For more than 18 years, the name George Peabody was practically synonymous with the Institute on Business and Government Affairs. Peabody’s Power and Values workshop was an integral and popular part of the Institute’s curriculum.

Although Peabody retired from teaching the workshop after the 2008 Institute, his name is now attached to the Institute’s outstanding student award. At this summer’s graduation, TFAS President Roger Ream presented the first annual George Peabody Outstanding Student Award to Michael Neagoe, a business major at the University of Southern California.

Because he is in poor health, Peabody was unable to attend the graduation ceremony and award presentation.

Peabody’s long association with TFAS began through his acquaintance with David Jones, then president of The Fund, who had seen Dr. Peabody’s workshops at Vanderbilt University. When the curriculum of IBGA was being developed for the inaugural Institute in 1990, Jones asked Professors Mike Collins and Tony Moore to build a course around the Peabody workshop. That course became Power and Values in Organizations.

The unique course engages students in a process of analysis and reflection that helps them understand their own roles, values, and responsibilities as members of organizations. The interactive workshop on power and values is designed to help students, through simulations and exercises, to discover the sources and obligations of empowerment.

Dr. Peabody graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA degree, then obtained a Doctor of Divinity. He served in the Coast Guard in World War II.

The son of an Episcopalian bishop, Pebody was ordained an Episcopalian priest, but resigned from the active priesthood. He worked in Chicago as a community organizer. He later trained priests of the American Episcopal Church in community organization and members of the CIA in the practice of power. He was involved in conflict resolution between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.