Peace Corps Recruiting Office Reopens

After a two-and-a-half-year hiatus, Michigan State University's Peace Corps Recruiting Office reopened in fall 1998 under the auspices of MSU's Office of International Studies and Programs, made possible with renewed federal funding. Graduate students Brenda Hopkins and Will Shields, who served as Peace Corps volunteers in Benin and Mali, respectively, staffed the office in 1998-99. Their role as recruiters was to generate interest in the Peace Corps, recruit potential applicants, conduct initial interviews, and support applicants through the application process.

MSU has long been one of the leading universities nationally in the recruitment of Peace Corps volunteers. More than 1,800 MSU alumni have answered President John F. Kennedy's call to "promote world peace and friendship" by serving in the Peace Corps since its 1961 inception. Currently 63 MSU alumni are serving as Peace Corps volunteers or trainees, working in 41 different countries throughout the world on projects ranging from agriculture and engineering to English teaching and business training.

Mark Gearan, who soon leaves his position as director of the National Peace Corps to become president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, emphasized the importance of MSU alumni to the Peace Corps in a recent letter to MSU President Peter McPherson, himself a returned Peace Corps volunteer: "Michigan State University ranks eighth nationally on The 1998 List of Colleges and Universities with Graduates Currently Serving as Peace Corps Volunteers. This ranking reflects the high caliber of Michigan State University graduates and represents the outstanding contribution that they have made to the Peace Corps' legacy of service worldwide."

The strong participation by MSU students in community service programs, combined with MSU's historical mission as a land grant university, have helped many students develop the life experience that makes them competitive Peace Corps applicants and effective volunteers. For programs departing in 1999, approximately 70 MSU students or alumni were accepted to join Peace Corps training programs.

MSU's Moses Turner to Lead Peace Corps in South Africa

On January 12, 1999, the Peace Corps announced the appointment of Moses Turner, MSU professor in higher education and former vice president of student affairs and services, to be the Peace Corps country director in South Africa for a three-year term. Turner was selected for the post from a field of seven finalists. He underwent intensive training in Washington, D.C., before moving to Pretoria, South Africa, to oversee the training of 100 Peace Corps volunteers for work in rural South African schools.

"I expect it to be a challenging and important kind of work I'm going to be pleased to be associated with," Turner said in an interview with the Lansing State Journal. "South Africa is one of the more exciting places in the world right now. With the extraordinary kind of transition that is happening here... I'm hopeful that I will be able to provide effective leadership for the Peace Corps."

For more information about MSU Peace Corps, visit its Web site at http://www.isp.msu.edu/peacecorps (http://www.isp.msu.edu/peacecorps)

—Jay Rodman and Will Shields