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Peace Corps service shaped career of MSU President Peter McPherson
Peace Corps service shaped career of MSU President Peter McPherson
Peace Corps service shaped his careers
May 8, 2004
BY MARY OWEN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
He was a California banker with no academic experience when he returned to his alma mater and became the 19th president of Michigan State University in 1993.
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M. Peter McPherson was the surprise choice after a yearlong search for a new leader of the state's largest university, but not just because he lacked the one thing most university presidents have -- a PhD.
McPherson, who was a Bank of America vice president in San Francisco before coming to MSU, was not one of the 171 publicly identified candidates.
On a Tuesday morning in 1993, no one knew he was a candidate; by Tuesday night, he was president.
"I suspect there is a lot I don't know," he said during his public job interview with the MSU Board of Trustees, which voted 6-2 to hire him.
On Friday, he told reporters, "I never thought I'd be here 11 years."
McPherson is a native of Kent County, where he grew up on a farm outside Grand Rapids. His parents and all six of his siblings graduated from MSU, as did he, in 1963. He worked in the Shaw Hall dorm cafeteria during his college years.
His grandfather was an MSU trustee.
McPherson studied political science. After graduation, he went to Peru as a Peace Corps volunteer.
He spent 18 months in a Peruvian slum, where he ran a food distribution program and set up credit unions. He has called the experience a defining moment.
As president, McPherson touted the value of international studies. During his tenure, MSU's study-abroad program grew to be the nation's largest. More than 20 percent of MSU students study abroad each year. He earned an MBA from Western Michigan University and a law degree from American University in Washington. He was a politically active Republican in law school in the late 1960s.
After law school, he worked for the Internal Revenue Service, where his specialty was international taxation. He joined the administration of fellow Michigander Gerald Ford in 1975 as a White House aide.
After a stint in private law practice, he worked in several high-level positions in President Ronald Reagan's administration.
McPherson, who abbreviates his first name (Melville), took a 60-percent pay cut, to $180,000, and gave up a 52nd-floor view of San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge to be MSU president. His fourth-floor office at MSU has a view of Spartan Stadium.
He succeeded John DiBiaggio, who left MSU to become president of Tufts University.
"You have no idea how proud and how happy I am to return home to Michigan," McPherson told the Free Press soon after his hiring.
Contact MARY OWEN at 586-469-1827 or owen@freepress.com. Staff writer Chris Christoff contributed to this report.