Richard Peck

New Mexico Business Journal, Feb, 1997

As a successful playwright and novelist, Dr. Richard E. Peck would seem to have an unlikely background to be president of the state's largest university. UNM has nearly 15,000 employees. When asked how he came to the job, the 60-year-old former English professor says, "By accident. Over the years I was asked to do different administrative jobs, and it turned out that I don't get ulcers from that work. My wife says I give them. Once you've seen the breadth of activity at the university, to return to doing a small piece of it is less interesting."

Despite the demands of what Peck describes as "fairly close to a full-time job," he still finds time to write. His typical work day begins at 7 a.m. and frequently ends after 9 p.m., and just sorting through his daily mail is a two hour task. Yet he has recently completed another novel and is currently at work on a play.

Peck has headed UNM since 1990, after serving as interim president of Arizona State University, and a year and a half ago the Board of Regents extended his contract to 2000. He and his wife love New Mexico, and he says this will be their home when he retires from his post. He and his wife, Donna, have two children, Mason, who is an aerospace engineer of Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles, and Laura, a researcher in Boston.

We interviewed Dr. Peck at his office in Scholes Hall on the UNM campus.

NMBJ: Do you consider the presidency of the University of New Mexico to be equivalent to that of a corporate CEO?

Peck. In a way, although it's difficult to measure in the same ways, because I can't say that our product is newer or bigger or faster every year. It's tough to announce to the public what our product is, because our product for employers here is the graduate that we turn out. But for the graduate our product is the classroom instruction that he or she receives. I think a number of people in the community believe that our job is to turn out well-trained employees who can go to work immediately for them. I think our job is to turn out well-educated people who can make the move from one profession to another if necessary and can also find time to spend with themselves and not have to be the job they're going to do. That's a difference I keep trying to make between education and training. Most employers want us to train because they need our students for that purpose, but if we're looking at the life students are going to have to live, we need to educate them so they can be more than the job.

NMBJ: What sort of connections do you feel the university ought to have to the business community beyond educating the workforce?

Peck: It's tough to find ways in which we're not part of the business community. The business community has been supportive in helping us to raise money. I know of two instances in the last two years when companies looking to move to Albuqerque came first to the university. We were not supposed to know who they were or where they were from. They were just looking us over. But one of their first concerns is: is there a major research university that we can sidle up to? Along with that, what's the health care community like here if we're going to come in? Well, we're the only medical school in the state, and our five clinical operations mean a whole lot to Albuquerque. So when businesses come here - like General Mills - they tell us that they are here because of some things we can provide them.

We use the business community in interesting ways. We have, I'm going to guess, probably 20 to 30 business executives who teach classes for us. They bring the kind of hard experience they have into the classroom. That helps them recruit, and in the long run, it helps our students to see what the job market is likely to be like.

But there's a much closer link. For instance, we have a funny swap with the city. We trade fresh water from our wells at the golf course to the city for reclaimed water. We water the fairways with reclaimed water. We get something like three gallons for every gallon of fresh water we provide. So we make a profit. The city gets fresh water in exchange for reclaimed water they can't use in the same ways. We're a university, but we're a small city within the city. So our golf course is a player in the local economy in interesting ways, not just greens fees. We are so tangled in the economy of Albuquerque that what we do has an impact on the city and what the city does has a significant impact on us.

NMBJ: Enrollment at UNM has been stable or shrinking for the last three years. How do you maintain competence at the university in an era of shrinking budgets?

Peck: The budget does shrink. The money we get from the state is tied to a three-year rolling average, and we have had three downturn years. Interestingly, the same downturn has been an upturn in our branches, so if you look at the whole university, we've had a shift from main campus to the branches. The last two years, we've had 1,600 new freshmen and 2,600 transfer students come here, but our total enrollment is between 24,000 and 25,000.