MSU has reached a major milestone in its 44-year relationship with the Peace Corps more than 2,000 MSU alumni have now been Peace Corps volunteers. Including the 81 alumni currently serving in 33 countries around the world, a total of 2,003 MSU graduates have survived the rigorous screening and training processes to embrace what the Peace Corps bills as the toughest job youll ever love. Peace Corps records indicate that only four other universities in the nation have reached this level of participation.

MSU is proud of its long relationship with the Peace Corps and of the enthusiasm of its graduates for this sort of international involvement, says MSU Provost Kim Wilcox. Our 2,000 alumni who have served as Peace Corps volunteers are tangible evidence of MSUs commitment to advancing knowledge and transforming lives on an international scale.

MSUs history with the Peace Corps began with involvement in the planning and establishment of the agency in 1961. President Kennedy saw the agency as an opportunity for idealistic Americans to volunteer their time, energy, and expertise in promoting peace through projects in developing countries. After the founding of the Peace Corps, MSU graduates were among the initial cohort of volunteers sent to countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The MSU campus was actually a training site for Peace Corps volunteers heading to Nigeria later that year. (The specific destination for many of these early volunteers was the new University of Nigeria at Nsukka, an institution that many MSU faculty and administrators assisted in establishing and staffing.)

Except for a brief hiatus, MSU has hosted a Peace Corps recruiting office since 1978. Currently, the office operates under the auspices of the Dean of International Studies and Programs and is housed in room 4 of the International Center. It is staffed by two MSU graduate students who are returned Peace Corps veterans and who report to Peace Corps staff in the Chicago regional Peace Corps office. The MSU recruiters for 2005-2006 are Lisa Robinson, who served in Poland from 1998 to 2000, and Lexine Hansen, who served in Morocco from 1997 to 1999.

According to Jeffrey Riedinger, MSU acting dean of International Studies and Programs, there are several reasons that MSU has been so well represented in Peace Corps. MSU graduates students in a very broad range of academic programs, many of which match the needs of developing countries, Riedinger says. In addition, the international focus of MSU, including the strong emphasis on study abroad, produces many graduates with international experience and interests. And MSU, in its land-grant tradition, seems to foster an inclination toward public service in many of its alumni.

We have exciting plans for this year, with hopes of recruiting even higher numbers of volunteers, says Lisa Robinson, who is in her third year in the MSU Peace Corps Office. We are reaching out more systematically to the returned Peace Corps veterans at MSU and in the community, in hopes that they will help us attract more potential recruits, and we are developing a rigorous schedule of events, class talks, and appearances at career fairs.

For more about the MSU Peace Corps Office, visit the website at www.isp.msu.edu/peacecorps

-- Jay Rodman, International Studies and Programs