Dr. John G. and Mrs. Barbara C. Peters

Barbara Cole Peters and John George Peters were raised in Strongsville, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland). They met in ninth grade and were high school sweethearts. They married in 1967 and had one son, Russel Cole Peters, born in 1978. Dr. Peters earned his B.A. degree in political science at Cleveland’s John Carroll University, and a M.A, degree in government from Ohio University in Athens. In 1974, John Peters received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to assuming the NIU presidency, Dr. Peters was provost and chief operating officer at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. His distinguished career also includes twenty years in teaching and administrative roles at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he earned numerous awards for work in and out of the classroom. Dr. Peters assumed the presidency of Northern Illinois University on June 1, 2000.