When asked what he will miss most about Brandeis University, soon-to-retire Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Peter French answers instantly: "The people!""I've done quite a bit of reading about retirement," says French, a stately, white-haired man of 65, "and a lot of what people say after they retire is ... [they'll miss] the people, and I think that's high up on my list."

French came to Brandeis in July of 1997, and immediately, what he saw of the Brandeis community struck him. "My number-one impression was the people here, and really the enthusiasm and the excellence and the sense of optimism," says French. "I really felt that from when I first started to be interviewed, and that has carried through the whole 12 years."

But French also noted major drawbacks to Brandeis that he soon set out to fix: "The other impression I had when I arrived was that the physical plant was in need of a lot of work. I know when I got here that July, the campus was just covered in all sorts of trucks for repair people who were working on different elements of the campus."

Soon, French invested his time and effort in what he calls the "physical transformation" of the Brandeis campus. Indeed, since he took the position of chief operating officer, there have been 11 major renovations or construction projects, including the expansion of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, renovation of the Usdan Student Center and construction of the Shapiro Campus Center, Abraham Shapiro Academic Complex and Carl J. Shapiro Science Center. He credits in part University President Jehuda Reinharz and Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement Nancy Winship for their fundraising and planning efforts in achieving these goals for campus renovation.

However, the expensive, wide-scale reimagining of the campus has not come without criticism. The Board of Trustees approved a budget deficit of $5.6 million in October 2003 in order to continue building projects, and Brandeis has traditionally relied on large-scale gifts and borrowing to fund its efforts. While a booming economy in the early part of the decade led to consistently positive projections for a balanced budget, and while the upcoming fiscal year's budget is also projected to balance, a multimillion-dollar budget gap remains projected for the next few fiscal years even after extensive rollbacks. Fundraising to make up the extensive debt taken to construct the Science Center slowed after the recession and Madoff scandal took their toll, and work on the Safra Center for the Arts has also stalled.

In the face of the Brandeis budget crisis, many have asserted that revamping the campus with a reliance on debt and gifts was imprudent despite the undoubted improvements the new buildings have brought. French responds to such criticism with a rhetorical question all too common today: "Who could have predicted the economic downturn?" He continues, "When you look at the University, I think you have to look at it in terms of a long-term point of view, and all of these buildings were conceived and designed and have been put in place to meet a perceived need, and I think when history is written of this, it will show that the right decisions were made." Reinharz also disagrees with critics, saying in an e-mail to the Justice that "all of the major construction projects have filled critical needs at the University."

Along with transforming the physical campus, French also set out to rework the management and financial systems in place at Brandeis. "I recall walking into this suite of offices ... and one of the first things I actually did was move [my office] downstairs and take the doors off and put in glass so that people could see in." This none-too-subtle metaphor represents French's desire "to bring more visibility to what the administrative finance function does here and more organization and transparency. We really have been trying to do that over the past 12 years, and I do think that people have made some progress." He also mentioned that the "lack of credibility in some of the numbers we were producing" was a direct result of lapsed financial information systems and muddled interactions among different University systems.

Initiatives to achieve these goals included the creation of a chief information officer position and involvement of PeopleSoft information systems to smooth out University management and organization. "I did a chart early on when we were here, and I attempted to map all the different systems we had, and it was this chart with all these different balloons that weren't tied together," says French. "It was basically a homegrown system, and it took us about five years, but we were able to turn that around and put into place a best-practice information system." French emphasized that recruitment of talented staff and involving them in system changes was essential to the successful reorganization of Brandeis' financial and management systems. "That was a huge effort and it was one of the key things we did here and we worked as a team to change things around," he says, citing administrators like former Vice President and Vice Provost for Library and Technology Services Perry Hanson and the former Vice President for Financial Affairs and Treasurer Maureen Murphy as instrumental in the team effort.

"I think we've got a really first-class team here," says French, "and I'm really proud of that. I'd actually put that toward the top if someone says to me, 'Peter, what are you most proud of?' That's it."

In an e-mail to the Justice, Reinharz said of French, "He has been at the center of every major construction project, he has participated in and contributed significantly to the University's strategic planning efforts, and he has provided outstanding leadership of the offices reporting to him. He has been open and responsive to students and faculty, and his impact on the University will be felt for years."

"In all of our interactions, he has been honest, fair and deeply dedicated to the students at Brandeis," former Student Union President Jason Gray '10 wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

Reinharz added that French "has been a terrific colleague to work with, a tremendous resource for Brandeis and ... he will be missed by all of us, including Trustees, who have had the opportunity to work with him."

French will soon be replaced by Jeffrey Apfel, former executive vice president of the Rhode Island School of Design and chief financial officer of the Rutgers University and New Jersey State University systems. French notes that he crossed paths with Apfel while both were working in the New York state government system. When asked if he set out to end up in higher education from the beginning of his career, French says that "the main thing that I focused on in those early years was I wanted to make sure that I was making a contribution. As I got older and matured, I began to understand what that means, and I related it to a mission." French says that it was the not-for-profit worlds of "particularly health care and higher education" that attracted him for their societal import and wide-ranging impact. "The key thing that motivated me was I wanted to make a contribution to something meaningful."

As for where he'd like to see Brandeis go after he turns over the reins to Apfel, French says, "In a nutshell, I want to see the University realize its aspirations. . Excellence. Just excellence across the board." And while French acknowledges that the last six to eight months have perhaps been the most difficult of his career, he speaks with complete conviction when he says, "I look back on all those years-I've been working since 1967-and I don't really regret a day.