Two Valuable Assets

Posted by Joseph Phillips on Saturday, June 9, 2018 at 4:15 PM PDT

"Two valuable department assets" -- that is what Dr. Jot Yau, chairman of the Department of Finance, said about Professor David Carrithers and Peggy Allende, Administrative Assistant for the Departments of Economics and Finance. Both are retiring this year and these are big shoes to fill!

David Carrithers joined Seattle University in 1984, starting out as Director of the MBA Program and doing some teaching as well. Several years later he took over as Director of Continuing Education for the university, and then transitioned back to full-time teaching in finance. Besides being an excellent and dedicated teacher, David has been instrumental in the assessment activities of our finance program, which was one of the first programs in Albers and on campus to have a high functioning assessment program. Eventually, as a result of that expertise, he ended up as co-chair of the university Assessment Committee.

David was also instrumental in the founding of the Redhawk Fund, an opportunity for students to manage more that $600,000 of university endowment funds. He also served as the first Program Director of the Bridge MBA and for the last few years has been the faculty moderator for Beta Gamma Sigma, the academic honorary for AACSB accredited business schools.

Although these are all significant contributions to our institution, they are not what people remember about David. At a dinner last night to honor Peggy and David, colleagues spoke about David as a person -- he is a really nice guy! He is a good listener and provides good advice! He is a very supportive colleague, willing to go out of his way to help someone with their teaching or other issues they might be wrestling with! He is a former collegiate athlete (in swimming), and set many records, but he has also had his share of injuries and is the perfect patient for any orthopedic surgeon to feature in an advertising campaign (according to Dr. Bill Weis). And according to David, he may be a former athlete, but he is not a good golfer.

David retires at the end of this academic year. In recognition of his many contributions to SU, he has been given Professor Emeritus status by the university, one of the few non-tenure track faculty members to receive this honor.

Peggy Allende started working at SU in 1979, first working in the College of Science and Engineering, and then joining Albers in 1993. She has not given us an exact retirement date, but it is supposed to be soon, according to her husband Octavio, while everyone else tells her to take her time and at least make it to forty years at SU (which would be February)!

Peggy is very efficient and very no-nonsense. The trains run on time in the Departments of Economics and Finance. Department chairs rely on Peggy to make them look good. I'm not making that up -- they all admitted to it last night!   It's probably the case that some of the faculty she takes care of today were not born when she joined SU. Several faculty members said they had been trying to find a question that Peggy did not know the answer to, and they are still searching for that question.

Peggy will eventually pick a retirement date, and then we will face the challenge of carrying on without these two valued colleagues. It's not something we want to dwell on! We wish them the best in retirement and expect them to stay in touch with us!