Down the hall from the Environmental Design (ENVD) front lobby, hangs a large portrait of a serious older gentleman wielding a thick mustache with shoulders draped in blue-green tartan. It’s mounted on an office wall, large enough to be seen by all who pass by.
“His name is Thomas MacLaren,” Peggy Gordon, assistant director of academic services at ENVD, who resides in the office, explained. “He’s a current project of mine.”
Years ago, after finding his portrait stashed in a corner of the office next door, Gordon took it upon herself to dust off the cobwebs and unveil the portrait’s history. After a bit of digging, she discovered that the man was a Scottish architect living in Colorado Springs in the early 1900s. Research revealed that when he passed, he donated a significant amount of money to help start an architecture school in Boulder, a school that Gordon believes later became CU Boulder’s Architectural Engineering program (ENVD’s predecessor). “He’s our founding father if you want to think about it that way,” Gordon said.
His portrait, which came with the donation, has since found a home on the office wall of someone who is arguably as significant to ENVD’s history.
Since starting at CU back in 1996, Gordon has worn a lot of hats. “Other than teaching I think I’ve worn almost every hat here,” she exclaims. Her first hat was offered to her when she arrived at CU Denver for an interview and was instead immediately put to work as the front office secretary for the College of Architecture and Planning. In a short time, she became the administrative lead for the college’s majors and then later moved to an advising position at CU Boulder. To Gordon, advising was the right fit.
“I really like people and I like helping people,” she said. “I enjoy meeting with students knowing that each student is different. They all want to become something design-related, but all have a different way of expressing it.”
At the height of her advising career, Gordon had 900 students to guide and direct toward their architecture-related futures. But managing student needs and concerns was only a fraction of her role in ENVD. When the program’s administration split from the Denver campus ten years ago, she explained that the staff, many of whom reported directly to her, felt an overall lack of support and direction.
Fortunately for the program, Gordon shared that she’s “one of those people who when I see a need, I step into it. So, I did.” Through fluctuations in student populations, program-wide shifts, and multiple cycles of new leadership, she has offered ENVD a sense of support and much-needed consistency.
“Peg has served as the go-to problem solver for countless students, staff and faculty over the years,” ENVD Director Stacey Schulte said. “Her office has been the ENVD hub of wisdom and preserved the sanity of ENVD through thick and thin.”
After 27 years of administrative, advisory, leadership and program support work, the reign of consistency through Gordon’s office will come to an end this spring as she graduates from ENVD with the class of 2023 and enrolls in retirement.
“The job will never look the same way I did doing it. When you grow with the position and when the position grows with you, you take on what you can, and you build it out.” The position has been built out so much in fact that her role will be split into three new positions. “To just give everything that I was doing to just one person,” she explains, “they would go crazy!” Luckily, she has full confidence in her successors.
The people–the staff, the faculty, the students–after all, are what she’ll miss the most about working in the program. For Alea Richmond Akins, director of undergraduate education & student success, and one of Gordon’s successors, the feeling is mutual.
“Peggy Gordon has been the backbone of environmental design throughout her long and meaningful career in the program,” Richmond Akins commended. “She has provided valuable leadership and mentorship that has had a lasting impact on so many students, professional staff and faculty who have been fortunate enough to work with her. I’m personally going to miss her sage advice and genuine care that she brought to every conversation and decision that was made to help advance the Program and to make a difference in people’s lives.”
Gordon shared that her retired life would consist of travel. She, her husband of 40 years, and their two Akitas already have plans to drive across the country in a trailer that she jokingly referred to as “the most expensive doghouse” she’s ever seen. They’ll visit family, take their grandchildren to Disneyland, and spend ten days camping around Colorado–their shared home state.
As for the treasured portrait of Thomas MacLaren? Gordon thinks he ought to leave her office as well and be displayed more publicly.
“I don’t think I’ll take him with me. He’s definitely not going to fit in the trailer.”