When Petersen started on the switchboard in 1957, Westwood was still a village, and UCLA Anderson was the Graduate School of Business Administration, housed in what is now Dodd Hall. It was her first job, following her graduation with a B.S. in business education from UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. She was happy to be earning the "princely sum" of $243 a month, out of which, she recalled, "I could pay for my apartment, food, clothing, whatever I needed."
There were few options to spend a paycheck in the Westwood of that era. Long before Whole Foods, boutique hotels, designer bars and the global cuisine now on offer, students, staff and local residents had to make do with a Bullocks department store (where Ralphs now stands), the Fox Theater and a Desmond's clothing store. Of course, Mary added, there were beer busts (some things never change).
The business school was a much smaller institution in those days. It did, however, boast an all-star roster of faculty, including Neil Jacoby, dean of the school and a member of President Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisors; Harold Koontz and Cyril O'Donnell, co-authors of the seminal "Principles of Management"; Fred Weston, the father of M&A studies; Bob Williams, founder of the UCLA Business Forecast; and Robert Tannenbaum, a pioneer in business leadership theory.
Petersen recalled that relations between faculty and staff were remarkably relaxed and cordial, noting: "In the late '50s, the faculty used to get together and put on a show for the staff. They called it Faculty Frolics."
Thriving in the collegial atmosphere, Petersen soon parlayed her stenography qualification and practical bent into a move from the switchboard to a new position as a secretary and then as senior administrative assistant. As her career advanced steadily throughout the 1960s, she was on hand to witness campus uprisings, from sit-ins in the chancellor's office to tent cities protesting the Vietnam War. "Even some of the faculty got arrested!" she recalled with a smile, hastening to add that those intrepid professors did not include "anybody here now."
She married Pete Petersen in 1971. They had met many years earlier as fellow badminton devotees, when he would drive her and other top junior players to tournaments. He was an effects specialist in the film industry, spending most of his career at Twentieth Century Fox. His specialty was women's "hard wardrobe" — costume adornments ranging from from earrings to suits of armor. Prior to his retirement in 1980, he worked with many of the screen goddesses of Hollywood's Golden Age, including Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis and Kathryn Hepburn.
Mary's enthusiasm for all things UCLA soon converted Pete into an honorary Bruin, and they were perennial basketball and football season ticket holders.
While the couple settled into married life, Harold Williams was shaking things up at the business school. Appointed dean in 1970, Williams initiated a profound transformation of the academic mission of the school and a radical reorganization of its administrative services. Petersen expressed admiration for him as an innovator who shifted the school's educational focus from the M.S. degree to the more professionally oriented M.B.A.
On the administrative side, Williams rationalized and centralized a system in which each department had previously maintained its own staff, budget and operating procedures. Petersen was in a good position to appreciate the reorganization as the director of financial services, a role in which she managed many areas, including contracts, grant proposals, gifts and endowments, payroll, travel and purchasing.
Perhaps the crowning achievement of her tenure at UCLA Anderson was her pivotal role in moving the school to its new location. By the time John Anderson's gift set in motion the planning and building of the new facilities in 1987, Petersen's career path had taken yet another turn when she became director of facilities management in the school. "We planned for a couple of years before the countdown," she recalled.
Petersen views the new complex, which opened in 1995, with great pride — but also through the eyes of a facilities manager: "It's beautiful, but the atria — that's all lost space. It's not assignable square footage." The multi-building layout, she said, tends to isolate people in a way that the more cramped but intimate quarters of Dodd Hall did not: "If you don't have a particular reason to see someone, you may not see them."
Since her 1997 retirement and the loss of her husband, Petersen has maintained close connections to UCLA. She remains an ardent Bruins basketball and football fan, and she is on campus frequently to dine with friends and former colleagues at the Faculty Center. She also plays racquetball at the John Wooden Center two or three days a week.
Petersen's first venture into Bruin philanthropy was in 2007, when she established an endowment to support women's volleyball. She sees her current gift to UCLA Anderson as filling an important gap.
"Most of the fundraising that's done is to benefit students or faculty," she said. "I wanted to do something for staff."
This past December, Mary was honored at the Anderson School's staff holiday party, where Dean Judy Olian applauded her for being "a shining example of 'business beyond usual' long before we came up with the slogan.
"She devoted her professional life to the school and wants to help her successors in the administration grow and advance in their careers," Olian said. "We thank Mary for her lifetime of service and her generous gift, which will provide important future opportunities to our staff."
Petersen credits her generosity to a lifelong love affair with UCLA Anderson: "It's most of my life, and I'm just enchanted with the place."
She's giving now while she still has colleagues working at the school who remember her. But she's eager to make one thing clear: "I intend to stay around awhile!"
In her 40-year career as an administrator at UCLA Anderson School of Management, Mary Petersen wore many hats — from running the switchboard to supervising the move to the school's current campus.
