born in Vernon, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, and grew up in San Antonio. He was son of a Church of Christ minister who was also a barber. Starr, whose wife was raised Jewish, has declared that he will join a Baptist church upon moving to Waco to take over the world’s largest Baptist university.

Starr attended Harding College, an Arkansas Church of Christ school, for two years before transferring to George Washington University in Washington. He later got his law degree from Duke University.

Those who know Starr speak of a man with a strong work ethic and an equally strong independent streak. In a 1998 profile of him, the New York Times Magazine described him as “a workaholic of mythic proportions, even by Washington standards.”

A notable trait of his, says a soon-to-be-released book about Starr’s role in the Clinton impeachment, is to have his wife, Alice, drive their car so that he can work on legal briefs in the passenger seat.

But even supporters of his have complained about his multitasking, suggesting that his high-profile investigation into Clinton took much longer than necessary because Starr was involved in so many other projects at the time — including taking several weeks off one summer to teach a law class at Pepperdine.

This multitasking continues. While serving as dean of the Malibu law school, Starr took on varied and high profile legal cases, including working to gain clemency for a California man on death row as well as acting as lead counsel in arguing the constitutionality of California’s highly controversial Proposition 8, which banned same sex marriage.

How his work habits will translate to Baylor remains to be seen. His national stature could potentially swell Baylor’s endowment with expressions of support, but the controversial nature of that stature could impact Baylor’s image as well.

An immediate challenge for Starr, however, lies closer to home. An ongoing feud between the Baylor administration and the Baylor Alumni Association has been racheted up in the last few months as the administration first made, then withdrew peaceful overtures for the BAA to be absorbed by Baylor and lose its independent status.

Starr must also be mindful of the Baylor faculty, which played a key role in the ouster of Lilley after a highly controversial denial of tenure for a dozen professors. One source said the faculty representatives to the presidential search met Starr with a high degree of skepticism, but were ultimately won over by Starr’s personality.

As one opposing lawyer, who helped represent Monica Lewinsky, said years ago: “Ken Starr has the manners of a Southern gentleman: beautiful manners.”

Despite the political nature of the controversy that will always follow Starr, those who know him say he is not a political beast.

“He has more of a judge’s mindset than a politician’s,” former law partner Thomas Yannucci told the New York Times Magazine in 1998.

Despite that characterization, Starr has made his mark among politicians in public service roles dating back to shortly after getting his law degree.

Displaying an intellect that has been a trademark of his career, Starr served as a law clerk in the mid-1970s for Chief Justice Warren Burger.

That led to a position in 1982 in the Reagan Administration, when he served as an aide to then-Attorney General William French Smith. Even then, Starr demonstrated a willingness to take on controversial issues.

In that role, the young lawyer raised the ire of conservatives by helping steer through the Senate the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court despite her pro-choice views.

It was during those years that Starr also wrote a legal brief arguing the independent counsel law — brought on in the aftermath of Watergate — was unconstitutional.

A year later, at age 37, he was the youngest person ever nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, often called the second most influential appellate court in the country, bowing only to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It was in this capacity that Starr developed a national reputation for his appellate court expertise.

When George H.W. Bush was elected president, he asked Starr to become his solicitor general, the person who argues on behalf of the United States before the U.S. Supreme Court. Again, Starr’s independent streak showed itself on one of the first major cases he took on as solicitor general.

He defied the president’s position by siding with a group of whistle-blowers and against defense contractors, according to media accounts of the day.

Following Bush’s defeat by Clinton, Starr went into private practice in Washington until he was asked to replace independent counsel Robert Fiske Jr. in investigating an Arkansas land deal that Clinton and his wife had been involved with when he was governor of that state. That deal became known nationally as Whitewater.

The five-year, $52-million probe became the most expensive investigation in independent council history and led to the impeachment of Clinton.

Starr’s starring role in this drama, particularly a highly graphic report that detailed his findings, made him both a hero and villain in a highly divided country.

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