DEL.ICIO.USTech’s new president gets rave reviews
Peterson, chancellor at University of Colorado, officially elected to post Wednesday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Georgia Tech’s new president shuns fancy titles such as “doctor” or “chancellor” to introduce himself as plain “Bud Peterson,” colleagues say.
G.P. Peterson, chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder, has a string of degrees and honors. But he’s also “very down to earth, with good common sense,” said Richard Tucker, chairman of the Georgia Board of Regents.
- Age: 56
- Wife: Val Peterson
- Children: four biological; nine foster
- Education: B.S. Mechanical Engineering (1975), B.S. Mathematics (1977), M.S. Engineering (1980), all from Kansas State University. Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering (1985), Texas A&M University
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Peterson, the sole finalist for the presidency of Tech, was elected by the Regents on Wednesday morning. The presidency was vacated last year when Wayne Clough was named secretary of the Smithsonian Institution after 14 years at Tech’s helm.
Peterson is expected to take up where Clough left off as not only leader of the nationally ranked research university but also as a high-profile catalyst for continued improvement of the city of Atlanta and the entire region.
One of Clough’s legacies was to improve Tech’s Midtown campus with $900 million in construction projects. He also oversaw the doubling of Tech’s research funding and helped generate $1 billion in private gifts.
Peterson, a mechanical engineer by training with degrees from Kansas State and Texas A&M universities, became chancellor of the 30,000-student University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006.
He’s credited with helping to increase enrollment there, bring in more research grants and boost private donations by 80 percent even as the school bounced back from an athletic scandal. The football program had been accused of using sex and alcohol to attract recruits.
“I’ve seen him turn skeptics into allies, allies into stakeholders, and stakeholders into donors,” said Bronson Hilliard, who was hired by Peterson for the university’s media relations office.
In one case last year, Hilliard said he heard Peterson negotiate a deal for a $5 million donation from the back of an SUV on a cellphone that kept losing service as they drove through the Colorado mountains.
Hilliard described Peterson as a “private” person who recognizes the stereotype of the engineer as introvert.
His favorite joke?
Q: If you meet two engineers, how do you tell one’s an extrovert?
A: He stares at your shoes.
Sallye McKee, whom Peterson hired as the University of Colorado at Boulder’s first vice chancellor for diversity, described him as a “bloom-where-you’re-planted kind of guy,” valued for his adaptability.
“No job is too big or too small” to merit his attention, she said.
That attention includes dealing with complaints and concerns, said Paul Schauer, a former Colorado regent and state legislator.
“If I got a letter from a constituent, he would pick up the phone and call that constituent directly,” Schauer said. “He has a calming personality.”
The Boulder faculty found Peterson to be “collaborative,” said Uriel Nauenberg, chair of the Boulder Faculty Assembly. Peterson isn’t authoritarian, Nauenberg said. “He seeks input.”
Often, colleagues said, correspondence from Peterson came via e-mail sent in the middle of the night.
Outside his academic role, Peterson is a wood-worker and furniture maker.
He and his wife, Val — who was his college sweetheart at Kansas State University — have four grown children and reared nine foster children. Val Peterson spearheaded a program to raise college scholarships for children in foster care.
McKee, the diversity vice chancellor, is a Smyrna native who right now is unhappy with Georgia’s Board of Regents.
“If we’re ever able to pay back Georgia Tech, we will,” she vowed. “You know how you go through the stages of grieving? We’re in anger right now. They took our Bud.”
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