Not only has she consistently risen to meet challenges that presented themselves around her, in fact she set out four decades ago to look for them, inspired by the late Robert Reuman (philosophy) to go and make a difference in the world.

After teaching English and biology for two years in the United States, she set off for Mexico, "for an adventure," and landed at a Quaker house where she met her husband to be. They spent two years in Venezuela on a Farmers for World Peace project before returning to Mexico City, where her husband, an Earlham College graduate, was director of the American Friends Service Committee's rural community development programs.

When their son was old enough for nursery school, Peacock earned a translator's certificate and a master's degree in Hispanic literature. She began teaching Mexican students at the American high school in Mexico City.

She also taught English as a second language to business executives. "Back then," she said, for Mexicans who taught in such programs, "having spent one year in the United States was considered credentials to teach English."

That's no longer true, in part because of Peacock's work. In the 1980s at the University of Guadalajara she and her colleagues set up that school's first B.A. degree program in English as a Second Language (ESL), and recently she became the first director of the English program at the University of Celaya in the town where she now lives. A visiting Fulbright professor, recognizing her mastery of the unique challenges of teaching ESL, told her, "you should teach at Harvard," and for 11 years, beginning in 1986, she did just that as part of Harvard University's summer English Language Institute for international students.

Peacock also has made a difference as an advocate for the environment. She currently is co-president of the Mexican Audubon Society and a full-time volunteer working on river restoration and riparian habitats with a coalition of environmental groups, community officials and the National Water Commission.

"Mexico woke up to environmental degradation only about seven years ago," she said. In 1994, when 40,000 waterfowl were found dead at the Silva reservoir near Leon, Guanajuato, north of Peacock's home in Celaya, she wrote newspaper articles and worked with the Audubon Society and two other environmental groups to bring attention to the disaster. It became the first case brought before the trilateral Council of Environmental Cooperation established under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and a $3-million World Bank loan to clean up the reservoir resulted.

As co-president of the Sociedad Audubon de México she recently spoke to a symposium on water quality and found listeners surprised to hear that her degrees were in literature and linguistics. "The biggest shortcoming in Mexican education," she told Colby, "is that once you decide what career you'll study, you never study subjects in other fields." Too often, she says, people can't communicate well with those outside their own field and can't see the broader perspective. "The gifts of a liberal arts education are a blessing," she said.

–Steven Collins ’74