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CHE Department History - CHE "Firsts"
CHE's First Woman ChE - 1955
 Maryly
Van Leer Peck, UF's first woman chemical engineer, was made of very substantial
stuff. She had to be in order to be a chemical engineer. She said,
Being a `woman of firsts' meant I had many unique experiences. I learned
to organize. I set limits, and I always met deadlines. When you have four
children and you're trying to balance working and graduate school, you have to
insist on things happening in an appropriate way.
Maryly was destined to be an engineer. Her mother was an architectural
engineer, her brothers were engineers, and her father, who was Dean of
Engineering at UF and then President of Georgia Tech, had told her, "If you have
an engineering background, you can do anything."
After receiving her B.S.Ch.E. at Vanderbilt in 1951, where she was the only
woman graduate in her class, she came to UF to get her M.S.Ch.E. in 1955 and
then her Ph.D. in 1963. She was pregnant with her first child while working for
her M.S. and with her fourth while seeking her Ph.D. "It seems I was pregnant
every time I went back to school," she laughed. Incidentally, three of her sons
are now engineers too.
 After
her B.S., and between graduate degrees, Maryly worked at the Naval Research Lab,
at the Georgia Tech Experiment Station and taught at Georgia State. In 1961, she
accepted a job with Rocketdyne as a senior research engineer working on hybrid
fuel combustion for the Navy. It was there that Life magazine caught up
with her. She was a role model for women of the new generation, and Life
included her story in a special issue, "The Takeover Generation," in which she
was featured along with 100 of the most important young men and women in the
U.S. A photographer followed her everywhere, snapping pictures of her as she
went about her everyday business, taking more than 2,000 pictures but using only
two.
This publicity launched her on a new career—on the public-speaking circuit—where
she shared her experiences in engineering with professional women around the
country. She returned to teaching, however (at Campbell University in North
Carolina), and taught math for three years. When her husband was sent to Guam to
do missionary work, she went along and was asked to run a school connected with
the island's Episcopal church. But the University of Guam needed her expertise
in engineering, and she soon found herself Chairman of the Division of Math and
Physical Sciences; later she was named Dean of the College of Business and
Applied Technology and then Dean of the Community Career College. She said that
being on Guam for eleven years was a fabulous experience because she had the
opportunity to do so many different things.
When she came back to the U.S., she became President of Cochise College in
Arizona. She did some other engineering jobs and again returned to education as
Dean of Undergraduate Studies at U. Maryland, where she oversaw programs of
evening and weekend classes for 45,000 working adults in the state and another
45,000 overseas. She finally returned to Florida in 1982 as President of Polk
Community College in Winter Haven (where she was chosen from a field of 200) and
has been there ever since. She was the first woman president of a Florida public
institution of higher education.
Maryly hasn't slowed down. She swims laps every morning at 6 AM and, in addition
to her duties at the college, is involved in numerous community and professional
activities. She serves as vice chairman for the Polk County United Way and is
board president for Turnaround, a rehabilitation program that helps young people
break their dependence on drugs and alcohol. She is the first woman to be
inducted into the Rotary Club of Winter Haven, and she is active in the Chamber
of Commerce, AIChE, Society of Professional Engineers, the
Society of Women Engineers, and many more organizations, professional and civic.
But she hasn't forgotten the UF, where she renders service to the Chemical
Engineering Department as a valuable member of the Advisory Committee. She has
received many honors and awards, including the UF's Distinguished Alumna Award.
She says, "As an educator, I feel I am in a position to give back what a lot of
people gave to me when I was growing up."
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