Craig Peter is the assistant director of educational resources for Cornerstone University’s Professional & Graduate Studies Program. “If you see a staff member walking around campus with a dolly full of books, it’s probably me,” Peter said.

Craig Peter was born and raised in Muskegon and is now living in Fruitport, Mich. Peter has been working for PGS since June 2007.

As a PGS employee, Peter is responsible for taking care of the books and materials students will need for PGS classes. After ordering the books, Peter is responsible for getting them to the PGS campuses.

“I order, purchase and deliver books and materials for students,” Peter said. “I am in contact with 70 to 80 different publishers.”

The PGS campuses are located in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Kalamazoo and Zeeland. Peter makes sure the books and materials he orders get to the right person at the right campus. “It fills up my day,” Peter said.

The Professional & Graduate Studies Program provides evening classes for adults in career and graduate studies. Cornerstone began this program in 1993 to offer accelerated degree completion plans for adults with family and work responsibilities.

New PGS students start in groups called cohorts. One of Peter’s tasks is packaging up books for each student starting out in a PGS cohort, putting together all the books and materials the students will need to begin classes.

“I like everything about it,” Peter said about his job. “I like being here at the university. I like the atmosphere.” Peter was employed by the government of Michigan for 30 years before he was employed by CU. “It’s a real change,” he said, “working for the state versus the university.”

Peter, a CU alumnus, retired from his government job, but a few years after that he began looking for an opening at CU.

Peter’s daughter was working at CU at the time.

“I watched the CU Web site for a position opening,” Peter said. “About the same time I saw the posting, my daughter called to tell me the posting was there.”

Peter attended CU when it was known as Grand Rapids Baptist College. He graduated in 1972 with a three-way degree in Bible, history and social studies. “It wasn’t intended,” Peter said about the triple major. “I went to MSU for two years and then transferred here to take Bible classes. I picked up a few extra classes.”

Peter said that getting up in the morning is his least favorite part of his job. “I was retired for a couple of years,” he said. “It was nice to take time in the morning to read and study. Now I have to get all that in before I come to work.”

Peter also runs into obstacles while on the job. He said the unusual often happens. “Every week something comes up that requires me to stop what I’m doing to address,” he said.

“It’s fairly routine, and the oddities are fairly routine,” Peter said. A common complication he comes across is taking care of drop-in students. “The most hectic thing to deal with is drop-in students. Students will sometimes take a break from their cohort. Then they drop into another cohort. I will have to scramble around to try to get books and materials to them before class begins.”

Karen Breitenbach is the assistant director of curriculum services in the PGS program and works in close contact with Peter. “I’ve had the honor of working with Craig since he began here in June 2007. He is a wonderful person to work with — very organized, thorough, and conscientious.”