Maryly Van Leer Peck (June 29, 1930 – November 3, 2011) was an American academic and college administrator. She founded the Community Career College at the University of Guam (which merged into Guam Community College in November 1977). She was the first female president of a public institution of higher learning in Florida, the first female president of a Florida community college while president of Polk Community College aka Polk State College. She was one of the first female graduates of the School of Engineering at Vanderbilt University and the first woman to graduate with a degree in chemical engineering. She was also the first woman to receive an M.S. and a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Florida. Early life and education Maryly Van Leer Peck was born on June 29, 1930, in Washington, D.C. She was the second child, and only daughter, of Blake Ragsdale Van Leer and Ella Lillian Wall Van Leer. She was a member of the influential Van Leer family. Peck's parents both had strong academic backgrounds and were close friends with renowned intellectuals of their time, including Frank Bunker Gilbreth Sr. and Lillian Moller Gilbreth, which not only exposed Peck very early to engineering, but it also showed her the possibility that she could be one herself. Peck became the valedictorian of her high school class in Georgia, granting her a state-sponsored scholarship. However, at that time, the male-only Georgia Tech university was the only school offering engineering, and even though her father filed a case on her behalf, she didn't have an option but to spend a year at Duke, before transferring to Vanderbilt University in her sophomore year, so that she could major in chemical engineering. She received her bachelor's degree with highest honors from Vanderbilt in 1951, while also becoming the first woman initiated into Tau Beta Pi, the honorary engineering fraternity. Four years later, she became one of the first female graduates in engineering from Vanderbilt and the first woman with an engineering master's degree from the University of Florida, where she also received her doctorate in 1963. Career While working on her master's degree, Peck started tutoring older students in math-related subjects. This caught the eye of a professor at Florida University, who asked her to substitute for him, while he was away presenting a paper. This was the first of many teaching jobs Peck would have during