Peter Raven -- "Mr. Yes"

Posted by Joseph Phillips on Sunday, May 22, 2016 at 4:39 PM PDT

Professor Peter Raven is retiring from Seattle University next month, completing a 25-year career in higher education.  Peter started as a faculty member at Eastern Washington University, after a 20-year career in the food processing industry and completing his doctoral studies at Washington State. He joined the Albers full time faculty in 1998 and moved to a tenure track position in 2001.  In 2009, he was promoted to Professor of Marketing, and now leaves the university as Professor Emeritus.

Peter taught primarily international marketing and Internet marketing courses, as well as a number of consulting classes.  He was a champion for the global education of our students, serving as director of our Global Business programs from 2005 to 2013.  He co-led a number of overseas study tours for students, to such countries as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.  Students valued his industry experience, enjoyed his sense of humor, and found him to be available and supportive.  He has always been a very student-focused instructor.

Peter fully embraced the teacher-scholar model of the Albers School, publishing over 35 journal articles in such areas as global entrepreneurship, pedagogy, and hotel industry booking practices.

As a colleague, Peter always ended up doing more than his fair share of the service work that needed to be done.  His department chair, Carl Obermiller, described him as "Mr. Yes."  He would never say no to anything he was asked to do, including teaching such things as Internet marketing when no one really knew what that was.  It should also be noted that Peter was always the person who "showed up," meaning if there was any school event that faculty members should support, Peter was always there, whether it was a school meeting, recruiting event, the Mentor Fair, new student welcoming events, graduate program recruiting open house, Profs and Pizza, etc...  He modeled for others what it means to be an engaged faculty member.

We held a dinner on May 11th to celebrate Peter's many accomplishments at and contributions to Seattle University.  Carl noted that Peter had made his life as a department chair so much easier with his willingness to pitch in, and he was sure he could never find someone else who was so accommodating.  Other colleagues spoke about being so appreciative of the assistance Peter provided to them in activities or programs they were trying to organize.  David Reid emphasized the hospitality that Peter showed to him as a new faculty member.  Matt Isaac called out the mentoring that Peter provided to him as a new marketing faculty member.

Thank you Peter Raven for your many contributions to Seattle University and our students!  You will be missed by our students and your colleagues!