Georgia Tech President to Retire After Controversy Over Administrators’ Ethical Lapses

G.P. (Bud) Peterson oversaw several administrative departures at the Georgia Institute of Technology over the course of last year, following investigations that revealed employees’ ethical lapses. On Monday the university’s president announced the latest resignation — his own — saying he felt the university had “turned a corner.”

“The opportunity to serve as president of Georgia Tech for the past 10 years has been one of the highlights of my career,” Peterson wrote in a letter to the campus on Monday. “While we have faced several challenges, I believe we are on a very positive trajectory, a trajectory that has characterized Georgia Tech and served it well for many years.”

This past summer, an audit revealed that three officials in the university’s campus-services division had improper relationships with vendors and did not properly use Georgia Tech time. A fourth official, the university’s finance chief, did not properly disclose his paid position on the board of a software company with which Georgia Tech did business, an investigation found.

In an interview on Monday, Peterson attributed his decision to retire this summer to his age, 66. He said the revealed ethical lapses hadn’t cut short his tenure — if anything, they extended it, he said.

“I made it pretty clear at the very start, when they first came up, that I wanted to work through those and try to put the mechanisms in place to make sure that we didn’t have any additional or further problems,” he said. “We’ve turned a corner. I feel good about where we are and where we’re headed.”

The investigations and their findings kicked off a summer and semester of staff changes, surveys, and soul-searching at the Atlanta institution. Implicated employees resigned or were dismissed. Georgia Tech temporarily staffed up its investigators to examine a wave of new allegations of unethical conduct. The university also reviewed the compliance of its purchasing policies and procedures with system and state rules.

The university also surveyed faculty, staff, and some graduate students on their perceptions of ethics in the university’s culture. In a letter promoting Ethics Awareness Week, Peterson urged everyone on the campus to ask themselves, “Will our actions reflect positively on us as individuals and on Georgia Tech?”

In an August conversation with Chancellor Steve W. Wrigley of the University System of Georgia, Peterson recognized he needed to follow advice on management weaknesses at Georgia Tech, and to raise his expectations of senior officials, according to a letter from Wrigley to Peterson that the university shared publicly.

“Lax management and unethical behavior at Georgia Tech have resulted in misuse of resources and a failure to hold staff accountable, and, as president, you are ultimately responsible,” Wrigley wrote.

Wrigley would later praise Peterson’s execution of changes over the course of the semester. “While there is still much work to be done to ensure real and permanent change, I am pleased with Georgia Tech’s progress and appreciate you making ethical management a top priority for your leadership team and the institution,” he wrote in November.

In a news release on Monday, Wrigley praised Peterson’s “extraordinary contributions” to the prestigious research university, including bringing in more research dollars and raising enrollment. Under his leadership, Georgia Tech joined the Association of American Universities. The accomplishment Peterson is most proud of, however, is providing opportunities for students, including through online programming, he said.

The president, who started in 2009, said on Monday that he did not think new presidential leadership would have been required to create cultural change after the ethics complaints. “If the semester and summer like the one I had … had occurred four or five years ago, I wouldn’t be leaving,” he said.

His tenure is longer than the average college presidency, at 6.5 years, according to a survey conducted by the American Council on Education. The average age of a college president is 62.

Peterson, a mechanical engineer, said in the letter to the campus that he hoped to return to teaching and research. He said he would like to step down over the summer but would be willing to stay until a new president was identified.

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.