The Peace Corps recently announced the University ranks No. 5 for producing Peace Corps volunteers among medium-sized universities with populations between 5,000-15,000 undergraduate students.
For the last three years the University has ranked among the top five medium-sized universities in number of volunteers produced. The University has produced over 1,100 volunteers since the Peace Corps’ inception and is also the leading producer of Peace Corps volunteers in the Commonwealth.
“The Peace Corps was founded in 1961 by former President John F. Kennedy as an opportunity for Americans to serve abroad and help communities overseas,” Bruno Veselic, a spokesperson for the Peace Corps, said.
The application process for the Peace Corps is highly selective, and if accepted, students typically undergo intensive training before serving for about two years.
At the moment, there are 36 alumni currently serving abroad. There are also current students who were accepted into the program this year and will be volunteering for the Peace Corps in the upcoming year.
Fourth-year College student Jennifer Keltz will be joining the Peace Corps after graduation.
Keltz said in an email statement she will be serving as an education volunteer teaching English to secondary school students in the West African country of Burkina Faso. She said her motivation for applying was rooted in her desire to help others.
“All I knew was that [the Peace Corps] helped people, and I wanted to help people too,” Keltz said.
Programs like the Master in Public Health have recently partnered with the Peace Corps Master’s International so students can serve abroad before returning to the University to finish their degree requirements. According to the Peace Corps Master’s International, many partner schools offer similar arrangements in other fields, like education, forestry and social work.
This past cycle of admissions marked a 40-year high for the number of applications the Peace Corps received. The application process recently underwent significant streamlining and has been reconfigured to be more personalized.
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