Peter Likins

Peter Likins is president emeritus of the University of Arizona and former president of Lehigh University. He served earlier in his academic career as an engineering professor at UCLA, advancing to Columbia University as dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and then as provost of the university.

Educated as an engineer at Stanford and MIT, and engaged as a spacecraft engineer by the Cal Tech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1958, the very first year of the Space Age, Likins is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Captain of the Stanford wrestling team and silver medalist at the Pacific Coast Conference Tournament and the Far Western Championships, Likins is recognized as an "Outstanding American" in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Dr. Likins is the author or coauthor of three engineering textbooks and a personal memoir called A NEW AMERICAN FAMILY: A Love Story, describing the experiences of his interracial family, which includes six adopted children, black, white and brown, all born in California in the 1960's.

Peter Likins and his wife Patricia celebrate sixty years of marriage in their Tucson, Arizona home.

COYOTE SPEAKS: Cross Country Run, is his first foray into fiction.