Board Of Visitors
 | Peter T. Flawn The Leonidas T. Barrow Chair Emeritus in Mineral Resources |
Peter T. Flawn retired as President of The University of Texas at Austin in 1985 and was named President Emeritus by the Board of Regents. He received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1947 and Ph.D. in geology from Yale University in 1951 and is prominent as a geologist, educator, author, and consultant. He served in the U. S. Army Air Corps during World War II.
After a successful career as research scientist, geologist and professor, and following stints in various UT administrative posts and as president of the University of Texas at San Antonio from 1973-1977, Peter Flawn began his UT presidency determined to raise the university's academic standing. Declaring "War on Mediocrity," he helped raise the University's number of faculty endowments from 112 to 851 with the Centennial campaign in the early 1980s, despite reduced state funding.
During his six-year term as president, sponsored research awards grew to $100 million, and five new research buildings were built. The number of National Merit Scholars was second only to Harvard, and eighteen UT graduate programs were ranked in the top twenty. The University of Texas became the subject of favorable articles in Forbes, Time, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. With a reputation as a good bargain, enrollment swelled to 48,000. The Academic Center was renamed the Peter T. Flawn Academic Center in his honor in 1985. When he left he was named President Emeritus, one of only two officials to be given the title "emeritus." The other was Harry Ransom.
Drafted out of retirement in July 1997 to serve as interim president until UT President Larry Faulkner took over the post in April 1998, Flawn helped to lay much of the groundwork for the "We're Texas" campaign. In a statement about the campaign, he asserted, "We are the flagship University of Texas. A flagship institution is characterized by a distinguished faculty, the very best students, and special programs that are unique to the institution, like Plan II for example. And it's characterized by state-of-the-art facilities. We are now, by any measure, a flagship institution. We want to continue to be so."
"Looking to the future, the basic support we receive from the state will not be sufficient to maintain this institution as a flagship. I do not believe that in the near term, at least, the legislature will be moved to restructure higher education in Texas, designate flagship institutions, and provide special funding for them. If we are going to sustain our flagship and indeed advance it, we are going to have to do it ourselves." Outgoing UT President Robert Berdahl had this to say about Flawn, whose years as president are remembered for their intensive fund-raising and pursuit of excellence: "Historically, Flawn built the strong foundation which the University rests on. If you look at recent history, Flawn has been the most important president since Harry Ransom in building that foundation."